When the small town of Ruhpolding, Germany, bid to host biathlon’s 2012 World Championships, they knew they had their work cut out for them. “Preparations for the World Champs 2012 start now,” said Mayor Claus Pichler in August 2008 when Ruhpolding won the bid. “I got plenty of feedback from the delegates at the IBU Congress.” And they have been busy ever since, completely renovating and reconfiguring the area’s stadium as well as giving the...
Ruhpolding, Germany, has been both kind and cruel to Olympic gold medalist Bjorn Ferry of Sweden. On one hand, the summer before his Olympic victory, he crashed while rollerskiing at the venue. The impact broke his collarbone and he had to have surgery and give up a period of training. But on the other, Ruhpolding is his second home. “I have trained here three times every year for the past ten years, so I have...
Oberhof, Germany, has been kind to the Canadian biathlon team so far this year. After the men finished 11th in the relay on Wednesday, they had a banner day on Friday with finishes of 14th, 16th, and 34th from Brendan Green, Jean-Phillipe Leguellec, and Scott Perras. With a mass start competition coming up on Sunday, the team is feeling good. “With Brendan’s 14th place, we both managed to squeeze in the mass start race this...
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...
Normally, I would never complain about too much snow during the winter. However, this year there is so much snow in Germany that roofs are collapsing. I was scheduled to race in the Biathlon World Team Challenge in the Schalke … Continue read...
I am now enjoying a two-week break from World Cup action after racing 9 times in the last three weeks. Like last year, I have decided to spend the Holidays in Germany to avoid any extra travel. I need as much time as possible to first recover and then put in a solid training block [...]
At the first handoff of the men’s World Cup biathlon relay in Hochfilzen, Austria on Sunday, it looked like Norway might not be able to turn in the performance that everyone expected of them. Then Ole Einar Bjorndalen took over, and things went back to normal. Alexander Os, Norway’s first-leg skier, can be forgiven for turning in a less-than-perfect performance. Conditions were stacked against him, with huge wind gusts that held the range’s indicator flags...
As Alexis Boeuf of France told IBU News on Friday, “You know, in biathlon one day you can be on the podium and the next day be last.” That wasn’t quite true on Saturday, although Sergui Sednev of the Ukraine, who finished second in Friday’s sprint, dropped to 29th in the next day’s pursuit. No, what is more noticeable is that the stars of last weekend’s World Cup openers in Ostersund, Sweden, haven’t shone as...
For the fourth straight race, a Norwegian biathlete stood atop the World Cup podium. Was it 36-year-old veteran Ole Einar Bjorndalen? Or perhaps the overall World Cup leader, Emil Hegle Svendsen? Those would be smart guesses, but they’d also be wrong. Instead, it was their teammate, 22-year-old Tarjei Boe, who was the second-fastest skier on Friday and shot clean. Boe has never graced a World Cup podium before, much less won a race. But in...
After the U.S. men’s performance in the season-opening World Cup relay in Sweden, which had Andy Newell, Kris Freeman, and Noah Hoffman hanging with the leaders through nearly three full legs, the question hung in the air: Who would be the skier to fill the void in the fourth spot? The answer seemed to lie back at home, in the form of a rising star like Tad Elliott, who could be ready in time for...
Things are looking up here in Austria and I can finally drink the tap water and feel my fingers again! Last week was definitely not exactly the start that I was looking for, but it could have been much worse. I feel like I had quite a few issues to deal with, such as parasites [...]
The first big chinks in Ole Einar Bjoerndalen’s armor showed up at the 2010 Olympics, where his two-medal performance was eclipsed by the three podiums collected by his Norwegian teammate, Emil Hegle Svendsen. Bjoerndalen, 36, was charitable at the time, as befitted a living legend with nearly three-dozen World Championships medals to his name. And there was no sense that he felt threatened by Svendsen—after all, the three medals that Svendsen won in Vancouver represented...
The story of the day at the men’s World Cup biathlon opener in Ostersund, Sweden, was how Norway’s Ole Einar Bjoerndalen, already a legend despite the fact that he hasn’t retired, blew an early lead in the 20 k individual race by missing two targets in the last shooting stage. Coming into that stage, Bjoerndalen had an edge of just over a minute on his teammate Emil Hegle Svendsen. But with a pair of missed...
Just a quick update before the first World Cup here in Ostersund, Sweden tomorrow. If you have been following any of the news about the first World Cup, you have surely read a lot about the parasite problem with the drinking water. Unfortunately, like many of the athletes who trained here prior to the World [...]
This is a picture of the ski tracks from our hotel here in Ostersund. I think the potato count is officially over 30 now, not that I am keeping track anymore… Besides the lack of culinary variety, everything is going pretty well here. Winter is definitely in full force here and the temperatures have continued [...]
I arrived in Ostersund, Sweden last Wednesday after a pretty smooth travel from Lake Placid. It was great to step off the plane and enter Sweden in the full swing of winter. Temperatures have been very cold and they have a great mix of natural and man-made snow on the trails. After skiing around a [...]
(Note: FasterSkier initially made an error and reported that Lanny Barnes was not re-named to the National Team. Since then, we have corrected the article – it was in fact her sister, Tracy, who was not re-named. FasterSkier apologizes for the error.) Last year was a historic season for U.S. biathlon. In late December, Tim Burke captured the yellow World Cup leader bib, and continued to wear it through part of January; it was the...
I have been out in Canmore for a week now. Unfortunately, the weather has not cooperated and nearly all of the snow has melted. I managed to get on my skis a few times while I was here but most of my training was still on roller skis. I originally planned on being here until [...]
After three weeks in Utah, I am now back home in Lake Placid for my final dry-land training weeks of the year. I am trying to make the most of my time at home because I will be here for a total of two weeks between now and April. After spending a few weeks at [...]
With only seven weeks until the first race of the World Cup season, biathletes around the world are making their final preparations and fine-tuning their training. For the Americans, this meant a two-week training camp in Soldier Hollow, Utah, which finished Friday. Coaches had two main goals for the camp: to take advantage of training at altitude, and to solidify shooting skills in “combination” workouts with rollerskiing. Coach Patrick Coffey said that the staff worked...