From the FasterSkier archive — posts syndicated from athletes’ and coaches’ own blogs between 2004 and 2012, kept online as published. Current coverage is at fasterskier.com.
BEND, Ore. — At 35 years old, U.S. Biathlon’s Lowell Bailey is the consummate veteran: he’s been racing on the World Cup since 2002. And this past winter on one day in mid-February, Bailey was perfect. On Feb. 16, he won the 20-kilometer individual race at the 2017 International Biathlon Union (IBU) World Championships Hochfilzen, Austria.
Lowell Bailey celebrates after crossing the line to win gold in the 20 k individual at IBU World Championships in Hochfilzen, Austria. (Photo: Glen Crawford)
Ten days ago, FasterSkier sat down with Bailey in Bend. The US Biathlon team was in town for an on-snow camp up at Mt. Bachelor. Bailey, of Lake Placid, N.Y., is a biathlon lifer, a husband and a dad. He plans on racing one more season through the 2018 Winter Olympics and them moving with his family to Bozeman, Mont.
And yeah, if you heard rumors of Bailey pursuing a career as a bison rancher, you’ll hear Bailey set the record straight when it comes to his post-World Cup career.
Bailey = renaissance man.
He’s clearly a world’s best biathlete. He’s also a musician. As a bit of a bonus, Bailey allowed us to include one of his songs in the podcast titled Shores of Horicon. Here are Bailey’s notes on the song and the album.
“It’s the title track of my solo album, ‘Songs of Logging’ (2005),” Bailey wrote. “This album was a historical theme album dealing with the history of logging/forestry in the Adirondack Park region of upstate NY. This particular song deals with the history revolving around the Battle of Lake George during the French and Indian War (1755). In that battle, Sir William Johnson, fighting on behalf of the British, fought in alliance with more than 200 Mohawk warriors led by Chief Hendrick Thianoga (various spellings). Hendrick died in what was one of the bloodiest battles of the war. William Johnson was one of the first landholders in the region and one of the first white settlers to become friendly with members of the Iroquois people.”
FasterSkier’s Performances of the Year (clockwise, from upper right): Jessie Diggins and Sadie Bjornsen placing third in the FIS World Championships team sprint (Photo: John Lazenby/Lazenbyphoto.com), Canadian men’s relay placing third in Ulricehamn World Cup (Salomon/NordicFocus), Ben Loomis placing ninth at Junior World Championships (U.S. Ski Team/Tom Kelly), Susan Dunklee placing second at IBU World Championships (USBA/NordicFocus), and Lowell Bailey becoming the first American to win gold at IBU World Championships (Glen Crawford).
This is it — the final award in our 2016/2017 awards series. Votes stemmed from the FS staff, scattered across the U.S., Canada, and Europe, and while not scientific, they’re intended to reflect a broader sense of the season in review. This honor goes to outstanding North American performances of the year across various nordic sports.
What made his performance legendary wasn’t just that Bailey became the first American biathlete to ever earn the title of world champion. It was the way he did it: perfect 20-for-20 shooting, digging deep on his skis, rising to the meet the pressure of a nailbiter of a competition, and sealing the win with aggressive skiing on the final downhill into the stadium.
Lowell Bailey (US Biathlon) racing to gold in the men’s 20 k individual at 2017 IBU World Championships on Feb. 16 in Hochfilzen, Germany. (Photo: USBA/NordicFocus)
“In my mind, that was where the race began, the second I left the mat,” Bailey said of cleaning his 20th target.
Watching from the finish line was the Czech Republic’s Ondřej Moravec, who had started with an earlier bib, also cleaned all 20 targets, and held a 6.4-second lead as Bailey left the range. It also would have been the first world title for Moravec, who had a gold relay medal but never an individual of his very own. The Czech — a veteran journeyman just like Bailey — shook his head and laughed as he watched his fate hang in the balance on the big screen.
The 20 k individual is often nobody’s favorite race. It’s hard to keep track of what’s happening, with each athlete going through four shooting bouts and a seemingly interminable amount of skiing. The individual-start affair takes nearly two hours from first start to last finish. There are only a few on the World Cup schedule each year and persistent rumors that the format will be eliminated.
But Bailey, Moravec, and their competitors proved that the individual can be as exciting as anything in the sports world.
With just about a kilometer to go, Bailey had a tenth of a second on Moravec’s time. The stadium announcer asked the fans to cheer him around the last bit of the race course and they responded with a deafening roar.
“Every hundred meters it was a sprint,” Bailey said. “Every hundred meters was ‘go as hard as you can for this hundred meters, and then when you get to the end of that hundred meters, go as hard as you can and just keep doing that.’ I thought the finish line was never going to come. I was just like, I don’t know how much longer I can do this, because the finish line is just not showing up.”
It did, and Bailey had done it. The first American world champion let out a scream. He was mobbed by the press afterwards and his performance became one of the defining moments of the World Championships.
“I know how important it really is for biathlon,” World Cup overall champion Martin Fourcade said of Bailey’s gold medal. “To see some people outside of Europe winning. I think that is the most we can do to make our sport bigger. I cannot be more satisfied about the guy winning today.”
Susan Dunklee (US Biathlon): Mass-start silver at IBU World Championships
A few days later, Bailey’s teammate Susan Dunklee matched his 20-for-20 shooting and left the shooting range in the 12.5 k mass start with the race lead.
American Susan Dunklee leaving the range first after the final shooting stage of the women’s 12.5 k mass start at IBU World Championships in Hochfilzen, Austria. She went on to place second for her first World Championships medal and the best result of a U.S. female biathlete at World Championships. (Photo: USBA/NordicFocus)
In the final kilometers, she was caught and passed by Germany’s Laura Dahlmeier, the most successful athlete of the Championships who took home five gold medals. But her fifth and last one did not come easily: the pair were among the only women to shoot perfectly, and Dahlmeier had to chase hard on the last loop. In the end, Dunklee crossed the line 4.6 seconds after the German and won a silver medal, the first individual medal ever by a U.S. woman at a World Championships.
“I had a feeling that [Dahlmeier] would catch me, because it is a lot easier when you are hunting than being hunted,” Dunklee said of not being able to follow the German and thus missing out on gold. “Unfortunately I didn’t quite have that today, but I am pretty happy with the race and it gives me something to aim for in the future.”
While Dahlmeier was faster on her skis, Dunklee was the fastest on the shooting range, and it wasn’t even close. From the first bout of the race, she knocked down her targets in blazing fashion. That allowed her to leave the range first time after time, and set out around the course at her own pace. By the time she came to the last shooting stage, it seemed almost impossible that she could miss; a totally electric performance.
“You have to get to the point where you trust that speed is better than shooting slow,” she said of her shooting training. “That takes a long time… today it worked.”
Jessie Diggins and Sadie Bjornsen (U.S. Ski Team): Classic team sprint bronze at FIS World Championships
Jessie Diggins and Sadie Bjornsen gave us all a glimpse of what was to come when they finished first and third, respectively, in the women’s 5 k freestyle during the Tour de Ski in Toblach, Italy. That was Bjornsen’s first individual podium and Diggins’s third. Less than two months later, they returned to the podium together, this time in a team event at World Championships nonetheless. Bjornsen started first for the two-woman squad in the 6 x 1.3 k classic team sprint in Lahti, Finland, and Diggins anchored, skiing from fifth to third on the final lap and overtaking Sweden’s Stina Nilsson in the finishing stretch.
Sadie Bjornsen (r) greets her U.S. teammate Jessie Diggins after Diggins outlunged Sweden’s Stina Nilsson (not shown) for the bronze medal in the women’s 6 x 1.3-kilometer classic team sprint at 2017 Nordic World Championships in Lahti, Finland. (Photo: John Lazenby/Lazenbyphoto.com)
Diggins edged Nilsson by 0.19 seconds for the final spot on the podium. Following Diggins’s freestyle team sprint gold, which she won with Kikkan Randall at 2013 World Championships, bronze is the U.S. team’s next-best result. The medal was Diggins’s fourth at a World Championships (and second of the week in Lahti, Finland) and Bjornsen’s first.
“I have been dreaming to be on a team sprint at World Championships or Olympics for a while now and it’s so cool to finally be here,” Bjornsen said afterward. “I think it’s finally sinking in, because I feel like I just wanna cry.”
Out of all of the first-leg skiers in the final, Bjornsen posted the fastest splits on her first and second laps.
“For me, this is one of the most exciting ones because, as Sadie said, it’s in classic,” Diggins said.
In all, the U.S. team took home four medals from 2017 World Championships: two in the skate sprint (where Diggins placed second and Randall finished third), and technically two from the classic team sprint (one each for Diggins and Bjornsen).
“This was an event that, in April, we talked about as an outside medal shot,” U.S. Ski Team Women’s Coach Matt Whitcomb said. “With that in mind, the team started brainstorming of a way of ‘coming from some sort of surprising attack’ when the time came in Lahti.”
He explained that they didn’t select the team-sprint duo until about 12 hours before the race.
“We had [Bjornsen] specifically skip the skiathlon because we thought with a little extra rest, she could be that much sharper,” Whitcomb said. Diggins ended up dropping out of the skiathlon to rest up for the team sprint the next day.
“But we had four other women that were up for serious consideration for this spot and we didn’t make the call until yesterday afternoon at 2:25 p.m.,” he added. “[Bjornsen and Diggins] felt the pressure of being selected for this team and … they’ve awarded everybody that could have been on it.”
Canadian men’s relay: Bronze at Ulricehamn World Cup
Len Valjas (c) is greeted by his teammates Alex Harvey (far right), Knute Johnsgaard (far left) and Devon Kershaw after he anchored their team to third in the men’s 4 x 7.5-kilometer team relay for a team best in Ulricehamn, Sweden. (Photo: Fischer/NordicFocus)
“We barely assembled one team, but that team made a miracle today, so we only needed one,” Canadian World Cup coach Ivan Babikov said after the Ulricehamn relay medal. Babikov competed on Canada’s 2012 relay team, retiring just last spring and transitioning to coaching.
“I’ll never forget this day,” he added. “We’ve had individual podiums and individual medals, but the relay is special because it’s a show of strength for the whole team and the whole staff behind this team.”
The four-man squad included veteran World Cup skiers Devon Kershaw and Harvey, as well as U25 national team member Knute Johnsgaard, who flew to Sweden just a few days before the event. By the first exchange, Kershaw put the Canadians in third, just 0.7 seconds out of first. Harvey went on to tag Johnsgaard 3.5 seconds back in fifth, and Johnsgaard as the third leg kept the team within striking distance in seventh, 5 seconds out of first.
Over the final 7.5 k, Valjas raced his team into not just podium contention, but a threat for second place as well.
“On the last lap, I was totally blocked on the hill, so I couldn’t actually empty the tank, which was probably a good thing for me,” Valjas recalled. “And then just after the hill I built up some speed, and passed five or six guys just double poling.”
With about 300 meters to go, Valjas was up to second place behind Sweden’s Calle Halfvarsson in first. Norway’s Finn Hågen Krogh slipped past both of them on the final corner, leaving Valjas and Halfvarsson to duke it out for silver. The Swede took it and Valjas claimed third, 1.3 seconds ahead of Switzerland’s Curdin Perl in fourth, and the Canadian team was ecstatic.
“I’ve never been the anchor in a relay,” Valjas explained. “I’ve been the second leg in some team sprints, but today was special, the best feeling I’ve ever had skiing, seeing my three teammates sprinting towards me at the finish line. I don’t think anything will ever top that, the first relay [podium] for Canada.”
Harvey as the the team’s lone fully funded athlete explained that the relay medal could give the rest of his team a significant financial boost.
“Because the results over the last couple of years internationally have been not stellar as a team, a lot of funding was cut for us,” Harvey explained after the race. “I think this result will really help those guys to be fully funded again.”
Ben Loomis (U.S. Nordic Combined Team): Ninth at Junior World Championships
American Ben Loomis (10) leading Slovenia’s Vid Vrhovnik (11) during the individual normal hill/5 k competition on Feb. 4 at Nordic Combined Junior World Championships at Soldier Hollow in Midway, Utah. Loomis finished ninth for a career best in his third Junior Worlds. (Photo: U.S. Ski Team/Tom Kelly)
Together, the teammates raced to seventh in the 4 x 5 k relay, along with Elijah Vargas and Grant Andrews. Loomis moved the team from ninth to seventh on the third leg, and Schumann anchored them to seventh, 2:10 minutes behind Austria in first.
Two days later, Loomis posted his first top 10 in his third Junior World Championships, finishing ninth in the individual normal-hill/5 k. He started the day by jumping to 10th out of nearly 50 competitors then picked off one place in the shorter-format race before the finish.
“I was able to stay relaxed, focused and have my best competition jump of the week,” Loomis wrote in an email afterward. “The home hill advantage made a huge difference in my jumping. Prior to this week, I had little jumps on the hill this winter. Luckily, I know the hill well and was able to get in rhythm with the jump very quickly.”
Loomis hails from Eau Claire, Wis., a town that actually does have ski-jumping facilities, he explained in an “Under 23 Questions” interview before the championships. He is currently based in Park City, where he trains with his older brother Adam.
In the final competition of 2017 Junior Worlds, he was one of two U.S. men in the top 15. Schumann followed in 15th, racing up from his 20th-ranked jump.
“Overall, I am very happy with my 9th place result,” Loomis wrote. “I was hoping for a little more, but to be 9th in the world is very special. I am already looking forward to next year’s competitions and approaching them with even more experience.”
Bernd Eisenbichler embraces Lowell Bailey after Bailey became the first-ever world champion in the history of US Biathlon. (Photo: Glen Crawford)
With the 2016/2017 season officially in the rearview, FasterSkier is excited to unveil its annual award winners for this past winter. Votes stem from the FS staff, scattered across the U.S., Canada, and Europe, and while not scientific, they are intended to reflect a broader sense of the season in review. This set of honors goes to a coach or team director who has particularly contributed to their team’s success.
Despite the title of this award, Bernd Eisenbichler has never really been a coach.
He has been an athlete (in Germany), a ski technician (for Ricco Gross, Kati Wilhelm, and then the American biathlon team), the high-performance director for the US Biathlon Association (USBA), and now its chief of sport.
Such a title might suggest that as Eisenbichler has risen through the ranks to direct both the national team and now also the development pipeline for the U.S. biathlon community, he has become more distant from the nitty-gritty, the details or the athletes.
Not so much. This season, you could still see the 41 year old zooming around on skis, or running back and forth between different parts of a stadium. Eisenbichler isn’t one who is content to stand around, or to distance himself and watch other people do work.
