Christian Gow and Stuart Harden continued solid Championships racing that was nonetheless not quite what they were hoping for, finishing 16th and 18th in the junior and youth pursuits. For America, Casey Smith turned in one of the more impressive pursuit performances of the day, missing a single shot and climbing 20 places to 23rd.
Laura Dahlmeier of Germany and Alexandr Loginov of Russia picked up their first World Championships titles, while Christian Gow and Julia Ransom of Canada made the jump from youth to junior racing by placing 14th and 16th in the 7.5/10 k sprints. Casey Smith was the top American, placing 43rd.
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.
On Friday, Julia Ransom came thisclose to picking up Canada’s second medal of the week at biathlon World Youth and Junior Championships in Kontiolahti, Finland. Thisclose, it turns out, means four and a half seconds over six kilometers and two shooting stages. That’s the margin that separated Ransom, who wound up fifth in the youth women’s sprint, from third-place Lisa Theresa Hauser of Austria. If she had any regrets about missing the podium, Ransom kept...
On Wednesday, Kontiolahti, Finland, became a venue that was hospitable for biathlon for the first time in perhaps several weeks. After the bitter cold of the World Cup races two weeks ago, a general lack of sunlight, and a persistent wind that has dogged even the best shots at World Youth and Junior Championships this week, today’s balmy sunshine was a welcome reprieve. “Today was an amazing bluebird day and there was almost no wind,”...
The U.S. team at biathlon World Youth and Junior Championships in Kontiolahti, Finland, is hoping that things will heat up in the next few days – both literally and figuratively. “It has been pretty cold all week but it warmed up today,” American racer Anna Kubek told FasterSkier. At World Cup races one last weekend, the Finnish venue flirted with legal temperatures and athletes swaddled themselves in layer upon layer of clothes, as well as...