Last week, Biathlon Canada announced Justin Wadsworth as the Head Coach for the 2019-2020 season. In April, 2019, Wadsworth took on a temporary role as the team’s summer coach. That fill-in-the-gap stint will extend through this season’s racing. Wadsworth joins Canadian biathlon at a challenging time, with limited funding and after the retirement of many top athletes. “My job is really just for the national team — we have 12 athletes and I would say...
Think about all of the exceptional female biathletes out there. Too many to count, right? Now, if you watch biathlon at the World Cup level, think about how many women you’ve seen coaching there. None? One? There are at least a couple, according to Biathlon Canada’s High Performance Director Roddy Ward, who’s been coaching biathlon internationally since 2011. The Slovakian women’s coach is one and the Austrian team also has a female coach, he wrote...
IBU World Cup (Ruhpolding, Germany): Women’s 15 k individual IBU Cup women’s 15 k individual, also on Thursday. “That spark is exactly what our team needs right now and the timing is spot on,” Dunklee continued. “We will field our first women’s relay this weekend. It has been a challenging season so far living and traveling with such a small crew, trying to stay upbeat and carry the team with a skeleton group.” The World Cup...
For athletes who finished 2017 on a high note, the first race of 2018 can be a couple of two things. One is a continuation of the good competitions right like they left off. Another is a downgrade leaving them wondering if they’ve lost their mojo. For some women in Thursday’s 7.5 k World Cup sprint in Oberhof, Germany, it was the former. Anastasiya Kuzmina of Slovakia started in the yellow bib denoting the leader...
Two hundred and thirty biathletes, 115 men and 115 women, will earn the right to be called a 2018 Olympian — 10 of whom will be Canadian. The top-six teams in last season’s International Biathlon Union’s (IBU) final Nation’s Cup ranking can bring a full team of six men and six women to the Games. Canada’s men’s finished ranked 13th while the women ranked 15th, so each squad can bring five athletes. this document detailing...
Three Canadians and one American competed at last week’s International Biathlon Union (IBU) Cup opener in in Sjusjøen, Norway, with Canada’s Emma Lunder posting an individual top 20 and her teammates Sarah Beaudry and Carsen Campbell teaming up to place fourth in the single mixed relay on Sunday, Nov. 26. In an email, Biathlon Canada High Performance Director Roddy Ward explained that Canada did not send its National “Z” Team, arrived in Europe on Nov....
Note: This article has been updated to include comments and verification from Biathlon Canada High Performance Director Roddy Ward, and explain the modified shooting format used for Friday’s sprint. *** Almost exactly two weeks before Biathlon Canada sends the rest of its World Cup team to Europe for the first trimeter of International Biathlon Union (IBU) World Cup racing, the national team held trials this past Tuesday through Friday on snow in Canmore, Alberta. Three...
Few nordic ski racing and biathlon venues are as awe-inspiring as the Canmore Nordic Centre in Alberta, Canada. Just south of the venue, amidst the geologic upheaval that is the Canadian Rockies, punches the Zina Kocher, a three-time Canadian Olympic biathlete, fostered a deep connection to Boruta as she emerged onto the Canadian biathlon radar. Kocher told FasterSkier on the phone that she qualified for the national championships in 12th grade at age 17. To...
If you made it past the article’s title, then get ready to immerse yourself in the intricacies of Canadian high-performance sports funding. OK, here it goes…money, money, money. Add this for effect, $. Imagine for a moment you’re the CEO of a national sporting body and you’ve got high aspirations — things like championship and Olympic medals. There’s an infinite amount of puzzle pieces to organize and assemble. There are two critical pieces to even...
When Biathlon Canada missed most of the season due to a rare virus. For Smith, the health issues have passed and Ward reported that he was back to training a full load. Crawford and Green, he concluded, were overtrained. The winter taught the team some painful lessons that they are learning from and he is confident that the athletes will be back to their prior form this year. “One thing as a team we have...
Biathlon Canada has named 11 athletes to its senior national team for 2017-2018. The group is headlined by three athletes who scored World Cup top-20’s last season: Scott Gow, Julia Ransom, and Rosanna Crawford. Also returning is 2015 World Championships silver medalist Nathan Smith, who sat out most of last season recovering from a virus. The senior team does not distinguish between ‘A’ and ‘B’ squads this year, instead functioning as one group. “We are...
On Tuesday, Biathlon Canada posted its final roster for the first trimester of the IBU World Cup, IBU Cup and Jr. IBU Cup. Two women, Megan Tandy and Sarah Beaudry, recently secured their spots on the World Cup team.
A national-team member for the better part of the last nine years, Nathan Smith knows the life of a full-time biathlete isn't always glamorous, but it beats the alternative. “There’s tough training days ... or you’re having bad races and you’re like, ugh, why do I do this?” he said. “But if you have a normal 9-5 job, you’d have a lot more of those days I think.”
22-year-old Sarah Beaudry scored her first World Cup points last season. The Canadian biathlete is quickly becoming a contributing member of the senior national team.
Megan Tandy, a two-time Olympian who hails from British Columbia but lives in Germany, has been working with Canadian national team coach Roddy Ward - her closest off-season collaboration with the team in eight years. She hopes to regain the form that handed her four top-15s on the World Cup in 2015.
After notching a World Cup top 20 last season, Canadian national-team member Julia Ransom is feeling more ready than ever for the upcoming season. On top of racing, she also volunteers with a local youth biathlon program in Canmore and is working toward a management degree.
Although the IOC said in July that Russia should not host any international winter sports events due to their systematic doping violations and cheating at the 2014 Olympics, it apparently walked those guidelines back -- and now Russia has been awarded biathlon World Championships, despite the fact that the country is not currently in compliance with the WADA Code.
Canada had never won a championships relay medal - until today, when the men came together for bronze in Oslo, a result that both surprised them and didn't. "We’re teammates, we’re friends, but we’re fighting every day to be better than each other, said Nathan Smith. "I knew that if we had a better day it was possible. Not so likely, but possible."
22-year-old Canadian biathlete Julia Ransom just wanted to score some World Cup points this year - top 40's - to feel like she was on track. She blew that goal out of the water in the Antholz, Italy, on Saturday, shooting a perfect 20-for-20 and skiing to 19th place.
Nathan Smith did the expected and placed ninth in Saturday's IBU World Cup sprint, despite two misses. Meanwhile, another Canadian, Macx Davies, turned heads as the only man in the 100-plus field to shoot clean. He finished 10th for his career-best result by 30 places.