And when Lowell Bailey crossed the finish line in Hochfilzen, Austria, in February to become a world champion in the 20 k individual, one man ran out to grab him by the shoulders, scream and celebrate. You guessed it, it was Eisenbichler.
“Bernd was the first person who greeted me at the finish line, tears in his eyes,” Bailey wrote in an email this week. “[He is] one of the most passionate, hard-working individuals I’ve ever known!”
Eisenbichler testing skis in 2015. (Photo: Jake Ellingson)
Technically, nobody is allowed in the finish zone except the athletes who just finished the race. But Eisenbichler pushed through the scrum of officials and celebrated with an athlete he had met in the same place, Hochfilzen, back at Junior World Championships in 2000. Back then, he was what Bailey called a “hired hand” to make their skis fast.
At that point, did the German envision himself staying with the U.S. team for nearly 20 years (so far)?
“Along the way, I had different offers from different teams,” Eisenbichler admitted in an interview from his office in the Bavarian town of Frasdorf on Monday. “But I enjoy the freedom I get [from USBA] to create a high-performance program. You learn on the way. You make mistakes on the way. Hopefully you do it better next time. What I always see, though, is the potential to get better… I enjoyed working with Lowell and Tim [Burke] for every day of the 18 years. But every new person who came, they added something to the program. It meant, we are not done here. There are things we can do better, to reach higher.”
Bailey’s gold medal, the first ever by an American, and Susan Dunklee’s silver to make her the first U.S. woman to win an individual World Championships medal – together, they make an argument that this was US Biathlon’s best season ever and that the program is entering a new era.
“We have never, before now, had strong men and strong women at the same time,” USBA CEO Max Cobb said after Dunklee’s silver in Hochfilzen. “This is really exciting for us and a good validation that these opportunities, and the pipeline we have, works.”
The World Championships haul didn’t come out of left field.
Tim Burke gets encouragement from US Biathlon’s High Performance Director Bernd Eisenbichler at the beginning of the 12.5 k pursuit in Hochfilzen, Austria, in 2014.
In 2013, Tim Burke earned World Championships silver. Then at the 2014 Olympics, Bailey and Dunklee set best-ever marks for U.S. men and women, respectively: eighth by Bailey, 11th by Dunklee.
Just weeks after that, Bailey and Dunklee began accumulating World Cup podiums, and they haven’t stopped.
Since 2014, three different athletes – Sean Doherty, Maddie Phaneuf and Chloe Levins – have turned in top-five performances at Youth and Junior World Championships.
And this season, two athletes with college degrees in just their second seasons of biathlon – Paul Schommer and Joanne Reid – turned in individual top-35 performances on the World Cup and then teamed up with Sean Doherty and Clare Egan to finish eighth in a mixed relay. Five different athletes on the team, including Burke, Egan and Leif Nordgren, picked up top-20 World Cup results this season.
We asked Cobb, the USBA President and CEO, whether US biathlon would be where it is today without Eisenbichler.
His answer was simple: “No. Bernd is masterful in his leadership of our program.”
“Bernd is one of most passionate people I know, and for decades he has directed all his energies into building up USBA’s program,” Dunklee agreed.
“What was always interesting with Bernd, even at [the beginning], was that even though he was a German, he was extremely passionate about Team USA’s results,” Bailey wrote. “He got to know all of the athletes and was genuinely interested in seeing our team succeed, even if that meant beating the German team… At first, he was just waxing skis; then, he was in charge of stone-grinding and waxing; then he was put in charge of some team logistics. Eventually he became High Performance Director. Since that time, I’ve seen our team go from a mediocre ‘also-ran’ to one of the strongest teams in the world. That success is largely due to Bernd’s role and his tireless drive to win by out-maneuvering instead of out-spending. He embraced this David-and-Goliath struggle from the start.”
Eisenbichler prefers to call it a puzzle, referring to the complexity of the sport and the intricacy of the management required to win.
“We always knew that our program and our approach works, and we also had results to justify that,” Eisenbichler said. “But this year it really culminated in a perfect way… You always add to the puzzle and you try to have the perfect pieces to complete it. This year we just completed the puzzle. I think we proved that all the additions that we made to the program over the last three or four years, we really benefitted from it this year.”
For North American nordic sports teams, having a European at the helm seems to have worked out about as often as it hasn’t. But for US Biathlon, it sure has, and the consensus seems to be that it’s because of Eisenbichler himself. Having a German guiding your biathlon program doesn’t automatically buy you success. It’s not nationality so much as what the guy does.
The U.S. team and staff — including Cobb (brown jacket) and Eisenbichler (to his left) — celebrate Lowell Bailey’s gold medal at 2017 World Championships in Hochfilzen, Austria. (Photo: USBA/NordicFocus.com/Twitter)
In Eisenbichler’s case, he assembles a coaching team from Sweden, Finland, and Canada, a service team that includes Germans, Czechs, and an Italian, and brings in a shooting advisor from Austria. Plus, of course, Americans.
“We have eight nations represented on our staff, and they all worked so hard towards one goal, over nearly a decade for some of the staff members,” Eisenbichler said. “To see them so happy after Lowell and Susan’s success was just very, very rewarding for me.”
How does it work, gaining buy-in and loyalty from a staff which can be far-flung in the summer months?
“If I was being arrogant, I would say good management,” Eisenbichler laughed. “No, that’s a joke.”
He admits that there have been a few hires which didn’t work out and didn’t fit in with the team. But they have been “actually few.” Part of the staff’s success, Eisenbichler said, was how it fits together.
“We manage pretty well to give everybody a project where they can really identify themselves as being a very important part of the program,” he explained. “As a result they are really giving more than a normal staff member would do, really giving their heart and their energy into these projects. But at the same time they know they are part of the puzzle. There is nobody who is the only one contributing to the success or failure. I really believe it is like a puzzle, and every staff member has — even if at times their role is more important than other times — but they have the feeling that without them, it would not have been possible to be so successful.”
That’s not to say that there have never been cultural differences between Eisenbichler and his team.
“In my early years on the team, we used to have a slight disagreement about the word ‘fun’,” Dunklee wrote, explaining: “I’ve always made it my goal to keep ‘fun’ at the forefront of all my racing and training because the day that I forget to have fun is the day that I burn out. I think Bernd (and many other European coaches I have met) associate the word ‘fun’ with a carefree and unfocused attitude. However, I’ve never thought of fun and hard work or professionalism as mutually exclusive, in fact they can build on each other. I have been most successful and satisfied with the sport when I am directing every effort possible towards a big goal and remembering to savor and enjoy the goofy, spontaneous and joyful moments along the way. On that point, Bernd could agree. We were talking about the same thing, he just preferred to use the term ‘enjoyment’ rather than fun. But he humors me now and sometimes tells me ‘have fun!’ before my race and I always act so surprised to hear that word coming from him. It’s become a running joke.”
In some ways, Eisenbichler is still a ski technician at heart. He works closely with Muck Bauer, the team’s stonegrinder, who is also based in Germany. The pair test skis all year round, and were developing new grinds right up through World Championships. That meant that skis were getting driven from Hochfilzen to Ruhpolding, stoneground, being driven back, and then skied in for 20 k the next morning before being raced on.
“Bernd was excited about some of the new breakthroughs they’d had,” Bailey wrote. “The night before the individual, it was decided that a couple of pairs of my skis should be sent to Germany and re-ground with some of these new grinds. It was one of those pairs that carried me to victory later that day. It’s hard to say what the difference was for me that day, but it’s hard to overlook that fact that, in a race lasting almost one hour, a 3.3-second margin of victory is about as slim as it gets!”
At the end of this year’s U.S. National Championships, Dunklee and Bailey presented Eisenbichler with USBA’s Medal of Honor. The love and appreciation that Eisenbichler has for his athletes, and vice versa, stands out.
“I was meeting with Bernd in the lead-up up to [the 2014 Olympics] in Sochi and one thing he said stuck out to me,” Dunklee wrote. “We were talking about goals and how of course he wants to see someone on the team bring home a medal. He explained how every bit of the high performance budget and staff were being directed towards that main priority. But then he told me, ‘You know, I’ll really gauge my work with the team as successful if 20 years from now, you athletes and staff decide to travel to Munich for an Oktoberfest Reunion together. Then I’ll know I did a good job.’ ”
“I look forward to that reunion some day,” Dunklee concluded.
Lowell Bailey and Bernd Eisenbichler leave the mixed zone after Bailey finished sixth in the mass start at 2017 IBU World Championships in Hochfilzen, Austria. (Photo: USBA/NordicFocus.com)
U.S. Biathlon’s Lowell Bailey (Photo: US Biathlon/NordicFocus) and Susan Dunklee (Photo: Fischer/NordicFocus) are FasterSkier’s 2017 Biathletes of the Year.
With the 2016/2017 season officially in the rearview, FasterSkier is excited to unveil its annual award winners for this past winter. Votes stem from the FS staff, scattered across the U.S., Canada, and Europe, and while not scientific, they are intended to reflect a broader sense of the season in review. This set of honors goes to outstanding female and male North American biathletes on the IBU World Cup circuit.
Susan Dunklee and Lowell Bailey, to U.S. national team biathletes, each had historic seasons in their own right, marked by both consistently strong performances and historic peaks. Bailey won the first World Championships gold medal for an American biathlete – male or female – and Dunklee won a silver medal as the first U.S. woman in an individual-start race in those same championships.
Then, like a tag team of comic book superheroes banding together, it seemed only fitting that they combined their strengths to also achieve the first World Cup podium in a team event for U.S. Biathlon in ages, putting an exclamation mark on their oustanding year.
Susan Dunklee, U.S. Biathlon
Dunklee, who already won FasterSkier’s female biathlete of the year award in 2015/2016, further improved on her strong performances from the prior winter with an even more remarkable season, thanks to increased accuracy and noticeably faster shooting times on the range after cleaning her targets rather deliberately earlier in her career.
Susan Dunklee (front) going head to head with Germany’s Laura Dahlmeier (1), Austria’s Lisa Theresa Hauser (12), and France’s Marie Dorin Habert (left) in the women’s 10 k pursuit at the IBU World Cup in Pokljuka, Slovenia. (Photo: USBA/NordicFocus)
In the first half of the season she already achieved a third place in the sprint in Nove Mesto, Czech Republic, as well as two more top-five finishes.
Then her powerful skiing and a clean 20-for-20 shooting performance – the first of her career in a four-stage race at the World Cup level – propelled her to a historic podium finish in the women’s 12.5-kilomter mass start at the World Championships in Hochfilzen, Austria.
“I thought, I have to get the hell out of here!” Dunklee described her feelings after hitting the last target in that race in an interview with FasterSkier back then. And she did, leaving the range first and claiming the silver medal and her first podium at World Championships, after only being passed on the final loop by Germany’s Laura Dahlmeier.
“Repetition and discipline and training will get you to be able to shoot fast in the race,” Dunklee reflected. “And you have to get to the point where you trust that speed is better than shooting slow. That takes a long time … [to] feel comfortable with that speedy rhythm. It has worked some days in races this year, and then other days it has totally fallen apart. But today it worked.”
Dunklee followed up the highlight of her season with several more strong and consistent performances, three times just missing another World Cup podium in fifth place. And then she crowned her year with another success, placing second together with teammate Lowell Bailey in the single mixed relay at the World Cup in Kontiolahti, Finland, only behind a team from Austria.
“I have dreamed for a long time being able to run into the finishing pen with a bib on and a rifle, and greet my teammates as they come in,” Dunklee described her new experience of winning as part of a team, in a phone interview after that race. “It’s so cool to finally do that. It’s definitely a dream come true.”
Fittingly, Dunklee was also the only North American athlete qualified for the elite top-30 field in the final World Cup mass start of the season in Oslo, Norway. Despite struggling a bit with her shooting accuracy in that last World Cup weekend, she managed to overall claim the tenth position in the women’s Total Score standings, another highlight to end her best season to date.
“This is the sort of history-making team that every athlete dreams of being part of during their lifetime,” Dunklee reflected on her season after the final race in an email. “We have staff who have worked for decades believing this level is possible. Now the door has been opened. I don’t think they will have to wait decades for the next relay medals or World Championships podiums.”
Lowell Bailey, US Biathlon
“Well, glad I didn’t stop,” Lowell Bailey told broadcaster ARD following his historic gold medal in the men’s individual race at World Championships, later reiterating that feeling in the press conference.
“I’m so thankful for the people who came to me and allowed me to continue my career. The first one to think of is my wife Erika who supported me in my decision. We had our daughter Ophelia this summer, and of course this makes things much more interesting as a family. We had to be creative in our training this year, but it all worked out. So thankful for them, and grateful for everyone who has helped me.“
Lowell Bailey (US Biathlon) celebrating a podium in the men’s 10 k sprint at the IBU World Cup in PyeongChang, South Korea. (Photo: USBA/NordicFocus)
In retrospect, Bailey had definitely made the right decision to continue racing. Leading into the 2017 season, talk about his imminent retirement from biathlon after a long and successful career and his potential future as a “bison farmer” on the ranch of his father-in-law had become a bit of a running gag among some TV announcers and his fellow competitors.
Bailey started out the winter with consistently good yet not outstanding results, with a ninth place in the pursuit in Nove Mesto his best result before the New Year’s holiday break, usually finishing between positions ten and twenty due to his slightly slower ski speed than the strongest athletes in the field.
Following the break Bailey’s form improved leading up to the planned peak at World Championships in Hochfilzen, and he shot remarkably well during the second half of the season when he focused on some foundational principles of biathlon.
“As you get to the competition season, you boil your shooting cues down to a few key principles,” Bailey explained in an interview with FasterSkier after his winning performance. “For me those are having a good trigger squeeze and follow-through. So it’s like two things. Trigger squeeze. Follow-through. And by the way, when you got to your first biathlon camp, those are two of the three things they teach you. But when you are in that situation, you are fighting for a World Championship medal, you have to keep things simple because that is all your brain is capable of.”
With a clean 20-for-20 shooting performance in the men’s 20-kilometer individual race at the World Championships, Bailey held a small lead going out on the final lap over Czech Republic’s Ondrej Moravec, and what followed was truly one of the most exciting finishes of the season.
“Fortunately I had great skis, and I had a U.S. staff member seemingly every hundred meters along that track,” Bailey told FasterSkier after the race. “But every hundred meters it was a sprint. Every hundred meters was ‘go as hard as you can for this hundred meters, and then when you get to the end of that hundred meters, go as hard as you can and just keep doing that.’ I thought the finish line was never going to come. I was just like, I don’t know how much longer I can do this, because the finish line is just not showing up.”
