Annelies Cook finished 18th and Susan Dunklee 25th in the World Cup sprint in Sochi, Russia today. With only three women and no team for tomorrow's relay, the sprint and individual races were the only chances the U.S. women had to race on the Olympic course before next year; here's what they thought.
More on the women's World Cup sprint in Antholz, Italy, from U.S. women's coach Jonne Kahkonen, 18th-place finisher Annelies Cook, and Audrey Vaillancourt of Canada, who finished 55th in just the second weekend of World Cup racing in her career.
For the third time this year, the U.S. Ski Team ran into their counterparts on the biathlon squad earlier this week when both groups were in Utah for their respective training camps. “The biathletes were at Soldier Hollow yesterday as was the entire U.S. Ski Team,” skier Noah Hoffman wrote in an e-mail to FasterSkier on Tuesday. “Cross country was doing a speed (10-15 seconds) session classic. I’m not sure what was involved in the...
Sara Studebaker is an Idaho-raised, New-Hampshire educated, Lake Placid-based Olympic biathlete – who just happens to be adopting Anchorage, Alaska as her second (or third) home. While Studebaker lives and trains primarily out of the Olympic Training Center in upstate New York, her boyfriend, former biathlete Zach Hall, stays in Anchorage, where he has works and trains junior biathletes part-time. Between traveling on the biathlon World Cup all winter and the distance separating the East...
LAKE PLACID, N.Y. — While the U.S. Nordic Ski Team trained on the mountainous,
JERICHO, Vt. – If one thing is constant in summer biathlon races here at the Ethan Allen Firing Range, it’s the sight of Lanny and Tracy Barnes near the top of the results sheets. Since 2009, only one of the sisters, Tracy, has been off the podium – and it was just once. Lanny has won the majority of the races. And the 2012 edition of the North American Rollerski Biathlon Championships was no different....
HANOVER, NEW HAMPSHIRE – When Laura Spector left the East and drove to Bozeman, Montana, this spring, she knew she was headed for school, but she wasn’t sure what was going to happen after that. The 2010 Olympian and national team biathlete had finished up her first full year of training and racing since graduating from Dartmouth College, and it wasn’t what she had been hoping for. After starting the early-season World Cups she struggled,...
Our recent series on biathletes facing the question of when and whether to go to college (parts two, and expressed frustration that star athlete Laura Spector was returning to school for the summer after a disappointing season and did not seem to plan on joining the national team program in Lake Placid. It was not an unreasonable sentiment: without actually seeing an athlete, a coach’s job is certainly much harder. And as a European (Kahkonen...
BEND, Oregon – Even though the U.S. biathlon national team did not compete in the Pole Pedal Paddle on Saturday morning like their skiing counterparts, the athletes still didn’t get to sleep in for their weekend. After all, this is training camp. Instead, they headed up to Mount Bachelor to do intervals, and had to start early so that they could be off the race trails before the five-sport extravaganza began. “Early in the morning...
This season, U.S. biathlete Laura Spector was tired, possibly overtrained, and unable to find the form that had netted her a top-20 World Cup finish in 2011. She's solving the problem in an unconventional way: by taking organic chemistry.
RUHPOLDING, Germany – When U.S. women’s coach Jonne Kahkonen showed up on the shooting range for Saturday’s women’s 4 x 6 kilometer relay, he looked a bit…. different than the last time he’d been there. The previously blonde Finn, who is in his second year coaching the U.S. women, was sporting a dark purplish pink hue atop his head, which turned out to match well with the red and blue U.S. team gear. His new...
RUHPOLDING, Germany – With only Susan Dunklee qualified for Sunday’s mass start race, Saturday’s 4 x 6 k relay was the last race of World Championships for the rest of the U.S. women. They wanted to end the Championships on a high note, but rather than set a tough results-based goal, their approach was more in line with the temporary pink hair dye they’d all used for the occasion: the Americans wanted to have fun,...
RUHPOLDING, Germany – When Susan Dunklee was leading Wednesday’s World Championship 15 k individual race, fans, coaches, and journalists alike were scratching their heads. Who is this Susan Dunklee? The American World Cup rookie is not unknown on the circuit – coming in to these races she had scored World Cup points eight times and finished in the top 20 in a sprint in Antholz, Itlay – but she wasn’t too familiar, either. While the...
RUHPOLDING, Germany – Susan Dunklee started today’s World Championship 15 k individual race with bib number one, and she wasn’t too happy about it at the time. In the sprint, the American had started dead last, almost an hour after the first woman. Today, she was looking forward to being seeded in group one and skiing the whole race with other top athletes. “I thought for this race, ‘yes, I’m going to be in the...
Remember all those Russian shenanigans about returned to biathlon, because recently she’s been on a tear. The 33-year-old Moscow native picked up her first win of the season on Friday in a 10 k sprint in Hochfilzen, Austria, to go along with two podium finishes from last weekend. She’s now finished on the podium four times in seven starts, and that’s the way she likes it. “I would like to be on the podium in...
Today in Ostersund, Sweden, two women returned to the spots they’re used to occupying on the World Cup biathlon results sheet. For Germany’s Magdalena Neuner, that spot was at the top. The 24-year-old won her 25th World Cup after placing third in a wind-dominated individual race earlier this week. For any other champion, an occasional bad day is standard. But Neuner is so good that seeing her finish over a minute and a half behind...
The U.S. biathlon community may be small, but one benefit of its size is that almost everyone can gather each year in October for a training camp at Soldier Hollow. This year, the senior national team is joined in Utah by the junior national team as well as biathletes from the Maine Winter Sports Center, Durango and as far as Canada. Inviting everyone brings training quality up, said national team women’s coach Jonne Kahkonen, who...
(Note: This is the second in a series of interviews with U.S. Biathlon Association coaches and staff. The first was with USBA Head Coach Per Nilsson.) Last summer, the U.S. Biathlon Association made a big change by hiring Jonne Kahkonen as a dedicated head coach for the women’s team. Up until that point, the women hadn’t had their own program. “There were enough of us to really warrant having a women’s coach, and having a...
Northern Maine is best known for its ties to Scandinavia—both New Sweden and Stockhom are within striking distance of the biathlon venues in Fort Kent and Presque Isle. But in the raw conditions for Friday’s 7.5 k World Cup sprint, it was the German women who felt more at home in Fort Kent. Battling through frigid temperatures and a swirling breeze, Andrea Henkel led her country to a sweep of the top three, with Miriam...
Jonne Kahkonen was hired by the United States Biathlon Association this summer to be the new women’s head coach. Kahkonen, who hails from Finland, just finished a four-year stint as head coach of the biathlon program. Finland’s top performances last season came from Kaisa Makarainen, who finished the year ranked 22nd in the overall World Cup Standings. How did Kahkonen end up in the United States? U.S. Biathlon Association President Max Cobb said that he...