When the 2013 season turned into a disaster for Canadian biathlete Megan Imrie, she headed back to her parents' ranch for a few weeks of checking the traplines, bonfires and picnics in the snow, and spending time with her horses. The chance to rejuvenate mid-winter has her ready to go for Sochi, and these days you'll find her making the most of on-snow training with the national team.
2012 World Junior Champion Kurtis Wenzel began mulling retirement in December; despite his first World Cup start and a national title, come April, it still felt like the right decision. The Canadian biathlon team is also losing 2012 Female Biathlete of the Year Melanie Schultz, who struggled to find her ski speed - and motivation - all season.
In his first year as a senior, Canada's Kurtis Wenzel - last year's World Junior Champion in the individual - saw his season progress as normal. Then, at the very end, things got exciting: he got the surprise call to race in his first World Cup, at the Olympic venue in Sochi, then returned home to win his first national championship.
Despite feeling less that great on his skis, Canada's Jean Phillippe LeGuellec finished 10th in the 20 k individual at World Championships on Thursday to lead three teammates into the top 31.
Both Scott Perras and Scott Gow notched personal-best performances on the biathlon World Cup; teammate Jean Philippe Le Guellec joked that the reason he collected two penalties and finished 41st was that his first name isn't Scott. The results highlight a Canadian team growing in both strength and depth.
Canada will be sending a full team of 16 young athletes to the World Youth and Junior Championships, to be held in Obertilliach, Austria, starting January 25th.
Rosanna Crawford scored points in a World Cup biathlon race for the first time today, beating her previous best finish by almost 30 spots to place 24th. Meanwhile, Jean Philippe Le Guellec wrote in an e-mail that he was "totally happy with following up last week with a top 10."
The culture of Quebec is special, says Biathlon Canada High Performance Director Chris Lindsay, and it's no surprise that the province produced both Myriam Bédard and Jean Philippe Le Guellec - and, of course, Alex Harvey. Le Guellec wants to do for biathlon's visibility, and for Canada, what Bédard did in the 1990's.
Despite tying his career-best World Cup result last year, winning three IBU Cup races and hitting the podium in another, and securing a spot on Biathlon Canada’s “A” team, until recently Nathan Smith wasn’t feeling too confident about the upcoming season of racing. “I got a cold at the end of August and I guess I underestimated how much of a toll it took on me,” he told FasterSkier in an interview on Thursday. “So...
By all accounts, Canada’s Zina Kocher had a great season on biathlon’s World Cup in 2012. After a disappointing Olympics in Vancouver and then a dismal 2011, she joined the newly-formed Biathlon Alberta Training Center, skated through trials races, and rejoined the World Cup, where she had three top-ten finishes and landed 19th in the overall standings, her best-ever ranking in nine seasons on the circuit. This year she’s training to more consistently hit the...
Note: This is the second of two pieces based on an interview with Biathlon Canada’s High Performance Director, Chris Lindsay, from earlier this spring.
Note: This is the first of two pieces based on an interview with Biathlon Canada’s High Performance Director, Chris Lindsay, from earlier this spring. Any way you look at it, 2012 was a good year for Canadian biathlon on the World Cup. Jean-Philippe Le Guellec, Brendan Green, and Zina Kocher all notched multiple top-tens. While Green continued an ascent that began with top-20 finishes in 2010 and 2011, for the older two athletes, the results...
VALCARTIER, Québec – As she rounded the penalty loop at Myriam Bédard Center on Sunday, Rosanna Crawford looked up and threw down her headband. Winning the pursuit wasn’t going to be a walk in the park at the Canadian Biathlon Championships, and the 23-year-old from Alberta needed all the firepower she could muster. But the shooting portion was over; Crawford missed one shot in each of the last three stages for three total misses. The...
Lowell Bailey may be getting a lot of attention these days, but the American biathlete isn’t the only one to have found success in the early days of the 2012 World Cup season. Quietly, the Canadian women have upped their own profile – and their first two weeks of racing culminated in a ninth-place relay finish in Hochfilzen, Austria, tying the U.S. men’s performance. Team member Zina Kocher, who has been racing in senior-level international...
When two-time Olympian Zina Kocher was left off of Biathlon Canada’s “A” team this spring, she was surprised. “Criteria was never set before the season started,” Kocher told FasterSkier in an interview; it wasn’t until after the season was over that athletes learned whether their results were good enough for a nomination. Instead of simply adjusting and continuing on with the national team, Kocher turned down the “B” team nomination altogether and joined another squad,...
In early July, Marc-André Bédard’s brother called him up, urging him to try a Spartan Race. Simon Bédard, of Montreal, had just finished one the 5 k trail challenges in Ottawa. He had heard of a $20,000 reward for outrunning the series’ reigning champ, Hobie Call, and figured his brother, Biathlon Canada’s 2008 athlete of the year, could beat him. While training with the national team in Canmore, Alberta, the 2010 Olympian looked into it....