When the line finally did show up, Bailey was 3.3 seconds ahead and fell elated into the arms of U.S. Biathlon Association (USBA) Chief of Sport Bernd Eisenbichler awaiting him, emotionally celebrating the first gold medal not just of Bailey’s career but for the whole U.S. Biathlon program.
Susan Dunklee and Lowell Bailey celebrate after finishing second in the World Cup single mixed relay in Kontiolahti, Finland. Austria won the competition. (Photo: IBU/Twitter)
“When I think about when I first met Lowell, he was probably 13 years old, in Lake Placid, and just this good young skier who put his heart into this and worked for this every day, for almost 20 years now,” USBA President Max Cobb told FasterSkier following Bailey’s gold medal. “I think it is a total validation of Lowell’s career.”
As a sign of the respect Bailey commands among his peers, not just his own team but even his competitors seemed happy about the success, drawing high praise from silver medalist Moravec who so narrowly had lost out on gold, bronze medalist and World Cup dominator Martin Fourcade of France, and Germany’s Erik Lesser who had just missed the podium in fourth place.
Bailey followed up on his medal with a second place in the sprint at the following World Cup in PyeongChang, South Korea, at the site of the upcoming 2018 Olympic Winter Games.
“Sometimes you have these waves as an athlete, sometimes you can have also the opposite,” Bailey said in the press conference at PyeongChang. “I have been on this path since World Championships. I feel good physically and mentally, and confident on the shooting range and on the tracks.”
Then he recorded another historic second place in Kontiolahti in the single mixed relay together with his teammate Dunklee.
“It was my first single mixed relay and Susan’s as well, and we were totally psyched,” Bailey told FasterSkier after their shared podium. “This was the first time that you could hug your teammate in the finish zone… It’s a great moment to see both programs, both the men’s and the women’s teams, have a joint success like this.”
Bailey finished the season in eighth place overall in the men’s World Cup Total Score standings, both a career-best for him and a historic best for a US biathlete, all the more impressive because he skipped the entire week of races in Oberhof, Germany, for a longer holiday and training break.
“This is, by far, the best season of my life,” Bailey wrote in an email reflecting on his season after the last mass start of the year, where like Dunklee he had been the only qualified North American starter. “At 35 years old, I can say that I’ve waited a long time for this season.”
Susan Dunklee celebrates silver in the women’s mass start at the 2017 IBU World Championships in Hochfilzen, Austria. She became the first U.S. woman to earn an individual medal at Biathlon World Championships. (Photo: USBA/NordicFocus)
HOCHFILZEN, Austria—Lowell Bailey’s gold medal in the 20 k individual on Thursday was groundbreaking for the U.S. biathlon team.
But Susan Dunklee had come with goals of her own. And if anything, they just got bigger.
“I think back to a few years ago when he got his first podium in Kontiolahti [Finland], and I watched him do that,” Dunklee said. “I thought, he has been doing this for a long time and that’s possible. Then a week later I got my first podium in Oslo. So that thought crossed my head the other day when he won. I was like, huh, maybe I can feed off of this. You just need to get some positive momentum going and it makes it easier for the whole team to do well.”
In Dunklee’s last race of World Championships, the 12.5 k mass start, she performed in a way that was entirely her own. From the very first shooting, the Vermonter asserted that she was the woman to beat.
And while she didn’t match Bailey’s gold, she did end up with silver, the very first individual World Championships medal ever won by a U.S. woman in biathlon.
Susan Dunklee (US Biathlon) racing to silver in the women’s 12.5 k mass start on the last day of 2017 IBU World Championships in Hochfilzen, Austria. The second place was a best-ever result by a U.S. woman at Biathlon World Championships. (Photo: Fischer/NordicFocus)
Starting from bib 17, Dunklee moved into the top ten on the first loop of racing. Then, her moment came: the first prone stage.
Dunklee took just 26 seconds to hit the mat, clean all five targets, and jump back up again. It was the fastest time of the whole field and she left with a 5.1-second lead on the rest of the women.
It was a pattern that would repeat again and again: the others caught Dunklee on the top of the large climb on the back of the course, but then they would ski into the range together, Dunklee would clean with lightning speed, and go out with a gap again.
“I was focusing on skiing patiently today, and efficiently, especially because I was off the front,” she explained. “I didn’t have someone to tuck behind, so I didn’t want to overdo it. I wanted to have something left in the tank on loop four and five. So I thought, I am going to ski relaxed and if they catch me I will just jump in behind them, and if they don’t catch me, well, then I will have an extra gap.”
Dunklee knew that she had a trump card in her pocket: shooting speed. It was something she had been working on all year, and she was determined to shoot both quickly and accurately, making up time on the range.
At her first World Championships, where Dunklee finished fifth in the 15 k individual, she was one of the slowest shooters in the field. Today, she was the absolute fastest over all four stages.
“Repetition and discipline and training will get you to be able to shoot fast in the race,” she said. “And you have to get to the point where you trust that speed is better than shooting slow. That takes a long time, and one of the things that I have done this year is shooting on paper with speed, just to get used to that rhythm, and feel comfortable with that speedy rhythm. It has worked some days in races this year, and then other days it has totally fallen apart. But today it worked.”
And so she came into the final standing stage with three other women, giants in the sport: Laura Dahlmeier of Germany, who had already won four gold medals at this World Championships; Gabriela Koukalova of the Czech Republic, who had won a medal in every individual race so far; and Marie Dorin Habert of France, the winningest athlete of last year’s World Championships.
Dunklee had never cleaned a four-stage race, but she had the confidence of 15 perfect shots behind her.
As soon as the first target turned white, she was on a roll, keeping up the speed and finally getting that 20-for-20. Again, she left in first place.
American Susan Dunklee leaving the range first after the final shooting stage of the women’s 12.5 k mass start at IBU World Championships in Hochfilzen, Austria. She went on to place second for her first World Championships medal and the best result of a U.S. female biathlete at World Championships. (Photo: USBA/NordicFocus)
“I thought, I have to get the hell out of here,” she said of the feeling of hitting the 20th target.
Koukalova and Dorin Habert both missed a shot, leaving Dahlmeier as the lone chaser. (A third woman, Lisa Vittozzi of Italy, cleaned all 20 targets, but was slower on her skis and finished 11th).
“As I was skiing out I kind of looked up [at the scoreboard] saw that I was out and Laura was five seconds back,” Dunklee recalled. “I didn’t see any other names yet, so that’s all I knew, that Laura was dive seconds back. It could be someone else that was close to her but I wasn’t sure.”
Dunklee tried to ski big, but not to wear herself out on the first part of the loop. By the time the loop was halfway through, Dahlmeier had caught her. On the same hill where Dunklee had been caught on earlier loops, Dahlmeier put the hammer down.
“We had this in every loop, where she goes a little bit faster in the shooting range, then we come closer closer and I got her at the highest point,” Dahlmeier said in the post-race press conference. “Then on the last loop, it was going to be the same thing. [I thought], it is possible.”
She skied away; Dunklee couldn’t follow.
“I didn’t quite have it to stick with her,” Dunklee said. “But I didn’t know how far back those other people were, so I as just pushing to hopefully keep a big enough gap so they don’t get any ideas in their head, you know, and chase me down.”
It was a smart move: while Koukalova and Dorin Habert were in the penalty loop, a few other women cleaned the last stage. That set up a battle between Kaisa Makarainen of Finland, Teja Gregorin of Slovenia, Yuliya Dzhima of Ukraine, and the Czech and French stars.
Makarainen skied the fastest last-loop time of the entire field, and claimed bronze (+20.1).
“The first shooting I did a big mistake,” Makarainen said of her one miss in the race. “My finger was breaking early. But I knew that [if] it was my only penalty, I could still fight for the top spots. When I came to the last shooting I knew that the girls were in front of me were strong, but I worked hard in the last loop.”
Dunklee stayed well ahead of her and crossed the line second (+4.6), earning a historic silver medal.
“I had a feeling that [Dahlmeier] would catch me, because it is a lot easier when you are hunting than being hunted,” Dunklee said of not being able to follow the German – who with the medal became the most successful woman at a single World Championships ever – and thus missing out on gold. “Unfortunately I didn’t quite have that today, but I am pretty happy with the race and it gives me something to aim for in the future. Laura is at the top of her game right now, she’s done fantastic under pressure and I don’t think there re many people in the world ever who could have done that.”
Dunklee’s performance was distracting, even mid-race, for teammate Clare Egan. Egan had turned in the best results of her career so far to earn the 30th and last bib in the mass start, her first time ever qualifying for the race.
“I was paying attention to the bigscreen even on my way into my standing,” Egan admitted. “I was listening and I heard that Susan was leading after shooting four. It took the pressure off in a way, I was like, what I am doing right now doesn’t matter at all because Susan is going to medal in this race! Maybe I should have been paying a little more attention to myself,” she laughed.
But perfect focus or no, Egan raced to 24th place (+3:04.4), one of the five best races of her career.
“Luckily I started our last two relays, so I had some experience with mass starts,” she said. “But I still need to work on my standing shooting. I missed my last standing shot both times and I just I don’t have a lot of confidence in my shooting. And as soon as you get defensive you miss. I have a lot to work on, but I am happy — I shot 80%, I was 24th and I am content.”
Maybe it wasn’t a medal, but seeing Egan in the mass start was another accomplishment for a team which has had their best week ever.
Like Dunklee, Egan came from a cross-country skiing background. While Dunklee turned to biathlon immediately after graduating from college, it took Egan a few more years before she decided to make the switch. But the results are starting to come.
“Going into this week I have met none of my goals for the season and I was pretty disappointed,” said Egan. “But I had a lot of support from our coaches, and sports psychologist and my teammates, and turned things around. I can only hope one day I will be as good as Susan, but nobody works harder than she does, she really deserves this and every other victory that she gets.”
Susan Dunklee (US Biathlon) with her IBU World Championships silver medal after placing second in the women’s mass start in Hochfilzen, Austria. (Photo: USBA/NordicFocus)
For Dunklee, the shooting speed and the results it has brought her have come from not only hard work on the range, but a calm attitude and a diversified lifestyle. Much like Bailey has successfully divided his time between world-class training and personal pursuits, Dunklee became a homeowner this summer and is dedicated to her home community in Craftsbury, Vermont.
“We say I am adulating, I guess,” she laughed. “I definitely like having a little more space. I feel like it has also allowed me feel like I have done my little bit and I have other interesting things going on besides just biathlon. Like the other day I found out that my mailbox got hit by the plow truck. Now I have other things to think about, you know, it’s just its fun.”
In the press conference, Dahlemeier talked about how mountain climbing and having other hobbies that require spending time away from biathlon (and her mobile phone) was essential for her performance. Balance, she said, was good.
Dunklee agreed.
“I do have a tendency to focus 100 percent on whatever I am working on at a given time,” she said. “That can be good at certain aspects, but that can also can take over my life, and when things are frustrating or a little disappointing it can be hard for me to distance myself from that. So I need to have other things that I get meaning from.”
Lowell Bailey (US Biathlon) racing to gold in the men’s 20 k individual at 2017 IBU World Championships on Feb. 16 in Hochfilzen, Germany. He finished the championships with his fourth individual top six on Sunday in the men’s 15 k mass start. (Photo: USBA/NordicFocus)
Before this year’s International Biathlon Union (IBU) World Championships, American Lowell Bailey had never cleaned a 20-kilometer individual or 15-kilometer mass start race. In layman’s terms, he had never hit all 20 targets in those types of races — the longest formats on the circuit. Not in a World Championships, not in a World Cup. That’s not to say shooting isn’t his strength; that’s just extremely difficult to do.
Fast forward to Sunday, the last day of 2017 Biathlon World Championships in Hochfilzen, Austria, Bailey finished his third individual race of the championships with perfect shooting, shooting clean in the 15 k mass start for sixth place. In four individual races over the last week, he hit 69 out of 70 targets.
“It’s, no words, it’s unbelievable,” Bailey said after Sunday’s mass start, where he finished with what would have been a career best (sixth) in any other of his previous World Championships appearances.
In his eighth World Championships, this year was different. Bailey started the week off by racing to fourth in the sprint, the second-best result of a U.S. biathlete at World Championships. He cleaned that race. Then he finished sixth in the pursuit for his second-best result at World Championships. That’s the race he missed one.
Not counting Olympics (Bailey finished eighth in the 20 k at the 2014 Sochi Games), he had cracked the top 10 of an individual race at World Championships once before (in last year’s mass start in Oslo, Norway, where he placed 10th). Bailey carried his momentum this year all the way to the Hochfilzen 20 k, which he won to become the first American gold medalist at Biathlon World Championships. That happened Thursday. Three days later, he ended the championships with his fourth top-six result in as many individual races.
“I’m so happy for the team, for Susan,” Bailey said. “Our whole team deserves this world champs. We haven’t shown what we’re capable of, there’s always been one setback or another … and the stars aligned for this one. We were waiting for this moment and everything clicked for the team and it’s so great to see, and god, am I glad I stuck around to be here.”
Lowell Bailey sharing his moment on the top step of the World Championships podium with his wife Erika (r) and daughter Ophelia on Feb. 16 in Hochfilzen, Austria. (Photo: USBA/NordicFocus)
Bailey, 35, is a new dad. Some people refer to him as a buffalo farmer. He got married nearly two years ago and he and his wife Erika welcomed a baby girl into their lives last June. You could say Bailey has a lot going on, and he considered retiring at the end of last season, yet he came into this season with a very specific focus.
“I told my staff, I said, ‘Hey, I just want to be on the podium again. It really doesn’t matter to me where that is because I know every race is just as competitive, so if it’s at world champs, great, if it’s at the first World Cup, if it’s at the last World Cup…,” Bailey explained.
With “25-some-odd” races in a season, he liked his odds. And considering the momentum he has coming out of world champs, Bailey is feeling good about the last nine races of the season.
“It’s just a matter of believing,” he said. “I’ve got the confidence now, I know I can go head to head with the best in the world … I’m just gonna enjoy the rest of the season and every race is a new day and a new chance.”
Podium Contention
While sixth sounds pretty good, Sunday’s mass start was even more exciting for fans of Bailey and US Biathlon as he skied in first, second or third for much of the race.
Bailey put himself near the front of the 30-man field early in the mass start, entering the range in fifth for the first time. One of 18 skiers to shoot clean on that first prone stage, he headed out on his second loop in second place, just 1.1 seconds behind Russia’s Anton Shipulin in first.
On that second loop, Austria’s Simon Eder took the lead then traded off with his teammate Dominik Landertinger before Germany’s Benedikt Doll led the pack into the range for the second time, followed closely by Shipulin and Bailey, respectively.
