A day after besting Germany's Simon Schempp on the last loop, Anton Shipulin of Russia did so again -- this time beating the German by a second for the men's relay victory. Schempp partially blamed a lapped skier. The U.S. men ended up sixth, tying their season best from a week earlier, while Canada placed 11th with strong shooting.
Ninth on Saturday, Nathan Smith placed 10th in Sunday's pursuit, the final race of the IBU World Cup in Östersund, Sweden, and another Canadian, Macx Davies finished in the top 30 in his first World Cup pursuit.
Nathan Smith did the expected and placed ninth in Saturday's IBU World Cup sprint, despite two misses. Meanwhile, another Canadian, Macx Davies, turned heads as the only man in the 100-plus field to shoot clean. He finished 10th for his career-best result by 30 places.
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.
Simon Schempp and three teammates combined for Germany's second gold in the last two days of relays at 2015 IBU World Championships, topping Norway and France, respectively. The U.S. got off to a strong start with Lowell Bailey, but finished 14th with two penalties. The Canadians had two penalties as well and ended up 19th.
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.
The Canadian men showed some more depth despite heavily falling snow on Saturday, with competitive finishes from Brendan Green and Scott Gow in the IBU World Cup 10 k sprint. In 16th, Green qualified for Sunday's mass start.
The 2014 Olympics in Sochi were an unmitigated disaster for German cross country skiing and biathlon. We look back on why, using our own observations and a 235-page Germany Olympic committee analysis of the country's performance in Sochi. With problems identified, the question becomes: what about now?
It was warm, wet and calm in Finland on Thursdsay requiring perfect shooting and strong legs. Norwegian Johannes Thingnes Bø delivered, shooting clean and beating France's Martin Fourcade, who also cleaned, by 7.1 seconds. Canada's Nathan Smith led the North Americans in 21st.
Bjorn Ferry had a disappointing Olympics - he couldn't come even close to repeating his 2010 gold medal in the pursuit - but came back to win the first World Cup since Sochi. For the United States, Lowell Bailey placed 12th and Tim Burke 16th, while Brendan Green led Canada in 21st. "I'm psyched to start of the last trimester with a top 15," Bailey said.
Simon Schempp and Lukas Hofer looked pretty chummy after the finish men’s 10 k sprint at the World Cup in Antholz, Italy this Friday. Maybe their laughter was a product of their relief of finishing a challengingly slow course, or maybe it was that both of them were on the podium for the first time this season. More likely, however, it was the fact they both sat atop that podium in a rare tie for first place having skied the 10 k in 22:44.9.
Friday's World Cup relay turned into a barnburner in Oberhof, with Emil Hegle Svendsen desperately trying to make up nine seconds on Dmitri Malyshko in the final 2.5 kilometer on the newly-salted tracks. The Russian held strong, though, and gave his team the victory.
Coming into today’s 15 k mass start in Khanty-Mansiysk, Russia, Martin Fourcade of France seemed to be unstoppable. At World Championships in Ruhpolding Germany a week ago, Fourcade had won the final race, a mass start, by overpowering a better-shooting Bjorn Ferry of Sweden. Then in the sprint here in Khanty-Mansiysk he eked out a 5-second victory, which he parlayed into a more sizable win in the pursuit. Those wins clinched the overall World Cup...
Kilometer after kilometer, Martin Foucade of France and Arnd Peiffer of Germany skied on and on, unable to break one another on the trails. Starting today’s 12.5 k World Cup pursuit just five seconds apart, the pair were initially trailed by Sweden’s Fredrik Lindstrom, who finished third in Friday’s sprint. But after just one loop on the Khantiy-Mansiysk trails, Lindstrom missed a shot and lost his spot with the leaders. From then on, it was...
RUHPOLDING, Germany – Going into today’s men’s 4 x 7.5 k relay, the field was wide open. France, with double gold medalist Martin Fourcade and silver medalist brother Simon Fourcade, was a prerace favorite. But last year’s top two teams, Norway and Russia, hadn’t dominated in the individual races, and neither had host country Germany. Meanwhile, Sweden’s Carl Johan Bergman had won two medals, and three Swedes had finished in the top ten. Slovenia and...
RUHPOLDING, Germany – There were plenty of errors at the IBU World Championships mixed relay today, mistakes that were big enough to have a surprising and significant impact on the outcome of the race. France’s third-leg racer, Simon Fourcade, received the tag from Marie Dorin Habert in second place, just 11 seconds behind Norway. But he imploded in spectacular fashion, using all six of his spare rounds, hitting the penalty loop, and losing almost two...
It’s hard to say which biathlete faced more pressure before the start of Saturday’s 12.5 k pursuit in Oslo, Norway: Evgeniy Garanichev of Russia, or the country’s own Emil Hegle Svendsen. 23-year-old Garanichev was coming off the first win of his career in Thursday’s sprint. After seeing just one weekend of World Cup action during the 2011 season, Garanichev started the first period of World Cups this year, but was then sent back to the...
When Norway’s Emil Hegle Svendsen starts a pursuit race in bib 1, it’s a pretty good bet that he’ll stay there. Gamblers today, however, would have been sorry to put their money on the overall World Cup leader. As soon as the 12.5 k pursuit started in Nove Mesto, Czech Republic, Svendsen began making errors. After being caught by Frenchmen Simon and Martin Fourcade, who had started second and third, the trio skied into the...
In the first competition of this week’s six-race series in Oberhof, Germany, Olga Vilukhina anchored the Russian women’s relay team to a victory, the nation’s fourth in a row on biathlon’s World Cup circuit. But in the last competition, Sunday’s 15 k mass start, a different team became dominant. Germany’s Andreas Birnbacher shot 20 for 20 and skied to a 24-second win, annihilating the rest of the 30-man field. In the process, he gave his...
For three quarters of Sunday’s 12.5 k pursuit in Presque Isle, Arnd Peiffer had the biathlon race locked up. The German started the day in bib one, with a 16-second advantage over France’s Martin Fourcade, and grew his lead to more than a minute in the first half of the race—thanks to strong skiing and just one penalty over three shooting stages. To his competitors, Peiffer seemed untouchable—each time they entered the range, he was...