After feeling like health issues stunted her career two seasons ago, two-time Olympian Perianne Jones decided to give it one more year and go out on a high note. She did so, staying healthy and logging some career-best distance results in her final season with the Canadian national team.
When Casey Smith went flying off the race course in Canmore, Alberta, he was knocked unconscious; he later found he had broken many ribs, a shoulder blade, and bones in his back, as well as puncturing a lung. The U.S. biathlete is recovering at home, a process which will be long but which he's approaching optimistically.
Stepping up from youth to junior racing is supposed to be hard - but in doing so, Canmore's Aidan Millar turned in his best result ever in international championship racing. "I’m finding it hard to believe that I was actually able to get that result," he wrote of finishing 8th in the 10 k sprint in Belarus.
This weekend, Olivia Bouffard-Nesbitt, of Rocky Mountain Racers, will make her World Cup debut in Östersund, Sweden. Less than a week later, she'll appear at her first World Championships in Falun, Sweden, where she hopes to start the classic sprint and 10 k freestyle.
We can't imagine anything much more exciting than making World Championships for the first time, so we contacted the North Americans living that exact dream this year. Here's our first of the series from Canadian national-team member Jess Cockney in his first World Champs after competing at the Sochi Olympics last year.
NorAm leader Michael Somppi shares a tool that can be used as a race-day warmup or post-interval cool down, and it's one Canadian World Cup coach Tor-Arne Hetland shared with him. "The recipe is 4 x 15 seconds on/45 seconds off, and the key to doing this effectively is the pacing," Somppi explains.
Photos from an exciting day of mass start racing in Canmore, Alberta, on Sunday. American and Canadian men and women contested NorAms, and Canada also used the youth and junior categories as selection trials for age-group championships in Minsk, Belarus, this winter.
Canadian World Cup and IBU selection races wrapped up Friday at Frozen Thunder, with a second-straight sprint determining which eight men and eight women would start the season on the World Cup or IBU Cup. Four were prequalified.
Temperatures below -20 degrees Celsius didn't keep Canada's top biathletes from contending for spots on the World Cup and IBU Cup on Thursday, with Nathan Smith and Rosanna Crawford topping the competition in the opening sprints of trials at the Canmore Nordic Center.
There are a couple things one can count on in Canmore, including solid tracks and quality snow, even in October. At the first unofficial sprint of the North American season on Friday, more than 120 racers found both for the Frozen Thunder classic sprint, and organizers added what could be a new tradition to the mix: a zero-elimination format.
Biathlon Alberta, the provincial governing body for the sport of biathlon, is hiring a Canmore‐based Events Coordinator for the 2014‐15 season. This contract position will involve working approximately 40 days between November 24th and March 24th, assisting with the production of Biathlon Alberta events around Alberta.
Newly-minted Biathlon Canada national team member Macx Davies talks season prep and Frozen Thunder: "When you have a long ski, catching up with friends is one of the few things that can shorten the long hours on the track," he writes. "Finally I am skiing. Finally the season is here. Finally it is winter."
At 22, Olivia Bouffard-Nesbitt hasn't taken the most conventional road as an up-and-coming Canadian skier, but she's developed training smarts through experience and is now working toward U23 World Championships, Canada's 2016 World Cups and the 2018 Olympics with Rocky Mountain Racers in Canmore.
Between the Canadian NorAm and U.S. SuperTour circuits, here's a rundown of what you have to look forward to this winter, highlighting dates, places and big races.
Emma Lunder placed 30th in her World Cup debut last season. The Canadian biathlete has since gained funding, training partners, and motivation: "Anytime I'm doing a really brutal workout, I just think to myself, if you can get through this, you're one step closer to racing in Pokljuka again!"
Three biathletes from Switzerland ventured to Canmore earlier this month for three weeks of training with the Canadian biathlon team. Before heading home, they headed to the Yukon for a little R & R.
Last month, Norwegian shooting coach Joar Himle, who previously coached biathlon greats like Ole Einar Bjørndalen and Halvard Hanevold, visited the Canadians for a weeklong camp in Canmore. While he mostly worked with individual athletes, he also had them do a few interesting drills, including a sort of 'shoot 'til you miss' exercise, which takes about an hour on the range.
The 5 Peaks Trail Running Series came to Canmore for the second installment of central Alberta's race series last weekend. Consistent with the usual 5 Peaks format, this event consisted of an “enduro” distance and a “sport” distance, 12 k and 8 k respectively. But unlike your average 5 Peaks race, this event featured Olympians.
Chandra Crawford stuck with skiing long after winning gold as a U23 at the 2006 Olympics because she remembered when Beckie Scott and Sara Renner explained "it would take ten years to get good." She committed, and after three Olympics, Crawford, 30, retired from the sport to pursue higher education -- cutting right to the chase with an MBA to better serve Fast and Female.
With Alana Thomas, Zoë Roy, Chandra Crawford and team founder Amanda Ammar all bowing out of competitive-nordic racing this year, Team Ninja only existed for a season, but what a season it was. We spoke with Thomas, Ammar and Roy about their experience training and racing independently and what each of them intend to do as they turn the page.