There, Bailey shot clean and posted the fastest range time to leave the range in first, 0.9 seconds ahead of Landertinger. Overall on the day, Bailey’s range and shooting times ranked third fastest.
On the third loop, Doll, Eder and Landertinger passed Bailey early, and he ultimately entered the range for the first standing stage in eighth, just 2.5 seconds behind Doll in first. Despite tired legs, Bailey shot clean again and left the range in second.
“I just kept to what’s been working for me all week,” he recalled. “I kept to the simple fundamentals of shooting. Today I was really feeling it, I didn’t have it in the legs and sometimes that can be a distraction, but I just said, you know, just do what you can do. You know how to shoot and you know how to ski, so just go and do the best you can.”
Austria’s Simon Eder (17) leads France’s Martin Fourcade (2) and Austrian teammate Dominik Landertinger (22) in the men’s 15 k mass start, the last race of IBU World Championships in Hochfilzen, Italy. Eder went on to place third for his first World Championships podium, Fourcade placed fifth and Landertinger seventh. (Photo: IBU)
He followed Eder, also clean through three stages, out of the range with about 3 seconds between the two. France’s Martin Fourcade had worked his way up to third after a penalty in the first stage and trailed Bailey by 0.6 seconds. Aside from Fourcade, seven of the top eight were still without a miss heading into the last shooting.
There, Bailey entered the range in eighth again, 12.1 seconds behind Fourcade, who had worked his way up to first on that fourth loop. Landertinger remained in second, just 0.5 seconds behind Fourcade, Germany’s Simon Schempp third (+0.7), Norway’s Johannes Thingnes Bø fourth (+1.3), and Eder fifth (+1.8).
Eder, Schempp and Bailey all cleaned — the only three men to do so and finish the day with 20-for-20 shooting — to embark on that last loop in that order. Eder led Schempp by just 2.3 seconds while Bailey trailed in third, 16.8 seconds out of first. Another 8.4 seconds behind Bailey, Bø flew out of the penalty loop (after his first miss of the day) in fourth.
And while third place was undoubtedly on Bø’s mind, he didn’t stop there when he passed Bailey early on the final 3 k loop. Up front, Schempp had caught and passed Eder within the first kilometer. Eder appeared to give up the chase for gold half a kilometer later, and at 13.6 k, he was 7.5 seconds ahead of Bø in third.
Germany’s Simon Schempp celebrating his first individual World Championships gold on Sunday in the men’s 15 k mass start in Hochfilzen, Austria. (Photo: IBU)
Bø caught him and with less than a kilometer remaining, he passed Eder to lead on a downhill into the finishing straight. Schempp skied away, uncontested, for first place in 35:38.3 minutes, while Bø finished 9 seconds later for silver. Just 1.1 seconds behind Bø, Eder notched his first World Championships podium in third (+10.1).
Meanwhile, Bailey’s gap to Bø on the last lap grew to 18 seconds by 13.6 k. Shipulin passed Bailey shortly after, and Fourcade passed him as well to put Bailey in sixth at the finish (+33.5), behind Shipulin in fourth (+25.3) and Fourcade in fifth (+31.3).
“I was able to hang for four laps and I just told myself to hang as long as I could,” Bailey recalled. “Unfortunately I only had four laps and the fifth was bru-tal as they say in Germany. But I’m so psyched with this whole world champs…
“It’s surreal to be sixth,” he continued. “I mean, a fourth, a sixth, a first, and a sixth… I’ve popped good results here and there, but to be consistent for the whole two weeks, I’m so satisfied with how the training’s gone and the preparation. I had great skis today, maybe the best skis I’ve had actually, thank god because I didn’t feel so good. I was pretty tired. It’s amazing, it’s really just amazing. It’s hard putting it into words.”
For the 28-year-old Schempp, who wore the red bib of the World Cup mass-start discipline leader, it was his first individual world title in his sixth World Championships.
“He is wearing the red bib, and you could see he deserves that,” Germany’s head coach Mark Kirchner told German broadcaster ARD. “He has waited a long time for his individual medal, and now he also [silenced] the last critics who talked all week about how he hasn’t won one yet, and even with gold. Sensational.”
“I am just happy that it was finally sufficient,” Schempp told ARD. “Incredible, an amazing race. I am just happy that it finally was enough for the top. Thanks to everyone, I can’t really say anything right now.”
He explained that he made a point to save some energy for the last climb, because he was “determined to attack there,” Schempp said. “And that was enough. A great day.”
“Of course it’s a big relief,” he added. “After all the races here I had to walk through the mixed zone and justify myself, that was not a nice feeling. And everyone asked me about the medal. It’s not easy, but today I finally was able to put it all together for a season highlight, and that’s why I am also enormously proud of myself.”
The men’s 4 x 7.5 k relay podium at 2017 IBU World Championships on Saturday in Hochfilzen, Austria, with Russia (c) in first, France (l) in second, and Austria (r) in third. (Photo: IBU World Champs/Twitter)
HOCHFILZEN, Austria—Redemption, validation, national pride: just a few of the things that were on the line in today’s 4 x 7.5 k relay at IBU World Championships.
For Austria, it was clear: a good performance on home soil was critical. The team hadn’t won a medal yet despite eight chances to do so.
For Germany, the question was whether their accomplished men’s team could live up to the expectations set by its younger women’s team, which has won every relay this year, including at World Championships.
For Norway, there had been no gold so far, but the men wanted to defend their title from last year’s Championships in Oslo.
Russia? Relays were seeming like the best way to take medals. They had earned bronze in the mixed relay, but been locked out ever since. Plus, the team has been embroiled in politics. Things were getting complicated.
France’s Martin Fourcade has dominated the whole season, but only won one gold at World Championships. Would the relay be the place he could finally get a second?
Plus, Canada won bronze in the team event last year, and the U.S. men’s team, often a top-six threat, was looking to capitalize on the energy from Lowell Bailey’s gold in the 20 k individual.
Any number of teams wanted a slice of the podium. But there were only three steps, and only one set of gold medals.
Out of the start, a team that nobody had expected shot to the front: Latvia. Andrejs Rastorgujevs, always one of the fastest skiers in the field, decided to make a breakaway already on the first loop. He then quickly cleaned prone and continued to lead on his own through the second loop.
Using spares in standing, though, the strategy didn’t seem to pay off. Germany staked a claim as soon as he faltered, with veteran Erik Lesser cleaning both shooting stages with no spare rounds and then attacking the final loop. He tagged off to Benedikt Doll with 5.8 seconds on the competition.
“Erik is such a great finisher,” U.S. lead skier Lowell Bailey – who tagged off 12.4 seconds back in fourth place, after using one spare round – said of Lesser. “In that situation he is nearly unstoppable. Hats off to him. He knows how to ski relays.”
While Lesser had thrown down, many teams weren’t so far behind him. By the end of the third leg, Benedikt Doll had thrown away Germany’s lead with poor shooting and six teams were still within 32 seconds of first place. Gone were the U.S., Canada, and Norway. Anton Babikov had turned in a hero’s performance to take Russia to the front, and his team was now chased by Austria, France, Germany, Ukraine, and Italy.
Anton Shipulin had taken over for Russia with a slight lead over Austria and France. Martin Fourcade, the French anchor, chased hard, and passed Austria’s Dominik Landertinger. With a clean prone from both Fourcade and Shipulin, the race narrowed. But Shipulin still had some seconds of cushion when he came in for standing.
He needed them: Shipulin used one spare. Fourcade shot quickly, cleaned, and tried to catch the Russian. He left the range 4.2 seconds back, setting up a battle between two of the top men on the World Cup.
“Today the last round for me was the most difficult, because I knew that Martin Fourcade is a very strong athlete,” Shipulin said through a translator at the press conference. “I was just trying to run faster than him.”
It turned into the battle that wasn’t, however, with Shipulin pulling away and coasting to a 5.8-second win for Russia.
“I think it was too complicated for me today,” Fourcade said. “I am not in my best shape. Anton was really strong on the track. I tried in the beginning of the race to catch him, and I almost did it. But then he had a bit more power than I had.”
While the Russian fans weren’t the most numerous in the stands, they were among the most passionate. And the team had delivered for them.
“I feel relieved for our team and our country,” Shipulin said. “I think it has been almost ten years we have not won any [World Championships] in the relay. So we are just really lucky and really happy, and we are going to celebrate.”
(Russia did win gold at the 2014 Olympics.)
Behind Fourcade and Shipulin, Landertinger of Austria and Simon Schempp of Germany were both trying desperately to secure a podium spot, but there was only room for one.
Schempp initially appeared to have better skis on the downhills on the front end of the loop. But on the major climb on the back end, Landertinger accelerated and Schempp was utterly unable to follow. To the monstrous roar of the crowd, Landertinger skied into the stadium to take bronze with his three teammates.
“It was very, very hard,” Landertinger told Austrian broadcaster ORF. “Simon is one of the best anchor skiers I know. When I skied out of the range after the shooting and saw him just four or five meters behind me, I knew it would be very difficult. I probably looked at that climb a hundred times in training, and it was pretty clear I would do my attack there. And thank God that worked out great.”
Schempp was deflated, but said that Germany needed to have an overall better team performance to secure a podium. Eight spares wouldn’t to it.
“It wasn’t enough for the podium today,” he told German broadcaster ARD. “I gave everything I had, everything that was left. Unfortunately we were not convincing on the shooting range today.”
Doll apologized too: four of the eight spare rounds came from him, including three in the standing stage, which had dropped the team to seventh at the time.
“Everyone did their best, I also tried to do my best,” he said. “But I just didn’t have it in my head today. I am really sorry about that, it really hurts because half the used spares were on me. I might have to give out a bar round tonight. I have to take a large part of the blame on me.”
For the Austrian team, the medal was long-awaited and cause for celebration.
Leadoff skier Daniel Mesotitsch was also the leadoff guy when Austria took bronze on this same course back at 2005 World Championships.
“It feels just as great as back then,” the 40-year-old told ORF. “There is no better feeling than winning a medal at home with the team. We are all overwhelmed by our emotions. I was briefly feeling sick to my stomach even watching [the last loop]. I was a lot more nervous than during my own loop.”
But now, a medal is theirs.
“It’s beautiful,” Landertinger said. “Really, really beautiful. And I have to say, what I experienced today with those fans, I already got goosebumps coming into the arena today. And I am proud that I can race here. And now with this medal I achieved the goal I had, and I am brutally happy now.”
U.S. Team Seventh, Just Out of Top-Six Goal
Bailey delivered as the U.S. team’s leadoff racer, using just one spare round and staying near the front for the whole race. After the team could not contest the first few relays of the season, they lost valuable Nations Cup and relay points and started with a high bib number. Bailey had to make up the time on the range, rather than the trails.
“There was no where to go –it’s actually fairly narrow for a World Championships Course,” Bailey said. “There wasn’t a lot of room to work. With the high bib number you actually hit the [shooting] point [on the range] before a lot of other people, so I really was just focusing on getting my first shot off quick. I did, but I missed it unfortunately. The key is just in that first prone is keeping enough contact, so I really pushed the pace in shooting and pushed that extra round so I could maintain contact.”
While he was confident coming off his gold medal on Thursday, Bailey was also tired. He wasn’t sure how he was going to feel, or if he would be able to make up time on the trails once the pack thinned out enough for him to move.
“I was a little nervous about today, because the last 48 hours have been a little bit wild and I slept two hours the night after the individual,” he admitted. “I didn’t go to bed late. I just lay there and Erika and I were both wide awake, occasionally like, ‘Are you sleep?’ ‘No, are you sleep?’ ‘No, shit.’ You have to put your feet back on the ground, back in the ski boots.”
By the time he tagged off to Leif Nordgren, the U.S. was in fourth place, more or less where they wanted to be.
Then, Nordgren cleaned prone and moved into second place, 0.4 seconds behind Germany’s Doll. Really right where they wanted to be.
“I kind of took my time a little bit in prone,” Nordgren said. “I wanted to make sure I hit all five targets not using any extras, so that went really well.”
The pair were soon consumed by a chase back, but that didn’t bother Nordgren.
“I left the range right with Doll there for the lead, and then he didn’t push super hard the second loop so it was no problem staying with him. But of course it allowed some guys from behind to catch up, which, no big deal.”
In standing, Nordgren used one spare, dropping to fifth, and then stayed in sixth place on the trails. Despite losing places, he was still just 17.7 seconds out of the lead.
“I think I paced the race really well,” said Nordgren. “I was right there. I couldn’t quite close the gap, but you know, I think I kept us right in there, so yeah, I am happy.”
Tim Burke used one spare in prone and three in standing, and blamed his spare rounds partly on exhaustion.
“I feel so bad on the skis, it’s such a fight from the first kilometer,” he said. “By the time I got to standing my legs were cramping, and I — yeah. It’s so much easier when you’re feeling good, you can push and recover and get in the flow. When you’re just fighting the whole loop to try keep your head above water, and then you hit the mat to shoot, it’s just brutally hard.”
Despite a performance that left him frustrated, the U.S. was still in seventh place when Sean Doherty took over to race the anchor leg. He used two spares in prone and then cleaned standing, heading out on course in seventh place and on the hunt: Ukraine was just 3.2 seconds ahead.
The top six was not meant to be, though.
“I just didn’t have it in the legs today and that’s pretty frustrating,” Doherty said after crossing the line seventh, +1:50.5. “You know, to be so close to sixth there and not have the gear on the last lap to push it through. I gave it all I had and just didn’t have enough.”
With a total to eight spare rounds – not bad, but more than Russia’s three or France’s four – the team was missing the last little bit that would have gotten them to where they wanted to be.
“I would say we were hunting for the top six, and you know, Leif and Lowell got us off to such a great start,” Doherty said. “Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to really follow up on that. I think we all had it in us, just couldn’t quite get that critical mass.”
Canada 13th in Hunt for Medal Defense
Last year, the men’s relay was the best moment in several Canadian team members’ sporting careers. They won an unexpected bronze medal and were the sensation of World Championships.
This season, Nathan Smith has been out with a virus. That gave Macx Davies a chance to start. But overall, the team couldn’t match their form from the year before. With ten spares overall, they crossed the line 13th, +3:35.5.
“I was just hoping to have a good race for myself,” said Davies, for whom it was the first World Championships relay start. “It is hard to put any [results goals] on relays because it is a team event, and I am not the other three guys… It hasn’t been bad, it just has been a little too slow, especially a few too many spares for us. We need to miss less than the other nations if we ski, or if I ski, like I did today.”
“I could have definitely done better than I did today,” said leadoff racer Christian Gow, who had three spares. “Too many mistakes on the range, but I am at least happy with my skiing… I think it was a pretty good ski day. I think it is the closest I have been with that many spares. The skiing was pretty decent, but I dropped the ball in the range.”
