Rosanna Crawford was aggressive on her final lap around a rain-soaked Norwegian city loop, taking top honors in the biathlon sprint. Four other North Americans also made the finale, while Barbro Kvåle and Calle Halfvarsson won the cross-country sprints. Plus, video of the whole festival.
Matti Heikkinen wasn't sure last fall if he still had what it took - but then his home country won the bid for 2017 World Championships, and decided to rebuild from the base up. Meanwhile, biathlete Tarjei Bø beat all of Norway's cross-country skiers to finish fourth: “It's obviously very fun... but I was supposed to have been on the podium!"
With Tarjei Bø, who edged Martin Fourcade by 0.1 seconds in the sprint, still lacking fitness after a late start to the season, Fourcade skied away with the win in Oslo today. But he couldn't have been more happy than the third-place finisher: this year's double gold medalist at World Junior Championships, Alexandr Loginov moved up from fifth in the sprint after earning his first World Cup starts.
Norway's young gun Tarjei Bø redeemed a challenging season with perfect shooting and a World Championship gold in Sunday's mass start. Lowell Bailey shot clean through three stages but missed the podium with two final penalties. Tim Burke crashed early and was knocked out of contention.
While Norway had seldom a worry en route to another mixed relay title, France and the Czech Republic capitalized on a late-stage meltdown by Russia's Dmitry Malyshko to earn their spots on the podium. The Czech medal was especially exciting to the home crowd, and the racers struggled to express how special the moment was.
Martin Fourcade celebrated vocifericously at the finish of today's World Cup sprint in Ruhpolding, Germany, but he clearly didn't expect Andriy Makoveev of Russia to make a late charge from bib 95. While Makoveev didn't get the win, he did make it onto the podium, placing third behind teammate Evgeniy Ustyugov.
In late March, Norwegian biathlon ace Emil Hegle Svendsen complained to broadcaster NRK that the national team coaches were not spending enough time with the athletes, and that he hoped to see some changes. He was speaking out of frustration: after the World Cup title had seemingly been within his reach – indeed he wore the yellow bib several times – Svendsen ended up second to Martin Fourcade of France in the rankings. Despite winning...
RUHPOLDING, Germany – Going into today’s men’s 4 x 7.5 k relay, the field was wide open. France, with double gold medalist Martin Fourcade and silver medalist brother Simon Fourcade, was a prerace favorite. But last year’s top two teams, Norway and Russia, hadn’t dominated in the individual races, and neither had host country Germany. Meanwhile, Sweden’s Carl Johan Bergman had won two medals, and three Swedes had finished in the top ten. Slovenia and...
At the start of Sunday’s World Cup men’s pursuit, there was one man out in front: Carl Johan Bergman of Sweden. After picking up the win in Friday’s sprint in Ostersund, Swedene, Bergman had a seven-second advantage over the rest of the field. But as Friday’s victory was just the second of his career, the big question was how long the 33-year-old would be able to hang onto the lead. The answer, it turned out,...
It’s a question that seems to come up every year: how fast, exactly, are biathletes? Skiers imagine that their shooting cousins couldn’t possibly be as fast since they train differently, while biathletes maintain that they would do just fine on the cross country World Cup, thank you very much. Over the years, there have been plenty of opportunities to answer that question. Norwegian biathlete Lars Berger won three gold medals at cross country World Championships...
Both cross-country skiing and biathlon have welcomed their shares of stars over the past few years, but few, if any, have exploded onto the scene as quickly as Tarjei Bø. Last season, the 22-year-old Norwegian won an Olympic gold medal as part of the Norwegian relay team, but his best finish on the World Cup circuit was fourth. This year, though, he has come on like a freight train. After collecting his first World Cup...