Even Gabriela Soukalova's mother, an Olympic silver medalist, was impressed with the dominant performances the 23-year-old from the Czech Republic has put on in Khanty Mansiysk this weekend. Marie Dorin Habert of France and Kaisa Makarainen of Finland rounded out the podium in the 12.5 k mass start.
Miriam Gössner of Germany got lots of attention when the biathlete finished fourth in Tuesday's 10 k skate, just half a second from the podium - but she wasn't alone in making the jump between sports. Friends Kaisa Makarainen of Finland and Selina Gasparin of Switzerland also acquitted themselves well, and offered light-hearted insight on the difference between the sports.
Starting in 14th position, over a minute behind sprint winner Anastasiya Kuzmina, Tora Berger didn't think she had much of a chance in today's World Cup biathlon pursuit. Despite two penalties, her ferocious skiing brought her into the spotlight under the Antholz sun.
Careful skiing at altitude and a single penalty on the range netted Annelies Cook the best finish of her World Cup career, placing 18th in a 7.5 k biathlon sprint in Antholz, Italy today. The win went to Olympic sprint champion Anastasiya Kuzmina of Slovakia, who hasn't seen much of the podium since Vancouver.
Germany's Miriam Gossner used her trademark light and quick skiing to combat some dry, sticky, and slow new snow that fell on the Ruhpolding course today and pick up her third win of the season. Annelies Cook (USA) overcame "herky-jerky skiing" to notch a career best and her first top 30.
23-year-old Synnøve Solemdal used the best shooting of her career to propel herself to a dominating, 30-second win in Hochfilzen, Austria. “Everyone was cheering ‘Synnøve’ all the way to the finish," she marveled after the race. Tora Berger placed second, giving Norway two women on the podium for the first time since 2005.
Andreas Birnbacher paid Martin Fourcade back for his tough tactics last weekend, this time around notching a 0.4-second victory over the Frenchman in a 10 k sprint. Darya Domracheva of Belarus also collected her first win of the season, and the tenth of her career, thanks to rifle problems that slowed down Kaisa Makarainen on the range.
It’s unusual to see World Championship medalists miss more half their shots, but that happened in both the men’s and women’s pursuits in gusty Kamchatka. Kaisa Makarainen and Lukas Hofer survived to win new Mercedes cars.
Both Kaisa Makarainen of Finland and Björn Ferry of Sweden have won plenty of races before – including World Championships and Olympic gold, respectively. But their win in the team competition of the Champion’s Race in Moscow on Saturday was almost certainly their most unusual. For one thing, the pair teamed up despite their different nationalities, which is obviously not possible on the World Cup where they spend most of their time. Only at less...
It’s not that Darya Domracheva hasn’t been fast before. No, that’s not what makes her form in the last several weeks so impressive. She’s always been fast: the 25-year-old Belorussian biathlete has won eight races and picked up 27 more podiums, including Olympic bronze, in the past few seasons. But in many of those victories, Domracheva has won by sheer force of will, digging in to the intense head-to-head competition offered up by the World...
RUHPOLDING, Germany – With rain finally falling in this small Bavarian town this morning, it would have been easy to stay at home, watching a television broadcast of today’s mass start races from safe inside a dry living room. But that thought never crossed the minds of the 30,000 fans who packed the Chiemgau arena today, just as they have for every other competition of the 2012 IBU World Championships. And they weren’t disappointed. In...
As the clock ticked down in Sunday’s 10 k pursuit race in Kontiolahti, Finland, the home crowd became more and more tense. Their star, Kaisa Makarainen, sat in second place – which was good. But it looked increasingly as if the win was out of reach, as World Cup leader Magdalena Neuner of Germany was skiing faster and making no more errors than the Finn. Then, halfway through the race, Makarainen caught a break. As...
Mistakes can be a powerful motivator. In Sunday’s 12.5 k mass start in Antholz, Italy, the two biathletes with the fastest course times were the ones who really, desperately wanted to make up for errors in the very first shooting stage of the day. In that prone stage, both and Darya Domracheva of Belarus and Kaisa Makarainen of Finland – currently ranked second and third in the world, respectively – missed two shots. In a...
By this time last year, Finland’s Kaisa Makarainen had won two World Cups, podiumed in five more, and sat atop the rankings on the World Cup. The 2011-12 season is shaping up differently, not just for Makarainen, but for the other women as well. On Wednesday Makarainen became the fifth athlete – each from a different country – to win a World Cup. The 22-second victory, which came despite having one more penalty than second-place...
A couple of days ago, Canadian biathlete Megan Imrie couldn’t tell which way was up. Luckily, she’s feeling better – and up was where she landed on Wednesday, near the top of the results sheet in a World Cup individual race in Nove Mesto, Czech Republic. Despite a case of vertigo, Imrie finished a career-best 20th place. Athletes have to deal with a lot of variables when they’re preparing for competitions, but vertigo – a...
Sunday’s 10 k pursuit in Ostersund, Sweden was set up to be a barnburner from the moment the previous day’s sprint ended. With Olympic and World Champions Tora Berger and Magdalena Neuner separated by just 0.2 seconds and last year’s overall World Cup winner Kaisa Makarainen lurking 15 seconds behind, there was no doubt that things would get exciting. Germany’s Neuner and Norway’s Berger skied the first lap together, a study in contrasting styles. Berger’s...
While U.S. and Canadian skiers have been competing at FIS and World Cup races for several weeks now, the American biathletes waited until Sunday to kick off their season in an IBU Cup sprint. The race in Ostersund, Sweden, was actually the second of the weekend, but the U.S. team sat out of Saturday’s race. While the men were lucky to have skipped the windy conditions that shook up the result sheet in the opener,...
(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...
On Friday morning at 9:30 a.m., the United States will hold its first World Cup race since 2004. The IBU World Cup circuit will be making stops in Presque Isle, Maine, this weekend, and then in nearby Fort Kent next weekend. While it might take almost as long to get to “The County” from the U.S. as from anywhere else, the races should be spectacular. If you can’t make it to Maine, the event will...
While the once-dominant Norwegian men are in a slump right now, their teammate Tora Berger is just getting started. With an exhilarating mass start win in Antholz, Italy on Sunday – which came down to the final hundred meters but at the same time was a foregone conclusion at least a kilometer earlier – Berger collected her fourth victory in as many individual races, after winning Friday’s sprint by almost 30 seconds as well as...