-Gerry Furseth, Harald Zimmer, and Ian Tovell contributed
The men’s 4 x 7.5 k relay podium at 2017 IBU World Championships on Saturday in Hochfilzen, Austria, with Russia (c) in first, France (l) in second, and Austria (r) in third. (Photo: IBU World Champs/Twitter)
IBU World Championships (Hochfilzen, Austria): Men’s relay
[UPDATED] Russia’s four-man relay team hit nearly every target on Saturday, using a total of just three spares to clean 40 targets, and stayed out of the penalty loop to capture gold in the men’s 4 x 7.5-kilometer relay at the International Biathlon Union (IBU) World Championships in Hochfilzen, Austria.
It was the last team event and the second-to-last day of the championships, with the men’s and women’s elite mass starts remaining on Sunday. Anton Shipulin anchored the Russians to first, 5.8 seconds ahead of France’s Martin Fourcade, after Shipulin cleaned his prone stage and used one spare in standing to hold onto the lead his team built. Fourcade cleaned both stages to secure silver for his team, and Austria took bronze (+20.1) with anchor Dominik Landertinger.
After Russia’s Alexey Volkov used one spare in each of his shooting stages and came through the exchange in seventh, Maxim Tsvetkov and Anton Babikov both cleaned without any spares to bring the team into fourth, then first, respectively.
France’s first leg Jean-Guillaume Béatrix shot clean as well and tagged Quentin Fillon Maillet in second. Fillon Maillet then needed one spare in prone, but cleaned standing to take the lead, tagging Simon Desthieux in first. Desthieux used three spares in prone, but avoided the penalty lap before tagging Fourcade in third, 12 seconds behind Austria in second. Fourcade closed the gap and clinched second, and France combined for a total of just four spare rounds.
Austria achieved bronze in front of a home crowd with Daniel Mesotitsch, Julian Eberhard, Simon Eder, and Landertinger combining for 10 spares and no penalties.
Finishing 8.5 seconds after Austria, Germany placed fourth. Italy was a minute and a half out of first in fifth, Ukraine took sixth (+1:41.3), and the U.S. placed seventh (+1:50.5) with Lowell Bailey, Leif Nordgren, Tim Burke, and Sean Doherty. Bailey initially put the team in fourth at the first exchange, 12.4 seconds out of first, then Nordgren tagged Burke in sixth, 17 seconds behind. Burke used four spares to clean and tagged Doherty in seventh, about a minute back. The Americans used a total of eight spares but had no penalties.
Canada finished 13th (+3:35.5) with Christian Gow, Scott Gow, Macx Davies, and Brendan Green. They were 39 seconds out of first and in 12th place after Christian Gow’s first leg, then slipped to 14th before Davies moved them back into 12th by the last exchange. Canada had a total of 10 spares and zero penalties.
FIS Cross-Country World Cup (Otepää, Estonia): Freestyle sprint
In the last World Cup before the upcoming 2017 International Ski Federation (FIS) Nordic Ski World Championships next week in Lahti, Finland, five U.S. women qualified in the top 12 of the women’s 1.3-kilometer freestyle sprint, and Jessie Diggins reached the final on Saturday in Otepää, Estonia.
Diggins started the day by placing 12th in the qualifier, 3.93 seconds behind Sweden’s Stina Nilsson in first (and her U.S. teammates Kikkan Randall in third, Sophie Caldwell in fourth, and Ida Sargent in 10th) before winning her quarterfinal and semifinal. In the final, Diggins wad gapped by the leaders on the final climb and finished fifth (+6.82).
The women’s freestyle sprint podium at the Otepaa World Cup on Saturday in Estonia, with Swedish winner Stina Nilsson (c), Norway’s Maiken Caspersen Falla (l) in second and Heidi Weng (r) in third. (Photo: FIS Cross Country/Twitter)
Nilsson won the final in a time of 2:49.96 minutes, just ahead of Norway’s Maiken Caspersen Falla (+0.27) who lost her balance and her speed with it on the last corner. The two had broken away from third place and Nilsson led into the final straightaway and held Falla off for the win. Norway took second through fourth with Heidi Weng in third place (+3.75) and Astrid Uhrenholdt Jacobsen in fourth (+4.91).
Randall initially finished her quarterfinal in third position and would have been out, but advanced when Russia’s Natalia Matveeva was relegated to last for obstruction. In the same semifinal as Diggins, Randall fell cresting a small hill over a tunnel and finished fifth (+13.30) for ninth overall on the day.
Caldwellplaced second in her quarterfinal heat behind the day’s winner Nilsson, then stumbled halfway up a climb early in her semifinal, but stuck with the pack to finish fifth (+1.83) for 10th overall.
Sargent raced in the same quarterfinal as Falla and narrowly missed advancing to the semifinal in third place, fewer than 0.2 seconds behind Switzerland’s Laurien van der Graaff in second and 0.35 seconds behind Falla, who won that heat. Sargent placed 13th on the day.
Sadie Bjornsen qualified 25th and finished fourth (+2.82) in the same quarterfinal as Randall for the 25th overall.
Canada’s Dahria Beatty also qualified for the sprint heats in 30th place, and finished sixth in her quarterfinal for 29th overall.
Also for Canada, Cendrine Browne finished the qualification in 48th place and Katherine Stewart-Jones was one position behind in 49th.
Also for the U.S., distance specialists Chelsea Holmes and Rosie Brennan placed 58th and 60th, respectively.
The men’s freestyle sprint podium on Saturday at the World Cup in Otepaa, Estonia, with Norway’s Johannes Høsflot Klæbo (c) taking his first World Cup win, Norway’s Finn Hågen Krogh (l) in second, and Russia’s Sergey Ustiugov (r) in third. (Photo: FIS Cross Country/Twitter)
In the men’s 1.6-kilometer sprint, Norway’s Johannes Høsflot Klæbo achieved the first World Cup victory of his career in a time of 3:06.53 minutes, holding onto a lead he had created with an attack right out of the start gate in the final. His teammate Finn Hågen Krogh placed second (+0.60), taking the inside lane in the last turn to push reigning Tour de Ski winner Sergey Ustiugov of Russia to third (+1.0).
For the North Americans, it was a day of narrow misses.
For the U.S., Simi Hamilton started his race day by qualifying in seventh position, and placed second in his quarterfinal. He then closely missed out on the final after placing fourth in his semifinal in a four-way sprint photo finish (+0.33), just 0.04 seconds behind the third place and lucky loser time of Norway’s Håvard Solås Taugbøl, who advanced. Hamilton ended the day in eighth overall.
Canadian World Cup Team member Alex Harvey snuck into the sprint heats in 29th place in the qualifier, then just missed out on advancing from his quarterfinal in a photo finish for second with Great Britain’s Andrew Young, who took it by 0.04 seconds. Harvey finished third in that heat, 0.6 behind Italy’s Federico Pellegrino, for 15th for the day. Young went on to finish sixth in his semifinal for 12th overall, and Pellegrino advanced as a lucky loser from the same semifinal and was fourth in the final (+4.77).
American Andy Newell qualified 16th and finished sixth (+1.89) in his quarterfinal for 27th overall.
Canada’s Len Valjas missed qualifying for the heats in 40th place, as did his teammate Devon Kershaw in 50th.
American Erik Bjornsen was 53rd, and for Canada, Jesse Cockney 54th and Knute Johnsgaard 56th. In his World Cup debut, Benjamin Lustgarten placed 64th in the qualifier.
Germany’s Vanessa Hinz leading the first leg of the women’s relay, followed closely by France’s Anais Chevalier and Norway’s Kaia Woeien Nicolaisen on Friday at IBU World Championships in Hochfilzen, Austria. (Photo: Glen Crawford)
HOCHFILZEN, Austria — Coming into the women’s 4 x 6-kilometer relay at World Championships, there was certainly one overwhelming favorite: Germany.
Not only had the German women won every relay in the World Cup season so far, but the German mixed relay team won gold to kick off the Championships. Plus, anchor leg Laura Dahlmeier had two individual gold medals to her name and one silver so far.
“As a team we tried to put no additional pressure on us, at least not more than we already had,” Maren Hammerschmidt told German broadcaster ARD. “For me, I can say that it was not easy to resist the pressure today. I think that was similar for my colleagues.”
While the weather in Hochfilzen changed today from the hot, bright sun athletes had adapted to all week – instead, a snowstorm dumped wet flakes onto the course and slowed down the skis — the German team weathered the storm and again came out on top.
It hadn’t seemed like a given. On the first leg of the relay, it looked like it was going to be a fight.
Vanessa Hinz led the race out of the start and cleaned prone, just like you would expect from the best team in the world. Then she used two spare rounds in standing, which provided an opening for other teams.
“In standing the second miss annoyed me greatly,” Hinz told ARD. “I just wanted to do it too fast because I noticed Anais [Chevalier] next to me had already begun shooting, so I got too distracted by that. At least I managed to hit the spares so it was alright.”
France’s Chevalier used only one spare round, leaving the range in first place. Lisa Vitozzi of Italy also used just one spare, and left 6.3 seconds back. Chevalier, the bronze medalist from the sprint, extended her lead by another 1.2 seconds by the time she tagged off.
“For sure everybody wants to hand over first, but not everybody could,” Hinz said in a press conference. “With ten seconds back, it was quite okay.”
Hammerschmidt received the tag in third place, and despite four spare rounds, pulled the Germans into second.
That was partly because the previous leader, Celia Aymonier of France, struggled, using all three spares to hit her standing targets, and slowly.
Germany’s Franziska Hildebrand (c) tagging her team’s anchor Laura Dahlmeier (l) in first during the women’s 4 x 6 k relay on Friday at IBU World Championships in Hochfilzen, Austria. (Photo: Glen Crawford)
“I’m in good shape, but on the last shooting my leg was shaking and the mat was wet, so I [slipped] a little bit,” she said of the snowfall. “So it was really hard for me to shoot. But I am happy to put all my extra [bullets] in, so it’s okay, it’s enough for my teammates. They are strong.”
On the third leg, Alexia Runggaldier – the bronze medalist in the pursuit – faltered on the range, losing Italy’s lead with two spare rounds in prone. That gave Germany’s Franziska Hildebrand all the room she needed. With two clean sheets, she moved her team into the lead and they never looked back.
“I was very happy to shoot two times clean and I could give a little bit of time forward to Laura,” Hildebrand said.
Laura: the one everyone was waiting for. Dahlmeier didn’t disappoint, skiing the fastest anchor leg despite already being in the lead. She used three spare rounds, but even then held the lead and delivered another gold medal for Germany – and her fourth of the Championships, a feat no other German biathlete has ever accomplished.
The German team of (l-r) Laura Dahlmeier, Franziska Hildebrand, Maren Hammerschmidt, and Vanessa Hinz celebrate World Championships relay gold. (Photo: Evgeny Tumashov/IBU/Twitter)
“Of course that is gigantic,” Dahlmeier told ARD. “But I mostly want to point out that we were a really really good relay today, like already during the whole season. It’s just a lot of fun that we are now on the podium together, a great day for us.”
The other Germans agreed, and emphasized that despite the high expecatations, they were simply happy to work together.
“I think we are a strong team, and we had very good results in the past during World Championships,” Hildebrand said. “We can do it all together and have fun.”
While Italy had faded to just out of the picture, the fight for silver was intense. Gabriela Koukalova of the Czech Republic, Olena Pidhrushna of Ukraine, and Marie Dorin Habert of France all left the final stage within 10 seconds of Dahlmeier, and more than that, within four seconds of each other.
“During the last loop I was remembering the last year all the time,” Pidhrushna said. “In every relay last year, it was the fight on the last loop for me.”
The three women skied together for about half a loop, until Pidhrushna’s skis proved superior on a downhill and she glided past the other two. She took the opening and put in a surge up the next hill. Koukalova dropped first, undone by seemingly slower skis, and Dorin Habert couldn’t hang on either. Silver belonged to Ukraine.
“When I overtook the girls under the bridge I realized, this was my chance and now I have to jump for a medal,” Pidhrushna said. “And so I did, and it worked and I’m really happy.”
She finished 6.4 seconds back. France earned bronze (+8.1) and the Czech Republic was left in fourth place (+14.0).
“I’m very happy about this medal with all the team,” Dorin Habert said in a press conference. “It was very stressful for me. I know that Olena is a very good finisher. And of course Gabi is just crazy, she is the top this season, so in my head it wasn’t very easy to make it. So I’m happy to get this.”
Perhaps the happiest woman on the podium was Anastasiya Merkushina of Ukraine. Just 22 years old, she was appearing at her first senior World Championships.
“I have no words because it’s too much emotions for me,” she said in the press conference. “I cannot believe that this is my first World Championships and silver medal, it’s too big. I did not expect this result. Of course I believe in my team, but it’s really great.”
U.S. 14th, Canada 16th
Neither the U.S. nor Canada had perfect shooting days, with 13 spare rounds apiece; Canada also had two penalty loops.
Clare Egan racing the first leg of the U.S. women’s 4 x 6 k relay at IBU World Championships on Friday in Hochfilzen, Austria. (Photo: Glen Crawford)
Both teams had good, yet frustrating starts.
The U.S. started in bib 22, after they did not field relay teams for the first part of the season and thus lost out on team ranking points.
“The first leg, it’s so slow [with the new snow] to pass and it takes so much energy that my coaches basically said, ‘Unless there’s room in a good track to go around, don’t bother’,” Clare Egan said. “So I looked at it almost as a 4 k race after the first stage.”
She used one spare round in prone, and then took all three in standing. Despite that, she managed to move up on the trails on every single loop, and tagged off in 16th.
“I was really hoping to clean the prone so that I would be in a good position for that second lap, but I missed my first shot,” Egan said. “Then standing, maybe that 4 k approach meant I was a little over the redline in my shooting. I went really slowly [with the shooting], that was the problem, but I hit my targets. I missed two and then I missed the first spare. Then I had two targets, two bullets, and I’m just really happy that I managed that situation well.”
Susan Dunklee took over and skied the fastest second-leg time among all teams, cleaning prone and then using two spares in standing. Like Aymonier, she struggled with the copious wet snow falling on the range.
“The standing, the mats are really slippery, and I almost fell over just trying to stand up on the mat,” Dunklee said. “Then I just didn’t really take the time to set up in my position, I just felt like my legs were going out from under me the whole time.”
By the time her work was done the U.S. was in seventh place, and had moved from 1:20.7 back to just 36.7 seconds back from the lead.
