The U.S. biathlon team says that they were far from surprised when Lowell Bailey and Susan Dunklee broke through and onto the podium at the end of this season. That gains the team some recognition: "It’s obvious that we have more athletes that are a threat for everybody now for the top results," head coach Per Nilsson says.
Kaisa Mäkäräinen made winning at home a habit in the second-straight IBU World Cup sprint in Kontiolahti, Finland, edging Tora Berger and Gabriela Soukalova, who both cleaned. Susan Dunklee rose to eighth for her second-best sprint result of the season and her career. Two other Americans and three Canadian women made Sunday's pursuit.
Local girl Kaisa Makarainen took the top spot in today's World Cup sprints in Finland, while two Canadians, Rosanna Crawford and Megan Heinicke, got into the top 15.
Sean McCann is a sports psychologist who has worked for the USOC for over 20 years - and now he's embedded with the U.S. biathlon team, traveling to over half the World Cups so far this season. We chatted about what it's like to work with the team, and why his biggest push is to let the bad races go and get ready for good races to happen, every day.
Tim Burke knew exactly what he did wrong to earn five penalties in Saturday's individual race: he took his time. "Actually for me usually the slower I shoot the worse I shoot," he said. Fixing that on Sunday, he shot 19-for-20 and was rewarded with a much-improved result.
US Biathlon’s International Competition Committee (ICC) is pleased to announce the following roster of athletes for nomination to the 2014 United States Olympic Team:
The U.S. team of Susan Dunklee, Sara Studebaker, Hannah Dreissigacker, and Lanny Barnes finished eighth in the World Cup relay in Hochfilzen - the best result of any of their careers. And they did it without Annelies Cook, the team's usual number two racer. "We're on our way up," Barnes said.
Despite a mid-race snowstorm that put later starters at a serious disadvantage, Lowell Bailey finished 16th and Tim Burke 24th in the 10 k sprint in Hochfilzen. They were the only two Americans, men or women, to qualify for the pursuit races on Sunday. "We can't control the weather," shooting coach Armin Auchentaller said.
Mention the name 'Peter Hale' and you'll be hard-pressed to find someone that doesn't think he was one of the nicest, most giving people in the U.S. nordic industry -- and it wasn't because he was a salesman. In fact, making money might have been least important to Hale; he was in it for the athletes.
FS staff member Emily Schwing catches up with the voices and brains of NBC's commentary at the upcoming Sochi Olympics, Chad Salmela and Rob Whitney, who will likely cover nordic, biathlon and nordic combined at the 2014 Winter Games.
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.
There's a bit of a mystique surrounding the Ethan Allen Firing Range in Jericho, Vt., and we wanted to find out more about the treasured training site and who exactly can use it.
Lowell Bailey could go around telling people he won two national rollerski titles this weekend. But that’s not exactly the biggest deal for Bailey, a U.S. biathlon champion multiple times over who’s been competing at the sport’s highest level for more than a decade.
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.
Lake Placid-based biathletes are excited about the extension of their rollerski loop at the Olympic Jumping Complex, which cost $500,000 and took about 14 weeks to complete this fall.
LAKE PLACID, N.Y. — As seven US Biathlon Team members repeated loops around the stadium during trail-running intervals at Mt. Van Hoevenberg on Friday, each had their own things going on, their own focus. A-Team athlete Susan Dunklee, a Craftsbury Green Racing Project skier who tied the best U.S. women’s result of fifth at Biathlon World Championships last year, warmed up and cooled down on her mountain bike to remedy tendonitis in her knee. But for the...
LAKE PLACID, N.Y. — While the U.S. Nordic Ski Team trained on the mountainous,
RUHPOLDING, Germany – After winning a World Junior title in 1997, Jay Hakkinen has gone on to compete in four different Olympic Games and notch nine individual World Cup top-tens, including one this year. But despite Hakkinen’s long contribution to the U.S. team, in past years he has been more visible in Europe than in the sport in his home country. In 2008 he moved to Oberhof, Germany, when he and his girlfriend Kristin Orlameunder...
What do skiing, mountain biking, sunburns, snowstorms, rainbows and lots of roundabouts all have in common? They can all be found in Bend, Oregon in the month of May. For the first time in recent memory, the US Biathlon team sent a group of athletes ...
US biathletes Sara Studebaker and Haley Johnson were 20th and 21st respectively in the 10K sprint Saturday. They both had four penalties, and they both qualified for the mass start on Sunday. The difference is that while Johnson shot 1-0-1-2, Studebaker was 1-0-0-3.