FasterSkier caught the US Biathlon team during one of their hardest workouts of the training season in Lake Placid, with the added bonus of watching German gold medalist Andrea Henkel rollerski around with them.
FasterSkier caught the US Biathlon team during one of their hardest workouts of the training season in Lake Placid, with the added bonus of watching German gold medalist Andrea Henkel rollerski around with them.
With nearly two dozen athletes, the MWSC in northeastern Maine is shaping up to be a national powerhouse in both cross-country and biathlon. "From my perspective as director, this group is more of a team than we've ever had," says director Will Sweetser. "There is no doubt that our program will have one of the best men's distance teams in U.S. XC."
With the Olympics looming, the U.S. Biathlon Association cut its national team to the smallest it has been in years, with no new members and only one athlete under the age of 25; development was cut almost completely. President and CEO Max Cobb hopes that good performances in Sochi will be a rising tide that lifts all boats in his sport.
Coming off the high of a top-five in Sochi, Russia, last weekend, U.S. Biathlon’s Tim Burke continued the momentum on Friday in Khanty-Mansiysk with a ninth-place finish in the 10 k sprint, the third-to-last race of the World Cup season. Lowell Bailey also had a strong finish in 11th place, two seconds behind Burke with perfect shooting.
In fourth place just seconds from the front after two legs of Sunday's 4 x 7.5 k relay, the U.S. men went on to place tenth after losing out on a photo finish with Slovakia. They appreciated the chance to preview the Olympic courses, but with dangerous crashes and complaints about the difficulty of the trails, they expect to see a different Sochi when they come back in a year's time for the Games.
The Canadian men's relay team placed 8th in the 4x7.5k relay, the best mark ever at a championship event. The U.S placed 12th.
Tim Burke’s silver medal-winning performance for the U.S. Biathlon team gave the Americans a big reason to celebrate on Thursday, but the team’s performance as a whole was worth noting, too. Three members finished in the top 30 — after Burke, Leif Nordgren took 22nd with two penalties and Lowell Bailey was 29th with three errors.
Nine American and Canadian athletes competed in the 10/12.5 k pursuits at IBU World Championships on Sunday. Here are some photos of the action.
Across both the men's and the women's teams, six of the eight Americans qualified for the 60-person pursuits on Sunday. Tim Burke was the lone man to make the top 30, while Annelies Cook led the women's squad in 45th. All six are ready to improve in the pursuit.
In the men's 4 x 7.5 k relay in Ruhpolding Martin Fourcade anchored France to a 9-second victory over Norway, redeeming themselves of their last memory of the venue. Lowell Bailey and Leif Nordgren put the U.S. in second at the halfway mark, but the Americans ended up 14th.
A strong team effort, where each racer skied among the fastest times of the day withstood the pressure of the notoriously loud and crazy Oberhof fans, gave the U.S. their best relay result in the era of modern biathlon.
On Thursday in Pokljuka, Slovenia, Burke turned in a season best fourth-place finish in the 10 k sprint even though he never reached his top speed. Lowell Bailey finished 36th on a broken toe.
Last winter, a number of relatively young American athletes catapulted their way to top-ten World Cup results in nordic disciplines – often very much to their own surprise, and certainly to the surprise of European commentators. One of those was Stockholm, Maine’s Russell Currier, who, joining the biathlon circuit halfway through the season, had a breakout performance in his second race of that weekend. In a sprint in Nove Mesto, Czech Republic, 24-year-old Currier started...
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...
The Chiemgau Arena, a shooting range with paved rollerski loops just outside of Ruhpolding, Germany, is a venue unlike almost anything in North America, with the exception perhaps of a few former Olympic sites. And even if Soldier Hollow has nice rollerskiing, too, Ruhpolding has a bit more: other teams, for one, but also spectators who show up even in the summer just to watch some of the world’s top biathletes train. Here are a...
Note: This is the third preview in a quick-and-dirty series on U.S. elite teams. We asked coaches to send their 2012/2013 rosters and tell us what’s new for the coming season. We will be publishing additional reports over the next few weeks. Teams are presented in no particular order. Team: Maine Winter Sports Center Olympic Development Teams Coaches: Will Sweetser (cross-country), Seth Hubbard (biathlon), Amber Dodge (development), TBD (wax tech, intern) Roster: Cross-country: Kris Freeman (U.S....
The U.S. Biathlon Association has announced its 2012-13 national team, which consists of 12 returning members and a single new nomination. The squad is led by five Americans who achieved top-ten results on the 2012 World Cup circuit, and were rewarded with “A1” nomination: Tim Burke, Lowell Bailey, Russell Currier, Jay Hakkinen, and Susan Dunklee. In total, seven women and six men will make up next year’s national team, a slight decrease from last year’s...
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...
RUHPOLDING, Germany – Not a single one of the North American men was pleased with their race in the World Championships 10 k sprint today – at least that’s what they said at the finish. One after another, the biathletes reported that they felt slow. Tim Burke. Jean Phillipe Le Guellec. Lowell Bailey. Russell Currier. Nathan Smith. Marc-Andre Bedard. Here’s a typical soundbite, this time from Le Guellec. “Skiing wasn’t really awesome, actually,” the Canadian...
In case there was any doubt: the King still reigns. Ole Einar Bjørndalen of Norway had stood on the podium just once this season, and hadn’t won a World Cup race since December 2010. But on Sunday in Kontiolahti, Finland, the legend upped his tally of victories to 93 – a number that seems impossible for another athlete to ever match. At 38 years old, Bjørndalen also became the oldest athlete to ever win a...