“I really like having big packs of people in front of me,” Dunklee said. “It’s just really thrilling to chase them down. The course… it’s one of those glazed days where your shin muscles get all tight and it is hard to sprint. So you have to stay right in the middle where people have skied. I had to be a little patient, and when I went I had to go hard, 100%, for a few cycles just to get around people.”
Joanne Reid (r) tagging U.S. teammate Maddie Phaneuf (l) in 12th during the final exchange of the women’s 4 x 6 k relay on Friday at IBU World Championships in Hochfilzen, Austria. (Photo: Glen Crawford)
Joanne Reid took over, using four spares, then Maddie Phaneuf used three spares on the anchor leg. The team finished +3:37.0.
“The last loop was so hard,” Phaneuf said. “The snow was just so slow compared to every other day this week. The Swiss girl [Elisa Gasparin] I was with when I left the range did one long impulse up a hill when she passed me and I didn’t have any energy to stay with her. I tried, but nope. I knew there was nobody behind me anywhere, so I just tried my hardest to get to the finish line.”
For Canada, Rosanna Crawford kicked things off by using just two spare rounds, and shot fast, but was tripped up on the trail.
“I was pretty angry on my first loop,” she said. “I had moved up quite a few spots and then the Austrian [Dunja Zdouc] kind of shoved into me, and I spun around facing the wrong way so I lost a lot of time on that first loop, which I’m super pissed about. But the rest was good and the last loop was good, I was catching some girls.”
Austria was later disqualified when Julia Schwaiger used four spare rounds in her prone shooting stage; only three are allowed.
Canada’s Rosanna Crawford (l) tagging her teammate Julia Ransom in 13th in the women’s 4 x 6 k relay on Friday at IBU World Championships in Hochfilzen, Austria. (Photo: Glen Crawford)
Crawford tagged off in 13th. But with Julia Ransom skiing two penalty loops in standing, the team dropped to 20th. Megan Tandy pulled Canada back to 16th, and Emma Lunder regained 16th after slipping to 17th after a few more spare rounds on the range. The team finished +5:59.4.
“Even though we weren’t in an amazing position, it was still my first World Championships relay, so I wanted to make sure I enjoyed it,” Lunder said. “Last year here at the World Cup in the relay we were 10th. And we also had a 10th in Ruhpolding this year where we shot super well. But I think maybe it just wasn’t there for everyone today. Korea is our last chance this year, so we’ll see what we can make happen.”
Lowell Bailey, his wife Erika, and daughter Ophelia stand atop the World Championships podium in Hochfilzen, Austria. Second-place Ondrej Moravec of the Czech Republic and third-place Martin Fourcade of France didn’t begrudge Bailey the win: “It means a lot a guy like Lowell won today for the sport,” Fourcade said. (Photo: Glen Crawford)
HOCHFILZEN, Austria–As Lowell Bailey sprinted around the final four kilometers of the 20 k individual on Thursday, the stadium announcer told the crowd that they were witnessing something special.
Fans who had been watching the sprint and pursuit earlier in the World Championships had seen Bailey come oh-so-close to the podium, only to miss out, finishing fourth in the sprint and sixth in the pursuit.
This time, he was on track to stay on that podium – and the announcer explained that it would be the first top-level win ever for an American biathlete.
The crowd went wild.
As Bailey pushed towards the finish and back towards the stadium, the crowd was asked to urge him on. They responded, as loudly as the predominantly German and Austrian fans would have cheered for their own favorites. The roar was deafening.
And from deep in his pain cave, Bailey heard.
“I did notice all the cheering,” Bailey said once he was sitting down and could process having just won World Championships gold. “It made me want to cry. This is an amazing sport, all the support we have.”
Martin Fourcade missed two shots in the 20 k individual, one more than he could afford if he wanted to win another gold medal. Instead, he settled for bronze. (Photo: Glen Crawford)
The fans weren’t the only ones pleased to see Bailey finally break through. Other competitors, too, seemed happy to see him atop the podium. That even included Ondrej Moravec, the Czech who came so close to winning his first individual World Championships gold himself.
“I am really happy for his gold medal, because he waited for this for a long time,” Moravec, who finished 3.3 seconds back to take silver, told NBC’s Chris Dupre. “As he said, from 2000 he competed first here in Hochfilzen, and I started in 2001 in Khanty-Mansiysk. So I know him long time, and he is a really good guy.”
So you’re completely happy with silver? That was the question from Peer Lange, the International Biathlon Union’s Communication Director.
“Well,” Moravec laughed. “It is like — I already won other medals, bronze, silver — but never gold. And today I was really closer ever than I was. It was a big chance for me today, but I was not good enough.”
Martin Fourcade, the pre-race favorite who finished third, was also gracious. And while the reaction from some was a surprise that an American could possibly win, Fourcade was among those who saw it as a day that had long been coming.
“I think when someone is finishing fourth in the sprint and sixth in pursuit you can say it’s not a big surprise,” he said in the press conference. “I know Lowell a bit more from this year. I know the guy.”
It was suns out, guns out for Germany’s Erik Lesser, whose one penalty kept him off the podium. He ended up fourth. (Photo: Glen Crawford)
Fourcade was referring in part to Bailey’s work as an Athlete Representative to the International Biathlon Union. Throughout the doping scandal which has built since the release of the first McLaren report, Bailey has been working to give athletes a voice in how their federation handles doping violations.
Fourcade has sometimes been right there beside him. He was among the nearly 200 signatories on a letter sent by World Cup athletes to the federation requesting action, has spoken out in the press, and led an athlete walk-out from a meeting with the federation where athletes felt that the sport’s leaders were not adequately answering their questions.
“I am really really happy for Lowell, a guy with amazing values on the track and outside,” Fourcade said in an interview with NBC’s Chris Dupre. “Lowell is our Athlete Representative for the federation. We fought together for more anti-doping rules, and it means a lot a guy like Lowell won today for the sport.”
“I really appreciated his working in the athletes committee, fighting for better conditions for the athletes, against doping,” Moravec agreed. “So that’s a great performance.”
Ole Einar Bjørndalen, the Norwegian legend who is also an Athlete Representative, said that Bailey’s commitment to representing athletes and fighting for clean sport made it even better to see him atop the podium.
A fan holds an American flag at the end of the day on Thursday in Hochfilzen. (Photo: Glen Crawford)
“It was fantastic,” Bjørndalen said. “He is a fantastic guy, and it’s fantastic that he win in World Championship. I’m so happy for him. And he is a fantastic athlete. He is really a fair athlete, also, and I really like to compete with him.”
Germany’s Erik Lesser, who finished fourth, would have earned a medal if Bailey had missed even one shot.
“I don’t begrudge him this victory at all,” he told German broadcaster ARD. “Last year he had kind of retired already, he was at home on his bison farm or whatever, and now he comes here and becomes World Champion. He deserves that. He is a great guy with incredible experience. He has always been a good go-to guy for me when there have been any problems. That’s just the way it is.”
While Bailey could sometimes frustrate the German on the trails, that wasn’t the case on Thursday.
“In mass starts he can be a bit annoying squeezing himself into gaps, but today he pretty much squeezed himself into a gap left open by others,” Lesser said. “Four times zero, that has to be rewarded, just like Moravec. That just deserves to be honored with a medal.”
Fourcade also highlighted what all those people in the crowd who had cheered so loudly for Bailey had known: to see an American at the top of the sport, that’s not such a bad thing.
“I know how important it really is for biathlon,” Fourcade said of Bailey’s gold medal. “To see some people outside of Europe winning. I think that is the most we can do to make our sport bigger. I cannot be more satisfied about the guy winning today.”
Tim Burke was the last U.S. man to stand on a World Championships podium. He won silver in the 20 k individual in 2013, just as Josh Thompson did in 1987. Their medals had been the best-ever finishes for the U.S. – no more.
“I don’t look at like that, that’s not what it’s about,” Burke said of losing his record to his long-time training partner and friend. “It’s great for the entire team, especially for our program. You see we don’t even have a title sponsor this year. I’m sure we’re the only team that has a world champion that does not have a title sponsor, so it helps with things like that. It helps with the morale. It’s great for everyone.”
Lowell Bailey celebrates after crossing the line to win gold in the 20 k individual at IBU World Championships in Hochfilzen, Austria. (Photo: Glen Crawford)
HOCHFILZEN, Austria—Four days ago, Lowell Bailey left the shooting range after cleaning his fourth stage in the pursuit, and was in second place.
Things didn’t go his way and he saw first World Championships silver, then bronze, slip from his grasp as other men were stronger on the Hochfilzen race course’s big hills. He ultimately finished sixth, after placing fourth in the sprint.
Today, the American biathlete again left the range after cleaning his fourth stage. Two key differences: this time he had hit 20 out of 20 targets, rather than missing once. And this time, he was in first place, although he didn’t know it right away.
“I was really happy about it, obviously,’ Bailey said. “There was a surge of adrenaline immediately when I left the mat. Obviously most of the race is finished by that point, but in my mind, that was where the race began, the second I left the mat.”
Bailey was the second-to-last starter out of the 102-man field, and there was no chance of anyone behind him besting his time. When he hit the course, he had a 6.4-second lead on Ondrej Moravec of the Czech Republic.
If he could protect that lead, Bailey would become the first American ever to win a gold medal at biathlon World Championships. The U.S. has also famously never won an Olympic medal in biathlon, the last such winter sport, and Bailey had never won a World Cup before, either.
After watching a medal slip away in the pursuit, he wasn’t going to let it happen again.
“I know that my weakness on the course is the long extended climbs,” Bailey said. “If I look back to the pursuit that’s where things fell apart for me. I was okay on the fast gradual stuff, but at the long extended climbs I lost tons of time there. So today I tried to maximize my strengths… And then just mentally knowing that the last two kilometers are a lot of V1 extended climbing, I was telling myself ‘Don’t lose it on these climbs, you just gotta dig deep and find something there, because I’m not gonna lose it on these climbs’.”
He almost did. With 1,100 meters left to go, Bailey’s lead was down to 0.1 seconds. The crowd held its breath. Moravec, watching on the big screen from the finish area, shook his head, like, can you believe this?
U.S. Biathlon Association Chief of Sport Bernd Eisenbichler with Lowell Bailey after Bailey won World Championships gold in the 20 k individual in Hochfilzen, Austria. (Photo: Glen Crawford)
It was a race for the ages. But some on the U.S. team were sure that with the long swooping downhill to the finishing stretch, Bailey could eke out a win.
“It was closer and closer, and it was a tenth of a second at the last split at the very top,” U.S. teammate Tim Burke said. “But we had phenomenal skis and I knew if he was close there, he would make it. There was no way anyone had better skis than us… He owes a serious tip to the service guys.”
Bailey wasn’t as sure, but he also didn’t have any time or energy to think about it. He just stayed confident and kept fighting.
“I was in such a pain state that you are thinking like a five-year-old at that point,” he said. “But I would say that I was extremely confident in my skis today, and I think having those long downhill stretches before the finish definitely helped.”
Bailey ended up getting passed by Alexey Volkov of Russia, who had started a bib earlier but who Bailey had passed before. At first it seemed like Volkov might be an obstruction, but the Russian kept a high speed. As a result Bailey got a bit of a draft, and had someone to fight with to the finish.
“He was feeling pretty good on the last loop, and I tried to stay with him,” Bailey said of Volkov. “I mean, it’s always an advantage to see someone in front and try to stay with them. I think the battle was mostly going on in my own head. But we were skiing together, and I think that has to help in some way.”
By the time he hit the finish, he had gained a few seconds back from Moravec and crossed the line with 3.3. seconds to spare. Bailey fell to his knees and U.S. Biathlon Chief of Sport Bernd Eisenbichler rushed over to embrace him.
After nearly two decades of working together – back in the day, Bailey was a junior and Eisenbichler a wax tech – the pair had done it: a World Championships medal for Bailey.
And it was gold.
“When I think about when I first met Lowell, he was probably 13 years old, in Lake Placid, and just this good young skier who put his heart into this and worked for this every day, for almost 20 years now,” U.S. Biathlon Association President and CEO Max Cobb said. “I think it is a total validation of Lowell’s career… and how we were able to engineer things. We stripped out everything that we didn’t need to do and made it really focused on developing the athletes and bring them to this level. And now we are one year out from the Olympics.”
Perfection on the Range
Four-stage races have not always been Bailey’s best friend.
“That fourth stage in a pressure situation is definitely, in my opinion, the hardest part of biathlon,” Bailey said. “And it hasn’t always been my strong point. I have lost a lot of medal opportunities in the last stage.”
The U.S. men’s team, staff, and Bailey’s family celebrate on the podium after the flower ceremony. “Biathlon really is a team sport, and nobody achieves success like this without having a perfect environment around them,” U.S. Biathlon Association CEO Max Cobb said. “So I can’t say enough for Bernd [Eisenbichler]’s leadership, and all the great work of the coaches and ski techs and the whole support staff. Because that’s what makes it possible.” (Photo: Glen Crawford)But in the Olympics three years ago, Bailey came back from a disappointing start to the Games by focusing and turning in an eighth-place finish in the 20 k individual, his best Olympic or championship performance ever up to that point. He was one miss away from a medal, and set a new best mark for a U.S. biathlete at the Olympics.
Thinking about this World Championships, Bailey decided months ago that the 20 k would be his best shot.
“I focused on this race starting in May,” Bailey said in the press conference. “What do I need to do in my training to really prepare for this race? And so starting in May with the shooting workouts, I started going through this race in my head, and sort of doing a dress rehearsal during the training. Who is to say that helped or didn’t help, but I felt really composed today on the shooting range. I wouldn’t say I felt anymore nervous than any other day, any other race. That was good.”
Bailey knew that he would have to shoot a perfect 20 for 20. While the wind is tricky in Hochfilzen, it’s not always strong. There are always a few clean sheets and Bailey doubted he could win without one.
So he had to overcome the threat of a last-stage collapse, that pattern that had haunted him so many times in the past.
In Sunday’s pursuit, he had done it. His one missed shot came in the third stage, and then cleaning the final standing put him in that second-place position. So while the last loop of the pursuit didn’t go well, Bailey knew that he could do it on the range.
“One thing that I have learned over the years working with sports psychologists is that you are going to get distracted,” he said, gesturing as his daughter Ophelia cried in the background. “Especially at a World Championships, there are going to be distractions both externally and internally. For me actually the internal distractions are the most detrimental. You are talking to yourself in your head ‘if I do this, if I do that, if I clean then this, if I just hold it together…’ And all that is doing is taking you away from what you have trained for decades to do. The muscle memory is there, hundreds of thousands of rounds fired. So you just have to trust in your training, and also know that those are just distractions.”
