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Per Nilsson

Lowell Bailey and the High Performance Vision

For years under the leadership of Bernd Eisenbichler and Per Nilsson, US Biathlon was a polyglot enterprise. It’s often claimed the high performance staff at USBA had a decidedly United Nations vibe. As a sport firmly entrenched in Europe, siphoning some of that expertise into the U.S. program paid dividends over the past two decades. IBU World Cup podiums and World Championship medals were the payback. Lowell Bailey, at thirty-seven years old, is a hybrid...

Bernd Eisenbichler and his US Biathlon Legacy

“Twenty years and two months ago I began with US Biathlon,” Bernd Eisenbichler said to FasterSkier last week during a phone call to discuss his March 31, resignation as high performance director. For those of you unfamiliar with the name, Eisenbichler has worn many hats during his tenure with US Biathlon: Ski/wax tech, high performance director, and chief of sport. With a title like chief of sport, more fitting head-ware might have been a crown....

After Many Close Calls, Dunklee Ready for the Big Time and Finally Reaches World Cup Podium

Despite a fall, Susan Dunklee gutted out her first World Cup podium in a biathlon sprint in Oslo today, pushing hard in the finishing stretch to unseat Olga Vilukhina by one second and take third place. "I’m not afraid of being on the podium or even winning one of these days," Dunklee said after notching only the third-ever World Cup podium by a U.S. woman.

North American men had their moments in the 12.5 k World Cup pursuit in Kontiolahti, Finland. But biathlon giveth and biathlon taketh away, especially when it’s as windy as it was in Kontiolahti today. And so at the end of the race, Nathan Smith of Canada landed in tenth and Lowell Bailey of the United States in 14th. Bailey started in third, 19 seconds behind leader Johannes Thingnes Bø of Norway, after Results  

In a Familiar Situation, Dunklee Reminded to Ignore the Pressure

Susan Dunklee had been here before: in Ruhpolding, in the 15 k, coming into the final shooting stage with a single penalty. Two years ago at World Championships, she cleaned the stage and placed fifth. Today she collected two more penalties, and wound up 41st. But that's okay - this practice for the Olympics, which she's already qualified for, was just as valuable as if she'd hit those shots.

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...

Our recent series on biathletes facing the question of when and whether to go to college (parts two, and first part of our series, we focused on several elite junior biathletes who, bucking the conventions of the early- and mid-2000’s, decided to go to college before returning – often extremely successfully – to biathlon. Without a single exception, the five athletes said that today’s juniors should not rule college out as a means of facilitating...