Three American men finished within 16.5 seconds of one another in the top 20 of Thursday's sprint at the IBU World Cup in Presque Isle, Maine, setting themselves up well for Friday's pursuit. The youngest man in the field, Sean Doherty, 20 led them with a career-best 13th.
Martin Fourcade and the rest of the top three agree, something about racing in Canmore is hard. "None of us felt they were skiing really fast," Germany's third-place finisher Simon Schempp said. He finished more than 18 seconds behind Fourcade and 3 seconds out of second, which went to Russia's Anton Shipulin.
Tim Burke couldn't quite excel on the shooting range enough to get that great race he was hoping for, but the American team has one more chance in Sunday's relay. Brendan Green led the Canadians in 31st.
Martin Fourcade won big in Ruhpolding, in a snowstorm and despite one penalty. Lowell Bailey, meanwhile, got some redemption after missing two shots in the last stage of Sunday's mass start: in the 20 k individual, he nailed all five targets in his final stage and raced to 14th place.
The Canadian men posted their second-best result in a World Cup relay in sixth on Sunday in Hochfilzen, Austria. They did so thanks to near-perfect shooting from the Gow brothers and fast ski times from all four team members.
Martin Fourcade was behind some race drama on Saturday in the IBU World Cup men's pursuit, which the man who finished second behind him -- Simon Schempp -- called a "psycho race." American Lowell Bailey was in the hunt for a top 10 and placed 13th with a single penalty.
After ditching the German team and flirting with a coaching job in Ukraine, German biathlon legend Ricco Gross will work with the Russian men's team. He says he looks forward to having more control and using his own ideas in coaching.
Nathan Smith took the lead after the third shooting stage, and never gave it back - despite the best efforts of superstars like Martin Fourcade and Anton Shipulin. "It was kind of surreal," Smith said of entering the final loop with a 37-second lead and savoring the moments leading up to his first World Cup win. Meanwhile, Martin Fourcade clinched his fourth consecutive World Cup title, a feat that has never before been accomplished in biathlon.
Nathan Smith shot 9-for-10 and ended up fifth, 34 seconds behind winner Martin Fourcade, in Thursday's 10 k sprint in Khanty-Mansiysk, Russia, the final stop on the IBU World Cup tour. Leif Nordgren led the U.S. in 21st with 90-percent shooting as well, finishing 1:14 back despite feeling under the weather.
German biathlete Erik Lesser earned his first victory in Sunday's 12.5 k pursuit at the 2015 IBU World Championships in Kontiolahti, Finland. Canadian Nathan Smith was the top North American in 13th after placing second in Saturday's 10 k sprint.
Two men left the range for the final time within half a second's time, and they played a cat-and-mouse game over the final kilometers of Sunday's biathlon World Cup relay in Oslo, Norway. Russia's Anton Shipulin proved the smarter racer, gaining his team a 0.2-second win.
Germany's Arnd Peiffer started late and finished faster than anyone else to win the men's 10 k sprint on the second day of IBU World Cup racing at Holmenkollen, and Nathan Smith and Leif Nordgren hit 95 percent of their targets to finish in the top 30 on Saturday.
Nathan Smith shot 19-for-20 for the first time in a 20 k individual race to place 12th on Thursday, and Leif Nordgren did the same to finish 20th, which stood as career-best 20 k results for both. France's Martin Fourcade won the race with perfect shooting, and the top-three men all cleaned.
Canada's Nathan Smith improved 71 places since his last World Cup sprint for a career-best seventh with perfect shooting in the Saturday's IBU World Cup sprint in Nove Mesto, Czech Republic. Three Canadian men qualified for Sunday's pursuit, with Brendan Green in 22nd and Macx Davies in 54th.
Emil Hegle Svendsen and Lowell Bailey had a few things in common on Thursday. While Bailey started the four-leg race for the Americans and Svendsen anchored the Norwegians, both led to the finish and capitalized on one critical hill to do so.
France's Martin Fourcade used a cushion from fast skiing to allow for a relaxed-shooting pace. It was an investment that paid off, being the day's only perfect shooter, earning him first place with a comfortable margin.
There was wind. There was fog. There were crashes. In a normal World Cup relay, 12 spare rounds and a penalty loop would place a team far back indeed. But in Oberhof, Germany, today, it represented excellence - and Russia claimed their third-straight men's relay victory.
Nathan Smith had never finished a mass start before Sunday, but he knew if all went according to plan, he could be in a competitive position. The Canadian found himself in sixth at one point, and with two penalties, secured his second-best World Cup result in ninth.
Emil Hegle Svendsen won his second race of the season on Saturday, again with perfect shooting, in the 12.5 k pursuit in Pokljuka, Slovenia. Cleaning was easier said than done, especially for the North American men, all of which had at least three misses.
Not only was Russia's Anton Shipulin 100-percent on-target in the men's IBU World Cup sprint on Friday, he was also the fastest, leading him to a nearly 12 second win over Austria's Dominik Landertinger. All but one man (Martin Fourcade) in the top nine cleaned, and Lowell Bailey shot flawlessly as well for 16th.