In the final stage of the individual, Bailey was focusing on just two things. The crowd and the potential medal didn’t factor in.
“As you get to the competition season, you boil your shooting cues down to a few key principles,” he explained. “For me those are having a good trigger squeeze and follow-through. So it’s like two things. Trigger squeeze. Follow-through. And by the way, when you got to your first biathlon camp, those are two of the three things they teach you. But when you are in that situation, you are fighting for a World Championship medal, you have to keep things simple because that is all your brain is capable of.”
Sprint, pursuit, and individual: 50 targets, and Bailey has hit 49 of them. Fast, too. His shooting time today tied for the fourth-quickest among all the men in the field.
His focus is working, and that accomplishment was something the U.S. staff was particularly proud of. As Bailey started taking his first shots of that last stage, U.S. men’s coach Jonas Johansson breathed a sigh of relief. While watching it was “horrible”, he said, he was also sure Bailey could come through.
“I knew when he started to execute the shooting like planned, that this can go,” Johansson said. “Normally before, he has been a little too cautious in those situations, and stepped back a little bit. But now he went for it. I’m so happy for him that he really pulled it off and he came through clean.”
Four k or 40 k?
While cleaning all 20 targets was a big part of the work, Bailey still had to ski four more kilometers to seal the deal after he finished shooting.
“I didn’t know that I would come out in first place, but I knew that if there was ever a point where every second mattered, it’s directly after you have gone 20 for 20 in an individual,” Bailey said. “So I knew that those four kilometers were going be the deciding factor, and I knew it was going to be a matter of seconds. It was just that rush of adrenaline: ‘I worked so hard to get to this point, I need to do this’.”
Bailey, one of the last men to leave the start house in Hochfilzen. (Photo: Glen Crawford)
He described the four kilometers as agonizing, especially those big climbs that he knew were his weakness. In the press conference, Bailey joked that it felt more like 40 kilometers than just four.
“Fortunately I had great skis, and I had a U.S. staff member seemingly every hundred meters along that track,” he said later. “But every hundred meters it was a sprint. Every hundred meters was ‘go as hard as you can for this hundred meters, and then when you get to the end of that hundred meters, go as hard as you can and just keep doing that.’ I thought the finish line was never going to come. I was just like, I don’t know how much longer I can do this, because the finish line is just not showing up.”
That final loop ended up being one of Bailey’s fastest of the day. And that earned him gold.
As he climbed up onto the top step of the podium after his race, he was joined by his wife, Erika, and their daughter. Martin Fourcade of France, the superstar who took bronze, handed the girl a plush toy he had received as a prize. Everyone seemed happy.
“I think Lowell has a really good mix of biathlon and life with his daughter and his wife,” Johansson said. “I think that’s something really good for him, to have them around to be able to relax. And to also be able to have pure biathlon focus when he’s racing and he’s training. That’s a skill he had today, he did it one-hundred percent.”
Johansson, a Swede, has been working with the U.S. men’s team for three years. Watching the whole men’s team succeed, including this medal for Bailey, has been rewarding, he said.
“It’s a fantastic team in every way and it’s hard workers,” Johansson said. “Most of these athletes are maybe not the most talented on day one, but they are hard workers, and Lowell is one of them. He’s worked hard for many years and now he’s on the top… Lowell and also the other athletes on the team, they have this potential. I mean, they’ve shown before that they can be up on the podium and fighting for the podium, so it’s an unbelievable day.”
Teammate Burke, the last U.S. man to stand on the World Championships podium when he won silver in the 20 k individual in 2013, was thrilled for Bailey.
“He deserves it, especially this week,” Burke said. “He’s been so on, with the fourth place, sixth place, and today he needed the perfect race and he absolutely had, that’s the perfect race. It doesn’t get any better than that.”
Other North American Results
23. Leif Nordgren, USA, 1-0-0-1 (+2:53.6)
36. Tim Burke, USA, 1-1-0-2 (+4:14.4)
42. Macx Davies, Canada, 0-0-0-1 (+4:25.2)
43. Scott Gow, Canada, 0-1-0-1 (+4:29.1)
58. Sean Doherty, USA, 1-1-2-0 (+6:04.4)
86. Brendan Green, Canada, 2-1-0-2 (+9:33.9)
Christian Gow of Canada did not finish.
-Alex Kochon, Jason Albert, and Harald Zimmer contributed
Germany’s Laura Dahlmeier jumps for joy after winning her third gold of the 2017 IBU World Championships, in the 15 k individual. (Photo: Glen Crawford)
HOCHFILZEN, Austria—Every women’s race of the World Championships so far, the question has been: where’s Laura Dahlmeier?
And in every race, the German has has turned in fantastic performances. Close to perfect on the range, fast on her skis, winning a medal each time.
The 15 k individual was no exception. A late starter, Dahlmeier had just one miss, in her first prone stage, and then all was clear as she raced to another gold medal. This time, it was by 24.7 seconds over Gabriela Koukalova of the Czech Republic, the winner of the sprint.
“I think Laura is in amazing shape, and it’s very difficult to beat her,” Koukalova said in a press conference. “Because, what can I say, she is unbelievable. Stronger, faster, better concentration, there is no chance.”
Dahlmeier herself was calm as she concluded something not so different
“It’s a special moment for me — the third gold medal, the fourth [overall] and I think the ninth medal since Oslo [World Championships 2016],” she said. “It’s amazing. One race after the other I can show my best performance, and it’s really great to be on the podium and on the first position.”
Most of the top women started in the last seed group, hoping for the shade to speed up the tracks in the late afternoon. Mari Laukkanen of Finland – who will represent her country at FIS Cross Country World Championships in a few weeks – set the early time to beat, with one missed shot and a blistering ski time.
Her time held up for 25 minutes, until Koukalova crossed the line with one penalty and a faster ski speed. Clean-shooting Alexia Runggaldier of Italy slotted in between them, and finally Dahlmeier’s time knocked everyone down a notch.
“I thought that it could be possible if I shoot clean,” first-time World Championships medalist Runggaldier said. “But then I thought, okay, there are the best people of the whole world that will be competing at this competition. So if I am lucky then I will be good, and if it’s not like this then nothing happens. But I am really happen that I shot four times clean… I think both [Dahlmeier and Koukalova] can shoot four times clean.”
Laukkenen ultimately ended up with the wooden medal, +1:56.8. Fifth place went to Ekaterina Avvakumova (+2:03.6), a Russian who transferred her citizenship to Korea, and sixth (+2:06.7) to Susan Dunklee of the United States.
Other North American results:
Julia Ransom, Canada, 18th Place
Julia Ransom. (Photo: Glen Crawford)
Ransom went into the individual with a brand-new attitude.
“I’ve been sort of frustrated the last couple weekends ,with sickness in Antholz and just having a hard time getting my groove, so I decided today to just leave nothing behind,” she said. “Shoot fast, ski fast, not worry about the consequences. It was just fun racing, so it was awesome.”
The strategy worked: Ransom missed just one shot, and raced to an 18th-place finish (+3:48.2), her best international result to date.
“I think I came in with too many expectations from last year and I forgot to just race because I love it and race for myself and not for carding or not for criteria not for anything, just because it’s super fun,” she said.
Clare Egan, USA, 22nd Place
Egan notched her second top-25 of the Championships, and is turning in some of her best racing ever at this event.
In the individual, she collected another personal best: with just two missed shots, she achieved 90% shooting in a four-stage race for the first time.
Furthermore, she did it by cleaning each of the first three stages. She was pleased that she didn’t completely falla part on the final shooting stage, given that she was in line for perhaps a top-six finish – which would have been a huge personal best – if she had cleaned.
Clare Egan waves to the crowd after crossing the finish line in the top ten. She was later bumped down. (Photo: Glen Crawford)
“After I cleaned my first standing stage, I knew I would have three clean stages because I was so confident about the prone ,” she said. “I’m happy with my last standing, too, I’ve never cleaned three stages of a four-stage race before so I’ve never been in that position before. Of course I could have handled it better, but I’m pretty happy with two misses… I’m totally fine with that. I hit more than I missed. I was a little shaky for sure.”
Egan also had the 26th-fastest ski time. That netted her 22nd place, +3:55.0.
“She is really able to be up there, and I want to see her up there more often,” U.S. Biathlon Association Chief of Sport Bernd Eisenbichler said. “We will work for the next season to have her more constantly up there in the top 20, because I think she can be up there any given day. She is in a higher level for the skiing performance now. There is still too much up and down, but she took a step forward this year.”
Megan Tandy, Canada, 43rd Place
With two missed shots, Tandy ended up +5:14.0. While she was happy with 90% shooting, she wished the effort had netted a better result.
“Actually it was a good race,” she said. “But I have been feeling actually awful this season. I haven’t had a good ski feeling since November… I am starting every race maybe feeling good for 800 meters, and then I am not racing, I am just surviving. Today I had some fight, and I hit 18 so I should be happy. But I am just watching the results list, because for me to qualify for funding [Spot Canada funding] next season I need one more top 30.”
That didn’t happen. But Tandy thought that the tools she had developed to get her through this race, and this season, would continue to serve her well in the future.
“I kind of came into the race prepared to not think about anything but the process,” she said of the pressure for results. “I had really specific keywords for the shooting, both prone and standing, as well as really key tactical goals for the course. When I am standing on the shooting mat I am thinking about trigger pressure and black targets, and those are the only two things in my head.”
Joanne Reid, USA, 56th Place
Reid split a bullet on the last shot of her first stage, but rather than be frustrated, she took responsibility.
“It was way off from the rest of my group, so that was all me,” she laughed.
After starting the season with a sensational performance in the 15 k individual in Österund, Sweden, Reid’s four misses today seemed imperfect. But she refused to let any one shooting stage get to her.
“I come into the range each time ready to focus on that bout,” she said.
That helped her clean the last stage, something she was particularly proud of. She finished +6:36.7, and also had a faster last standing stage than usual, clocking in at 27 seconds.
“I actually do have the speed capability, but I can’t always put all the pieces together yet,” she wrote in an email. “I’ve been working really, really hard at improving the speed over the course of the season, but it never seems like the time to implement it in a race. There’s always teammates counting on me, or an individual in which you have a minute penalty per miss, or the sprint in which you must make the pursuit, or the pursuit in which you aren’t supposed to miss the prone targets, or…. or…. or. This stage today was quite fast, and was all in the prone ring, and so was my fast standing stage in the pursuit (all in the prone ring). I think I have to trust myself.”
Rosanna Crawford, Canada, 62nd Place
Crawford had a rough start to her race: three missed shots in prone, right off the bat.
Rosanna Crawford. (Photo: Glen Crawford)
“That was so strange!” she said. “Usually my prone goes well, and this was just all over the place. I don’t know what happened. But actually, I find that when I miss early, it’s easy to get it turned around because the pressure is totally off.”
She did turn her shooting around, cleaning each of the next three stages. But her skiing time was not enough to make up for the missed shots and Crawford finished +7:01.5.
“15 k is really hard for me, and when it’s hot – I just can’t handle the heat,” she said. “So it was tough.”
Emma Lunder, Canada, 64th Place
Lunder had one more missed shot than her teammate, and finished +7:17.9.
“It had good and bad parts,” she said. “I missed two in my first shooting, so that was a little bit tough, trying not to think about that while I was skiing. And then the rest of my shooting I was a lot happier with, but then to miss one in the last bout – I was just so tired… it was such a hot race, and everyone was out there just dying. It was a good effort for sure.”
Maddie Phaneuf, USA, 87th Place
It was the second competition of World Championships for Phaneuf, a first-year-senior who had made the Championships a major goal.
“I felt like coming into it I was going to feel so overwhelmed, but it just kind of feels normal, like another World Cup,” Phaneuf said. “In the beginning of the season, I haven’t had that many World Cup starts, it was just so overwhelming and I wasn’t quite ready to experience it. But now that I’ve done a handful of them this season, it feels much more comfortable and I feel like I deserve to be here, which is exciting.”
Normally a strong shooter, Phaneuf missed two shots in each of her standing stages. That left her with 87th place overall, 9:38.3 behind the pace set by Dahlmeier.
“Recently I’ve just been struggling with my standing,” she said. “I’ve been hitting the targets in training but in the races I keep missing two every time. It’s really annoying. I think I shoot clean in prone and then I come into the range [for standing] and I try not to think about the result, but I need to figure out how to push that out of my head because it keeps messing me up.”
Eisenbichler saw this as a learning experience for the youngest member of the U.S. women’s team.
“Maddie is here to learn, more or less,” he said. “For sure we want to have great results for her as well, but it’s her first World Championships in the senior category. We must work on the [skiing] shape. She’s a strong shooter, she can shoot clean on any given day in an individual race, but the shape needs some work, this was obvious today again. We will make sure that we approach this with the right tactics for the next season.”
U.S. biathlete Susan Dunklee after finishing sixth in the 15 k individual at World Championships. (Photo: Glen Grawford)
Stay tuned for further reporting from the women’s 15 k individual race, to be posted later today.
HOCHFILZEN, Austria—Sixth place? Not a bad way to turn things around halfway through a week-and-a-half long World Championships.
After all, Susan Dunklee didn’t have the start she wanted at World Championships, finishing in the mid-20’s in the sprint and the pursuit. Not bad results exactly, but for the most successful U.S. woman in the history of the sport, they left something to be desired.
Yet even through those races, Dunklee knew that there wasn’t anything wrong with her racing or her biathlon process. In some ways, the pair of racing experiences reinforced her resolve.
“Honestly, I think after having the first couple races done I just started feeling a little bit more relaxed,” Dunklee said. “Okay, so I don’t have to have a good result when I show up. I just have to do my job, and I don’t have control over what the results are going to be, I can only control what I am doing in the moment. And I did that those early races. It didn’t go as well as I wanted, but it was good work and I have to accept that.”
Come Wednesday, and the 15 k individual, she was ready to do more good work and reap the rewards.
The unique race format, where missed shots accrue a one-minute time penalty rather than a trip to the penalty loop, has provided Dunklee some of her best Championships results, including fifth place in Ruhpolding in 2012. But paradoxically, it has been her worst discipline this season: no better finish than 71st this season.
“I think it took the pressure off,” Dunklee mused. “I knew I didn’t have to do a lot to beat that.”
The monkey is now off her back. With just two penalties, Dunklee finished sixth today, 2:06.8 behind German winner Laura Dahlmeier, who had one penalty.
“It was a great comeback,” U.S. Biathlon Association Chief of Sport Bernd Eisenbichler said. “I think that with the two misses today she can be satisfied. There’s really high pressure on her, she really wants to be up there, and she belongs up there, and I think today she proved that.”
