The cold weather is the most talked-about feature of this weekend’s World Cup biathlon races in Kontiolahti, Finland, but the U.S. team is lobbying hard for that to change. After putting two racers in the top six in Saturday’s men’s sprint – they were the only team to do so – the storyline might become the red-hot Americans, not the frozen thermometers. “Today was obviously a great day for the team,” World Cup veteran Tim...
Tuesday’s individual races in Osrblie, Slovakia, left the U.S. team at Under-26 Open European Championships one chance to grab the results they’d been hoping for all week. So could they do it? “The individual was another decent race, but not what I wanted,” Russell Currier told FasterSkier in an e-mail. “I’m a little disappointed, but there’s still plenty of room for hope left in the season.” Currier finished 21st in the 20 k, four-stage race, his...
After a successful but unspectacular start to the Under-26 Open European Championships in Osrblie, Slovakia, the American team kicked things up a notch in their second outing. In Sunday’s pursuit, not a single one of the six U.S. starters lost a place from their sprint ranking, and one – Leif Nordgren – rocketed up 24 places over 12.5 kilometers and four shooting stages. “It was nice to finally have a good race,” said Nordgren, the...
The U.S. biathlon team could be forgiven for having high expectations going into this year’s Under-26/Open European Championships in Osrblie, Slovakia. Last year, Leif Nordgren entered just one race at the event, and didn’t even finish. But a few weeks later, he notched three top-thirty finishes at senior World Championships. In that same U26 series in Ridnaun, Italy, Russell Currier repeatedly finished in the 20s and 30s. But just two weeks ago, he bettered those...
Jessie Diggins I’ll confess that I don’t much care for team sprints, so I suppose it’s not a surprise that I was more impressed by Diggins’ individual sprint than her podium performance paired with Kikkan last weekend. When I collect results data, I only track age very crudely, using the year of birth indicated by [...] Related posts:
With the U.S. men’s team notching their best day ever in Saturday’s sprint, hopes were high that the team could place athletes in the top ten or even the top five in today’s pursuit. But although the Americans were frequently close, they couldn’t pull it off. After starting with bib 6, Russell Currier missed a shot in the first prone stage which dropped him to 12th; and while Tim Burke, starting with bib 11, was...
After a frustrating individual race on Thursday, in which the top finish was 44th, the U.S. men’s biathlon team was left with two choices: wallow, or rebound for a great day Saturday. Luckily, the men in red, white and blue aren’t prone to feeling sorry for themselves. They picked up and moved on, notching top results in today’s 10 k World Cup sprint in Nove Mesto, Czech Republic. They were led by a man who...
For the World Cup athletes, Thursday’s announcement by the U.S. Biathlon Association of team nominations for the second period of racing brought no surprises. Just as in the last weekend of World Cup racing in December, three women (Sara Studebaker, Annelies Cook, and Susan Dunklee) and four men (Lowell Bailey, Jay Hakkinen, Tim Burke, and Leif Nordgren) will represent the U.S. on the trails. But the real excitement of the day came from the selection...
It may not have been the Olympics, but you couldn’t tell from the weather. Just like at Whistler Olympic Park last year, the weather for the US Biathlon Nationals at Mt. Itasca, MN had a little bit of everything, with some significant rain during the Sprint competitions on Thursday, gorgeous sunshine with firm snow during Saturday’s Pursuit, and light drizzle with heavy overcast for the Mass Start on Sunday. The athletes had good attitudes however,...
Last year, Susan Dunklee’s top finish at U26 Open European Biathlon Championships was 17th place in the sprint. At the time, she was pleased with the performance, but this year, she’s eclipsed that success – twice. In the open individual race at this year’s U26 event, which took place in Ridnaun, Italy last week, Dunklee finished 15th – an auspicious start to the week for the only senior U.S. woman nominated for the races. Then...
The American and Canadian teams have been off to a good start in Ridnaun, Italy, collecting three top-20 finishes in the opening individual-format races at IBU Under-26/Open European Championships. On Monday, the men kicked things off in the 20 k individual race, a format where each missed shot represents a one-minute time penalty. Tyson Smith of Canada missed only two of his twenty shots and finished 19th, just under four minutes behind Artem Pryma of...
The second period of the biathlon World Cup opened in Oberhof, Germany on Wednesday with a…. ping. Lots of pings, actually. Huge wind gusts obliterated the men’s relay field, and the International Biathlon Union reported that the world’s best biathletes used 352 spare rounds, about three times the normal amount in a World Cup relay, and still had to ski 100 penalty loops. Ouch. One team, however, wasn’t fazed by the challenging shooting conditions. Although...
The first race of the men’s World Cup biathlon season isn’t until Thursday, but one U.S. man has already seen action: Russell Currier competed in a 10 k IBU Cup sprint last Saturday in Beitostolen, Norway. The International Biathlon Union (IBU) requires that all athletes competing in the World Cup to first finish an IBU Cup race – the next level down – within 15 percent of the leader. Currier, after proving himself to the...
It doesn’t happen that often, but when Russell Currier gets hot on the range, there’s not a lot that can stop him. The Maine native is a notoriously fast skier—but also a notoriously inconsistent shooter. Sunday, at the North American Biathlon Championships, he wasn’t exactly on fire—more of a slow burn, perhaps—but the fifteen of twenty targets he hit was just enough to net him a satisfying win in the 15 k mass start race,...