FIS Cross Country World Cup (Dresden, Germany): Freestyle sprints Men’s report For her second-straight World Cup sprint, Sophie Caldwell of the U.S. Ski Team reached the podium in the women’s 1.2-kilometer freestyle sprint on Saturday in Dresden, Germany. Caldwell placed third in the final behind Sweden’s Hanna Falk, who won it in 2:11.02 minutes, and Maja Dahlqvist, also of Sweden, who placed second (+0.23). Caldwell and Dahlqvist both lunged in a photo finish for second,...
IBU World Cup (Ruhpolding, Germany): Men’s 4 x 7.5 k relay Less than a week after International Biathlon Union (IBU) press release, the Norwegians avoided the penalty lap and used seven spares to clean. First-leg skier Birkeland put them in second with near-perfect shooting (0+0, 0+1), just 0.4 seconds behind Germany’s Erik Lesser, who cleaned without any spares, in first. (Birkeland was also on the Norwegian team that won the
IBU World Cup (Ruhpolding, Germany): Women’s 15 k individual IBU Cup women’s 15 k individual, also on Thursday. “That spark is exactly what our team needs right now and the timing is spot on,” Dunklee continued. “We will field our first women’s relay this weekend. It has been a challenging season so far living and traveling with such a small crew, trying to stay upbeat and carry the team with a skeleton group.” The World Cup...
U.S. Cross Country Championships (Anchorage, Alaska): 20/30 k classic mass starts Women’s report Sweden’s Hedda Bångman denied Caitlin Patterson of her first outright victory of the week at 2018 U.S. Cross Country Championships, but Patterson as the first American racked up her third-straight national title in the women’s 20-kilometer classic mass start at Kincaid Park on Sunday in Anchorage, Alaska. Bångman, a 22-year-old freshman at the University of Colorado Boulder (CU), pulled off a 15.9-second...
For athletes who finished 2017 on a high note, the first race of 2018 can be a couple of two things. One is a continuation of the good competitions right like they left off. Another is a downgrade leaving them wondering if they’ve lost their mojo. For some women in Thursday’s 7.5 k World Cup sprint in Oberhof, Germany, it was the former. Anastasiya Kuzmina of Slovakia started in the yellow bib denoting the leader...
Two hundred and thirty biathletes, 115 men and 115 women, will earn the right to be called a 2018 Olympian — 10 of whom will be Canadian. The top-six teams in last season’s International Biathlon Union’s (IBU) final Nation’s Cup ranking can bring a full team of six men and six women to the Games. Canada’s men’s finished ranked 13th while the women ranked 15th, so each squad can bring five athletes. this document detailing...
LE GRAND-BORNAND, France — After a long weekend of racing, beginning with heavy snow and continuing with glazed tracks, the biathlon World Cup is on break for two weeks to recalibrate and rejuvenate as the athletes prepare for the rest of the season and the 2018 Olympics in February. Here’s what some members of the field thought about the races this weekend – the bits of interviews and press conferences that didn’t make it into...
NorAm mini tour (Rossland, B.C.): 10/15 k freestyle pursuits Team Gregg ended the Rossland NorAm mini tour with another double win, with American Caitlin Gregg and her husband Brian Gregg winning the 10- and 15-kilometer freestyle pursuits, respectively, at the Black Jack Ski Club trails. Caitlin capped the long weekend with her third-straight win, a 48.28-second victory over former Canadian biathlete Zina Kocher (Foothills Nordic). Caitlin started first and was first across the finish in 29:02.86,...
LE GRAND-BORNAND, France—Justine Braisaz was so excited for today’s 15 k mass start that she jumped the gun, scooting forward on her skis a few seconds before the start and having to reset. That provoked a laugh among the crowd and perhaps even her competitors, but they weren’t laughing by the time the race finished and Braisaz had left them in the dust, claiming her first World Cup win – on her father’s birthday, no...
NorAm Mini Tour (Rossland, B.C.): Freestyle sprints On Day 2 of NorAm racing in Rossland, British Columbia, Julien Locke, of the Black Jack Ski Club and Canadian National U25 Team, won the men’s 1.4-kilometer freestyle sprint final on his home trails by just one-hundredth of a second over Evan Palmer-Charrette, of the National Team Development Centre (NTDC) Thunder Bay, in 2:38.13. NTDC Thunder Bay had two on the podium with Julian Smith in third, 0.4...
