USBA picked 11 athletes to send to Europe this fall, based on trials races this summer in Jericho and last week at Soldier Hollow. Some of them will be picked for Sochi - but who? We clarify the qualification process, as well as getting some comments from High Performance Director Bernd Eisenbichler about the performances he saw in Utah last week.
With the Olympics looming, the U.S. Biathlon Association cut its national team to the smallest it has been in years, with no new members and only one athlete under the age of 25; development was cut almost completely. President and CEO Max Cobb hopes that good performances in Sochi will be a rising tide that lifts all boats in his sport.
In the men's 4 x 7.5 k relay in Ruhpolding Martin Fourcade anchored France to a 9-second victory over Norway, redeeming themselves of their last memory of the venue. Lowell Bailey and Leif Nordgren put the U.S. in second at the halfway mark, but the Americans ended up 14th.
On Thursday in Pokljuka, Slovenia, Burke turned in a season best fourth-place finish in the 10 k sprint even though he never reached his top speed. Lowell Bailey finished 36th on a broken toe.
The Chiemgau Arena, a shooting range with paved rollerski loops just outside of Ruhpolding, Germany, is a venue unlike almost anything in North America, with the exception perhaps of a few former Olympic sites. And even if Soldier Hollow has nice rollerskiing, too, Ruhpolding has a bit more: other teams, for one, but also spectators who show up even in the summer just to watch some of the world’s top biathletes train. Here are a...
RUHPOLDING, Germany – After winning a World Junior title in 1997, Jay Hakkinen has gone on to compete in four different Olympic Games and notch nine individual World Cup top-tens, including one this year. But despite Hakkinen’s long contribution to the U.S. team, in past years he has been more visible in Europe than in the sport in his home country. In 2008 he moved to Oberhof, Germany, when he and his girlfriend Kristin Orlameunder...
The U.S. Biathlon Association has announced its 2012-13 national team, which consists of 12 returning members and a single new nomination. The squad is led by five Americans who achieved top-ten results on the 2012 World Cup circuit, and were rewarded with “A1” nomination: Tim Burke, Lowell Bailey, Russell Currier, Jay Hakkinen, and Susan Dunklee. In total, seven women and six men will make up next year’s national team, a slight decrease from last year’s...
Both the U.S. and Canada had high hopes and lots of opportunities in Khanty-Mansiysk, Russia, but for the men competing in the 12.5 k pursuit Saturday, most of those possibilities didn’t materialize. For the U.S., Tim Burke started with bib number four after a season-best finish in the sprint on Friday. He missed a shot in the first stage, and then one in each of the next two, and hovered around tenth position. But after...
The world’s top biathletes recently competed in six races in eleven days at World Championships in Ruhpolding, Germany, but as exhausting as that may have been, their season isn’t over yet. The racers hopped on a chartered plane and headed for Siberia – home of the Russian venue Khanty-Mansiysk – to contest three more races over the extended weekend. For American Tim Burke, the last World Cup series wasn’t simply something to check off a...
RUHPOLDING, Germany – The U.S. men’s relay team had high hopes coming into Friday’s 4 x 7.5 kilometer relay. At last year’s World Championships in Khanty-Mansiysk, Russia, the team turned in one of the most surprising relay performances of the week, placing sixth after losing a photo finish with Italy just 38 seconds behind the victorious team from Norway. The Americans had been seeded 14th and not considered a threat in the race. This year,...
RUHPOLDING, Germany – After Jay Hakkinen’s sprint race on Saturday, where he missed five of ten shots including four in the standing stage, the American veteran was so upset that he didn’t have any interest talking to the press. On Tuesday after the 20 k individual race, the willingness to chat served as a barometer for Hakkinen’s feelings about his performance. “We can talk today,” he joked at the finish line. “It was good enough.”...
In case there was any doubt: the King still reigns. Ole Einar Bjørndalen of Norway had stood on the podium just once this season, and hadn’t won a World Cup race since December 2010. But on Sunday in Kontiolahti, Finland, the legend upped his tally of victories to 93 – a number that seems impossible for another athlete to ever match. At 38 years old, Bjørndalen also became the oldest athlete to ever win a...
The cold weather is the most talked-about feature of this weekend’s World Cup biathlon races in Kontiolahti, Finland, but the U.S. team is lobbying hard for that to change. After putting two racers in the top six in Saturday’s men’s sprint – they were the only team to do so – the storyline might become the red-hot Americans, not the frozen thermometers. “Today was obviously a great day for the team,” World Cup veteran Tim...
When the temperatures outside drop down to -26 Celsius like they did in Kontiolahti, Finland on Thursday morning, ski racing becomes a game of survival. Breathing in cold air while asking lungs to work their hardest isn’t anybody’s idea of a healthy decision. And the extreme cold is even more tricky in biathlon, where nimble fingers are required to pull triggers and bulky mittens just get in the way. In Fort Kent, Maine last winter,...
At the front of the race, Sunday’s World Cup men’s relay in Antholz-Anterselva was not especially exciting. Although the time gaps weren’t huge, there were few lead changes: after the first handoff, France took the lead and never looked back, remaining there for the rest of the race. After that point, Germany sat in second, Austria in third, and Russia in fourth: at each exchange, despite the intervening 7.5 kilometers, the scene was the same....
With the U.S. men’s team notching their best day ever in Saturday’s sprint, hopes were high that the team could place athletes in the top ten or even the top five in today’s pursuit. But although the Americans were frequently close, they couldn’t pull it off. After starting with bib 6, Russell Currier missed a shot in the first prone stage which dropped him to 12th; and while Tim Burke, starting with bib 11, was...
After a frustrating individual race on Thursday, in which the top finish was 44th, the U.S. men’s biathlon team was left with two choices: wallow, or rebound for a great day Saturday. Luckily, the men in red, white and blue aren’t prone to feeling sorry for themselves. They picked up and moved on, notching top results in today’s 10 k World Cup sprint in Nove Mesto, Czech Republic. They were led by a man who...
There were a lot of unusual things about the World Cup biathlon races in Hochfilzen, Austria on Saturday. First, there was the inch of snow that fell during the men’s 12.5 k pursuit. Then, there was the fact that the field was incredibly compressed thanks to some strange weather in the original sprint race. “The snow storm that stopped [mid-race on Thursday] had a bigger effect than I expected,” U.S. biathlete Jay Hakkinen told FasterSkier....
With three men who have placed in the top twenty so far this World Cup season and one more who was the hero of last year’s World Championships relay, the U.S. had high hopes for Sunday’s 4 x 7.5 k relay, the first of the season. The team chose Lowell Bailey, who has finished as high as fifth in these first two weeks of racing, as their leadoff leg. And in some ways, he lived...
At the start of Sunday’s World Cup men’s pursuit, there was one man out in front: Carl Johan Bergman of Sweden. After picking up the win in Friday’s sprint in Ostersund, Swedene, Bergman had a seven-second advantage over the rest of the field. But as Friday’s victory was just the second of his career, the big question was how long the 33-year-old would be able to hang onto the lead. The answer, it turned out,...