Following World Championships in Germany, the biathlon circus packed onto 3 different charter planes headed for central Russian and the final World Cup competitions of the season. I was excited for the chance to see Khanty-Mansiysk after hearing so much about it, but I was also very tired from the previous [...]
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...
Kilometer after kilometer, Martin Foucade of France and Arnd Peiffer of Germany skied on and on, unable to break one another on the trails. Starting today’s 12.5 k World Cup pursuit just five seconds apart, the pair were initially trailed by Sweden’s Fredrik Lindstrom, who finished third in Friday’s sprint. But after just one loop on the Khantiy-Mansiysk trails, Lindstrom missed a shot and lost his spot with the leaders. From then on, it was...
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...
Canada’s Zina Kocher took steps to overcome a solid yet frustrating World Championships series by placing ninth in the last World Cup sprint of the season, which was held in Khanty-Mansiysk, Russia on Friday. The result tied her best of the season. Coming off a six-race series at World Championships in Ruhpolding, Germany, Kocher said she actually felt great on Friday. “I had no idea how i would feel this week,” she wrote in an...
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...
Going into Sunday’s women’s 4 x 6 k relay, there had been plenty of excitement already in this year’s biathlon World Championships. What could top Emil Hegle Svendsen’s furious attack in the last few hundred meters of the previous day’s mass start? Or how could there be a performance more dominating than Helena Ekholm’s two-minute victory in the individual race? Well. The fans in Khanty-Mansiysk didn’t realize it, but they were about to see something...
The Russians had five times as many chances as the U.S. to win World Championships gold in the men’s mass start in Khanty-Mansiysk, Russia, today, but even they couldn’t beat out a dominant Norwegian squad which put three racers in the top six. With five of the field’s thirty starters, the home team had as good a shot as anyone at winning the mass start – and for a moment it looked like Evgeny Ustyugov...
Was U.S. biathlon head coach Per Nilsson enthusiastic about his team’s relay finish at World Championships on today? “BEST EVER!” he wrote in an e-mail on Friday evening. “[It’s] fun to show that we have a team that can fight on the highest level in the world.” While the entire team had a strong performance in Khanty-Mansiysk, Russia, on Friday – leadoff skier Lowell Bailey tagged off in fifth place – Leif Nordgren was again...
Today’s World Championships relay in Khanty-Mansiysk, Russia, was somewhat unusual, with a large number of spare rounds, quite a few penalty loops, and a small spread between teams at the finish . What wasn’t unusual? Norway finished on top, defending their Olympic gold from last year. Things got off to an inauspicious start, with at least three crashes and one broken pole in the first kilometer of racing. Lowell Bailey of the U.S. was among...
Part of every biathlete’s job is to manage conditions on the range, which includes making adjustments for the wind. But there are days when the wind makes that all but impossible and the weather seems to be laughing in the face of the world’s best shooters. Wednesday in Khanty-Mansiysk, Russia, was just such a day, with only a single woman in the World Championships field shooting clean, and most shooting quite far from it. “Today...
In biathlon, the individual format is often described as a shooter’s race. With a minute of added time penalizing each missed shot, the consequences for a single mistake while shooting are even higher than in any other format. There are many great biathletes – World Cup winners and even World Champions – who have never won an individual race. In Khanty-Mansiysk, Russia, on Tuesday, young Norwegian Tarjei Bø proved that while the individual is a...
The world’s best skiers are getting the experience of a lifetime in Oslo, competing in skiing’s ancestral homeland and getting cheered by a hundred thousand fans. The world’s best biathletes? They’re having a cultural experience too – in Siberia. World Championships are currently being held in Khanty-Mansiysk, Russia, a town of 70,000 inhabitants situated almost 2,000 miles east of St. Petersburg. The International Biathlon Union charters flights from Oslo and Munich to transport athletes and...
The eyes of the ski world may have been focused on Oslo today, where the Norwegian women ran away with the win in the 4 x 5 k relay, but the biathlon world is focused on Khanty-Mansiysk, Russia, where World Championships kicked off today with a mixed relay. And while the result was the same – Norway on top by a solid margin – the route to victory was a lot more challenging for Norway’s...
With their doping suspensions completed and competition ban lifted, one Russian biathlete retires and two return to the international racing circuit this weekend.
Tim Burke wrapped up a banner season on the World Cup by finishing 16th in Saturday’s 15 k mass start event in Khanty-Mansiysk, Russia. He finished 1:14 behind the winner, Austria’s Dominik Landertinger. Arnd Peiffer (GER) and 40-year-old Halvard Hanevold (NOR) were second and third. Like in yesterday’s sprint, Burke was again one of the strongest on the course, finishing with the fifth-fastest ski time. But he couldn’t overcome four misses. “My skiing shape was...