LE GRAND-BORNAND, France – Well, that didn’t take long. After missing the first stop on the World Cup calendar due to illness and showing less than her usual ski speed in Hochfilzen last weekend, Germany’s Laura Dahlmeier picked up her first International Biathlon Union (IBU) World Cup win of the season in the women’s 10-kilometer pursuit on Saturday. The 24-year-old German, who was the overall IBU World Cup champion last season as well as three-time...
Susan Dunklee’s start to another International Biathlon Union (IBU) World Cup season hadn’t played out as she’d hoped, specifically in terms of results. Coming off a banner winter, with a silver at 2017 World Championships (in the women’s mass start), Dunklee 31, had so far placed 53rd, 79th and 97th, respectively, in non-relay races over the last two weeks. She had yet to race a mass start, but also had yet to qualify for a...
Strong gusts of wind on the range required strong nerves and a lot of luck in the women’s and men’s relay races that concluded the International Biathlon Union (IBU) World Cup in Hochfilzen, Austria, on Sunday afternoon. While the relays concluded with teams on the podium one might expect there, tempestuous weather conditions that at times made it almost impossible to hit the targets also gave outsiders a good chance, and both the U.S. men...
NorAm/SuperTour (Sovereign Lake near Vernon, British Columbia): 10/15 k freestyle VERNON, B.C. — The combined NorAm and SuperTour event at the Sovereign Lake Nordic Centre continued with individual-start distance races and continued with the theme of U.S. domination of the leaderboard. Ian Torchia, of Northern Michigan University (NMU) and the U.S. Ski Team D-team, started the day with a big victory in the men’s 15 k freestyle, finishing in 36:29.7 minutes and on the heels...
Emma Lunder may be aclose to zero visibility in the sprint, in the women’s 10-kilometer pursuit in Hochfilzen, Austria. Despite having started more than two dozen World Cups since the 2013/2014 season, this was only her third pursuit. “I went into this race knowing that both snow and wind were expected, so I anticipated conditions similar to yesterday’s sprint,” Lunder, who had previously raced to 42nd in the sprint with 9-for-10 shooting, wrote in an...
NorAm/SuperTour (Sovereign Lake near Vernon, British Columbia): Classic sprints On the opening day of the NorAm Continental Cup series in Canada (which doubled as a U.S. SuperTour), American Kaitlynn Miller of the Craftsbury Green Racing Project (CGRP) started Saturday with a nearly three-second win in the classic-sprint qualifier at the Sovereign Lake Nordic Centre, then went on to win her quarterfinal and semifinal before topping the final as well. Miller was the fastest women’s qualifier...
Note: This article has been updated to include comments from Biathlon Canada’s Nathan Smith and Emma Lunder. Calm wind and a light drizzle for the men’s International Biathlon Union (IBU) World Cup sprint on Friday afternoon in Hochfilzen, Austria, turned into a full-blown blizzard for the women’s sprint that followed. One multiple-time Olympic and world champion weathered the elements best, as Darya Domracheva of Belarus won the latter with clean shooting. She was one of...
Entering this season, members of Biathlon Canada had everything to gain and not a whole lot to lose. They had already had theirprequalifying for Canada’s International Biathlon Union (IBU) World Cup Team for the first trimester of racing, Ransom, 24, jumped into the 2017/2018 season with the Sunday. Three days later on Wednesday, it was another ballgame. With little to lose in the women’s 15-kilometer individual in Östersund, Ransom raced to a career-best ninth, which...
Three Canadians and one American competed at last week’s International Biathlon Union (IBU) Cup opener in in Sjusjøen, Norway, with Canada’s Emma Lunder posting an individual top 20 and her teammates Sarah Beaudry and Carsen Campbell teaming up to place fourth in the single mixed relay on Sunday, Nov. 26. In an email, Biathlon Canada High Performance Director Roddy Ward explained that Canada did not send its National “Z” Team, arrived in Europe on Nov....
Even the most renowned athletes and national teams in the mixed relay on Sunday afternoon admitted they had not yet found their perfect groove in Östersund, Sweden, on the opening day of the 2017/2018 International Biathlon Union (IBU) World Cup season. Nevertheless it still made for an exciting race, with four teams vying for the podium on the last lap. And in the finishing stretch, anchored by veteran Emil Hegle Svendsen, the same country prevailed...