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Franziska Preuss

Historic 1-4 Sweep for France in Women’s Biathlon Sprint

FasterSkier’s Coverage of the Biathlon World Championships is made possible through the generous support of the Craftsbury Outdoor Center: New England’s finest snowmaking, world class race venues and touring trails, healthy food in abundance, comfortable accommodations at Craftsbury:  Sports, Sustainability, Stewardship.   Ever since France upset Norway to win the opening Mixed Relay of the 2024 Biathlon World Championships, their magnificent esprit de corps has been on display. After that race, the entire team gathered...

France Snags Mixed Relay Gold Ahead of Norway at Biathlon World Championships

FasterSkier’s Coverage of the Biathlon World Championships is made possible through the generous support of the Craftsbury Outdoor Center: New England’s finest snowmaking, world class race venues and touring trails, healthy food in abundance, comfortable accommodations at Craftsbury:  Sports, Sustainability, Stewardship.   In the opening race of the 2024 Biathlon World Championships, France overcame heavy favorite Norway to take gold in the 4×6 k Mixed Relay. It was a tightly contested race with 25 nations...

IBU World Cup Rundown from Oslo: Canada’s Lunder 9th, Egan 12th for the U.S.

The IBU World Cup resides in Oslo this week. The women began the racing with the 7.5-kilometer sprint on Thursday. The podium rundown goes like this: Slovakia’s Kuzmina Anastasiya shot 1+0 to win in 19:56.2, Germany’s Franziska Preuss placed second (+21.2, 0+0), with Paulina Fialkova of Slovakia in third (+25.1, 0+0). This was Kuzmina’s fifth win at Holmenkollen and secured her the IBU sprint overall title. Canada’s Emma Lunder was the top North American in...

Sunday Race Rundown: Otepää and More (Updated 2x)

FIS World Cup Otepää, Estonia classic 10/15 k individual start  Women’s Full Report | Men’s Full Report World Cup cross-country action returned to the Otepää race venue on Sunday, with athletes reconvening after Saturday’s classic sprints for the weekend’s distance classic event. In the women’s 10-kilometer individual start classic race, Norway’s Therese Johaug finished first in a time of 29:53.7 for the win. Sweden’s Ebba Andersson finished second (+48.4) while Russia’s Natalia Nepryaeva claimed third (+56.7). Skiing for the...

Sunday Race Rundown: Dresden Team Sprints & Oberhof Relays (Updated 2 x)

FIS World Cup Dresden, Germany 6 x 1.6 k Freestyle Team Sprint The first World Cup team sprint of the season was run amidst drizzle and the Dresden, Germany city-scape as the women raced a total of six 1.6-kilometer laps. Round and round on the looping course, the pace was a mix of tactically subdued speeds with sustained bursts of energy to break the pack. After all the speed changes and exchanges with one athlete...

Belarus Nabs First Olympic Gold in Women’s Relay; Canada 10th, U.S. 13th

FasterSkier would like to thank Fischer Sport USA, Concept2, mixed relay team placed fifth two days ago).  Öberg passed Bescond to claim silver for Sweden, 10.7 seconds back, while Bescond anchored France to bronze (+17.6), ahead of Norway in fourth (+29.7), Slovakia in fifth (+38.4), Switzerland in sixth (+43.5), Poland in seventh (+43.6), Germany in eighth (+53.9), Italy in ninth (+1:04.1), and Canada in 10th (+1:33.4). The U.S. finished 13th (+2:01.9) of 18th teams. With...

FasterSkier would like to thank Fischer Sport USA, Concept2, Full report It was a disappointing opening to the Olympics for Johannes Thingnes Bø of Norway, who despite winning eight World Cup races this season started the Games with finishes of 31st and 21st in the sprint and pursuit. But on Thursday he showed why he was a medal favorite and won the 20 k individual race – only by 5.5 seconds, but that margin becomes impressive when you...

Saturday Rundown: Dresden, Ruhpolding, Kaiser Maximilian Lauf

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,...

Sunday Rundown: U.S. Nationals; Tour de Ski Finale; Oberhof Relays

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...

Norway’s Mixed Relay Wins Again in Östersund; Canada 15th, U.S. 21st

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...

Mäkäräinen in ‘Different League’ in Ruhpolding Sprint; Dunklee 33rd

Kaisa Mäkäräinen skied in a league of her own on Saturday. The five biathletes currently leading the International Biathlon Union (IBU) women’s overall standings also occupied the top five of Saturday’s 7.5-kilometer sprint in Ruhpolding, Germany. But when Mäkäräinen shoots clean in a race, even those fast skiers cannot keep up with “the Finnish flash,” as an announcer for German TV broadcaster ARD dubbed her, as she finished in 20:51.8 minutes for her first World Cup win of the season and...

Thursday Rundown: Ruhpolding and Soldier Hollow (Updated)

U.S. Cross Country Championships (Soldier Hollow): Freestyle-sprint prologue [UPDATED] One and done. That was the case Thursday for the U.S. Cross Country Championship’s freestyle sprint at Soldier Hollow (SoHo) where only a qualifier was held to determine the final standings — no heats were contested. With just-under-freezing temps and a light snow falling, the men set off at 15-second intervals. The men’s podium was an all-Canadian affair as they swept the top-three positions. Jess Cockney of the Canadian...

Germany Wins at Home in Soccer Arena; Canada Debuts at Schalke

A biathlon relay with athletes skiing around and through a huge soccer arena in a city with no snow seems like a crazy idea. But in the 1990s, the German cross-country skier and biathlete Herbert Fritzenwenger, who had retired from active sports after competing in the 1988 Calgary Olympic Games, believed there had to be some way to make biathlon even more attractive for viewers. He wanted to mix sports and entertainment bringing the sport...

Reid Blasts into Top 30 for Career Best in Blustery Östersund

Wind and picked up the sport a little over a year ago, it’s even more impressive that she recorded her first World Cup top 30 in the longest-format (four-stage) biathlon race on one of the windiest race days in recent memory. “This was definitely my best result, probably more due to luck than anything else,” Reid wrote in an email on Wednesday night. Of 99 finishers, only one woman hit all 20 targets: third-place finisher Darya Yurkevich of Belarus....

French Dream Team Tops IBU Single Mixed Relay; Canada 7th

By mid-afternoon in Östersund, Sweden, on Sunday, Norway had already claimed a win in the mixed relay. But there was another event still on the schedule: the single mixed relay, a relatively new format with just one man and one woman per team, skiing short loops of a kilometer and a half. Each athlete skis and shoots twice, then tags off, then repeats: two relay legs each for a total of eight shooting bouts. While Norway...