“I do a lot of race visualization in training, and today I just tried to pretend I was doing a race visualization,” Dunklee said.
Like many of the other top women, Dunklee picked the last seed group. With constant sun in Sudtirol and the weather in the stadium reaching the mid-40’s (Fahrenheit), much of the course was getting slow. But late in the day when sections of the trail were shaded, things began to speed up.
Dunklee said it had been the right call.
“There was a little bit more shade, and the shade was fastest, so that was helpful,” she said. “It was a little bit deeper [in some places], but I think it was beneficial to have the shade and that outweighed it.”
Starting nearly last – 98 out of 99 starters – she had a strange race-day experience.
“A lot of sitting around beforehand,” she said. “I am not used to that… I felt like the steam of energy in the stadium had kind of died down a little bit by the time I started.”
It also meant that when she missed one shot in the very first stage, she was knocked way back in the standings – to 38th. But cleaning the next two stages brought her back up and by the time she left the range the third time, she was in podium position.
It was not to be, though, as Dunklee missed a shot in the last standing stage.
“Sometimes you can feel it, sometimes you can’t,” Dunklee said. “I didn’t feel any of the misses today, they felt like good shots. I feel good about what I did.”
Dunklee got the details, though, clocking in the fourth-fastest shooting time and seventh-fastest ski time.
“The [skiing] shape is on a higher level now than we saw in January, so that is good to see,” Eisenbichler said.
The result should qualify her for the 2018 Olympic Games, and she will join teammate Lowell Bailey to make the very first pair of athletes named to the U.S. Olympic Team. U.S. Biathlon has a criteria that any athlete with a top-six World Championships result in the prior season is automatically selected. That’s never applied to more than one athlete before, and many years there are no such performances.
Dunklee says that such a system, which allows top athletes to qualify a whole year ahead of time, makes sense.
“It takes a lot of pressure off, and allows you to just focus on your training,” Dunklee said. “If you have to try out and qualify extra you have to taper a little bit for those qualification races, and I have the luxury of being able to just train through and make my peak ready for the Olympics… I think it’s good for us.”
And that gives the U.S. three top-six finishes in five days at World Championships, easily a best-ever team tally.
“Now we are hungry for even more, that’s for sure,” Eisenbichler said. “We still have the mass start and I think with that skiing shape and that shooting we can go for even more. That’s the goal for now.”
Canada’s Christian Gow finished 32nd in the sprint and a career-best 23rd in the pursuit at World Championships in Hochfilzen, Austria, this weekend. (Photo: Glen Crawford)
Has a coach ever told you that you should be hot at the start line of your races? That the engine needs to be revved up and ready to go?
Then you might be surprised at the scene before a World Cup biathlon race. While some competitors are jogging around and jumping up and down, others seem to be just standing around for a surprisingly long stretch of time — the opposite of arriving to the start line just beginning to sweat.
Walking, jogging, and standing: the various modes of prepping for the start of the World Championship men’s sprint on Saturday.
That doesn’t mean that the adage to arrive to the line hot is wrong. For you, it might be right. But then again it might not.
“There are guys who you swear don’t warm up at all,” said Canada’s Christian Gow, standing in bib 24 in the photo above. “Especially some of the top guys. It seems like they come, zero, and then basically start the race. It’s pretty mind-blowing. But then other people it seems like they really need a long, hard, warmup, the longer the better even. And everywhere in between. It’s super individualized. I’m sort of a mid-ground. I try to ski a little bit during zero, get some hard effort in, and then go to the race.”
Zeroing — taking some prone and standing shots and getting the rifle’s sights adjusted for accuracy in the day’s conditions — is an added warmup feature in biathlon that skiers don’t have to consider. Athletes ski a few small, or large, loops during the zeroing process. And zeroing also has to take place before the race starts. That means that if you’re an early starter, almost your whole warm-up might be done during zeroing — but if you’re a late starter, you have a long wait between zeroing and actually heading to the start line.
“When you start early like I did today, you can usually just keep warming up on the trail during zero,” Gow explained. “When I’m a later starter I do use the warm-up track.”
So if Gow is a medium warm-up guy, how did he figure that out? Trial and error through the beginning of his career, with added tweaks even after he more or less had a reliable routine.
The message is that while copying a teammate’s warm-up might be a good place to start, you shouldn’t assume that what works for someone else will work for you. Here’s how Gow found his sweet spot, and how you can too.
1. Start now, because it might take a while.
“I started [racing biathlon] when I was 11,” said Gow, who is now 23 years old. “My warmup routine hasn’t changed much in the last five years. So I guess it took seven years or so to get it to where it is today.”
2. Track what you did for a warm-up, and how it made you feel.
“I’ve done races where I just finished warming up and go to the start line in five minutes or less,” Gow said. “Then it’s often that my legs don’t feel great starting.”
But in order to rule out the straight-to-the-start-line mode of warming up, Gow had to be able to make the connection between what he did, and how he felt. If you’re not paying attention or systematically tracking what you did for a warmup — perhaps writing it down in your training log along with your race notes — it will take you longer to figure out your best warm-up.
3. You can stay warm without coming in hot.
“For me, it seems like a little bit of a break between the hard warm-up and the race start is not so bad,” he explained. “Then it’s just a little bit of jogging around, jumping up and down, getting the blood flowing a bit. Nothing too crazy.”
4. Don’t be afraid to adjust.
Although routine is comforting, Gow said that it’s important for him to pay attention to how his body is feeling and adjust his warm-up for each race accordingly. If you’re particularly tired, you might need a shorter warmup than usual. Or a longer warmup. Try to figure that out.
“When things aren’t feeling right or aren’t going the way they normally do, there’s that air of doubt,” he said. “Today, for example, in my zero, I have the same zero routine I do every time. It’s normally more than enough. But today the prone just wasn’t there and [the grouping of shots] wasn’t tight. So I had to shoot more and more and more. Normally race morning isn’t the day to be trying to figure that out. But actually, I ended up shooting clean in the race.”
5. But don’t second-guess yourself.
“Sometimes things don’t go according to plan, but it’s all about how you go into it mentally,” Gow explained. “It’s the same way that some days you get to the race course and your legs just feel awful and you feel awful, and you’re setting yourself up thinking that it’s going to be one of your worst days. But sometimes those end up being your best races. So it’s just being open to different circumstances, and don’t count yourself out or second-guess yourself.”
France’s Martin Fourcade jumping for joy on the podium after winning the men’s 12.5 k pursuit on Sunday at 2017 IBU World Championships in Hochfilzen, Germany. (Photo: Glen Crawford)
HOCHFILZEN, Austria — In a World Championships that started as a contentious battle of snubs between France and Russia, the first week ended with three guys who couldn’t be happier to compliment each other on the podium.
Starting third in Sunday’s 12.5-kilometer pursuit, after earning bronze in the sprint, Martin Fourcade of France was nearly perfect. He only missed the last of his 20 shots and cruised to a 22.8-second victory for his first gold medal of the Championships.
France’s Martin Fourcade celebrates his first win of the 2017 IBU World Championships on Sunday with a nearly 23-second win in the 12.5 k pursuit in Hochfilzen, Austria. (Photo: Glen Crawford)
In the press conference, he was liberal with his praise for second-place Johannes Thingnes Bø and third-place Ole Einar Bjørndalen, both of Norway.
“I am pretty satisfied to be on the podium with Johannes, one of the greatest biathlon talents, and with Ole who is as well one of the greatest biathlon talents,” Fourcade said, understating Bjørndalen’s role in the history of the sport. “It was amazing for me to share this podium with them, because Johannes is always good on the big events… And everyone is asking me when I will break Ole’s record, and how I will do that. But I am simply sure that if I want to break one his records he will have to stop.”
If Fourcade seemed to have things locked up with one stage to go, the battle for second place was fierce.
Bjørndalen, Krasimir Anev of Bulgaria, and Ondrej Moravec of the Czech Republic were all in the pack close behind Fourcade, but all missed a shot. Lowell Bailey of the United States, however, cleaned – as did Bø and Anton Shipulin of Russia.
Bailey headed out of the range in second place, with Bjørndalen exiting the penalty loop just behind him.
The American led for a while, but Bjørndalen was stronger. And although the pair had a substantial lead on the others when they left the range – Bailey had 7.1 seconds on Anev, 12.8 seconds on Bø, and another 2-3 seconds on Moravec and Shipulin – the chasers were charging hard.
American Lowell Bailey (4) chasing Norway’s Ole Einar Bjørndalen during the men’s 12.5 k pursuit at 2017 IBU World Championships in Hochfilzen, Austria. (Photo: Glen Crawford)
About the time that Bjørndalen passed Bailey, Bø realized he had a chance.
“I was not sure I would catch Ole,” he said in the press conference. “When I closed up he was going past Bailey… he looked quite strong. But Lowell had not his best day I think on the last loop, and on the last uphill I managed to catch Ole.”
Bø fought with Bjørndalen in the final kilometer. He ended up with a clear edge, earning silver (+22.8) while Bjørndalen took bronze (+25.6).
The 43-year-old Bjørndalen seemed to harbor no hard feelings after being knocked down a spot by his younger teammate.
“It was a really good race for me,” Bjørndalen said. “Shooting was really good, and I felt much better on the skis also today, so it was a really good race.”
The last time World Championships were in Hochfilzen, in 2005, Bjørndalen won three individual gold medals, as well as one in the relay. On Sunday, bronze was good enough.
“2005 I was definitely stronger on the skis than I am in the moment today,” he said.
The men’s 12.5 k pursuit podium at 2017 IBU World Championships, with France’s Martin Fourcade (c) in first, Norway’s Johannes Thingnes Bø (l) in second, and Norway’s Ole Einar Bjørndalen (r) in third. (Photo: Glen Crawford)
His younger teammate started in second place, just where he finished. But it was not a straight line in between. Bø racked up three penalties and had a bobble that tripped him up and sent him sprawling to the ground as he left the shooting mat at one point.
While he had been disappointed to be second the day before – by just 0.7 seconds to Benedikt Doll of Germany – he seemed ebullient with his pursuit silver.
“Today it is quite a better feeling,” he said. “Not quite so tired after the race as I was yesterday. It’s quite fun to [finish by] gaining places up to the podium today. It’s a little bit more fun than losing the gold medal [at the end] yesterday.“
As for Bailey, he was finally caught by a group of Shipulin, Moravec, and Anev. He couldn’t stay ahead of anyone but Anev, and finished sixth (+34.7).
“In the end I just didn’t quite have enough,” he said at the finish. “It’s just so close and there are so many good guys. One more shot! One more shot, ten more seconds… You know, I could keep going and going, but that’s the way it is.”
A New High for USA
Although Bailey was so close to the podium he could almost taste it, sixth place was still a solid result to follow up his fourth-place finish in Saturday’s sprint.
Lowell Bailey (US Biathlon) racing to sixth in the men’s 12.5 k pursuit on Sunday at 2017 IBU World Championships in Hochfilzen, Austria. (Photo: Glen Crawford)
“Two times in the top six, we cannot complain about that,” U.S. Biathlon Associaiton Chief of Sport Bernd Eisenbichler said. “It’s a fantastic result for Lowell.”
While fourth place in the sprint was the second-best result ever by an American at World Championships – Tim Burke won a silver medal in 2013 and Josh Thompson a silver in 1987 – two top-six finishes in a single Championships is pretty unprecedented.
Starting a pursuit in fourth position is certainly an advantage, but it’s also far from any sort of guarantee. Just ask Doll, who won the sprint but ended up 11th in the pursuit. Or Germany’s Vanessa Hinz, who started the women’s pursuit sixth but ended up 20th.
“I think it was really impressive how he approached those two races,” Eisenbichler said. “Yesterday he was really aggressive on the range, really went for it, had the second-fastest shooting time. And you know, it was just unlucky that there were three better guys… And I have to say that I am even more proud today, because this was a really tough race for him. And he kept it together in the last shooting, and I am really proud of that.”
Bailey had a similar assessment.
“Obviously I would have loved to be on the podium,” he said. “That’s what we all hope for. But I approached each race this year just telling myself to go out there and do what you can do for the day. Some days you got more in your legs than others. I am actually really happy with the shooting today, because I held it together shooting up there near the lead the whole time. Quite honestly, that’s where I have struggled in the past. So I am really happy to have stuck with my game plan in shooting and kept my focus.”
Bailey took his time to clean the last five targets, but even so was the second-fastest shooter in the field when all the stages were added up. That helped him, since the skiing did not go exactly as he would have wished.
“I would say the pace was a little bit faster than I would have liked to go in the beginning,” Bailey admitted. “But I knew that if I didn’t maintain contact, I wouldn’t have a chance. So I went as hard as I could in the beginning, and then I paid for it in the end. But you have to be there at the end to have a chance. So…”
He shrugged his shoulders. What are you going to do?
The weekend netted Bailey another major accolade: he became the first athlete of any sport to qualify for the U.S. Olympic team to PyeongChang, South Korea, for 2018. U.S. Biathlon qualification rules stated that any athlete with a top-six finish at 2017 World Championships would get a spot, and Bailey nailed it – twice.
“It’s a goal that I’ve had for a long time and I think now it means so much more for me to be competing with the support of my wife Erika and our new daughter Ophelia,” Bailey said of the 2018 Olympics in a Team USA press release. “To know that I can represent the U.S. team for her is really special for me to be able to have that privilege.”
Tim Burke (US Biathlon) racing to 32nd in the men’s 12.5 k pursuit at 2017 IBU World Championships in Hochfilzen, Austria. (Photo: Glen Crawford)
Behind him, his three American teammates didn’t have as strong days on the range. Tim Burke had three penalties to move from 40th up to 32nd (+2:45.4); Leif Nordgren had five missed shots to drop from 26th to 49th (+4:11.1); and Sean Doherty collected nine penalties to fall from 39th to 55th (+5:15.2).
But Eisenbichler focused on their performances in the sprint as a sign of what was to come.
“I am really happy how the recovery goes for [Nordgren and Doherty],” he said, referring to a toe injury and mononucleosis, respectively. “I still call it a recovery, they are still on the path to get back to their full shape. Sean had a really super shape in the summertime — he was there with Tim and Lowell –and Leif had also a really high level. And so I was really pleased to see Leif’s 26th place, and Sean also taking points with two misses in prone which is absolutely not perfect. But with a clean shooting he’d have been up there. And don’t forget about [Burke], too. We had a really good men’s team performance overall yesterday, so we are really looking forward to the individual and to the relay.”
Personal Best for Gow to Lead Canada
Christian Gow (Biathlon Canada) racing to a career-best 23rd in the men’s 12.5 k pursuit on Sunday at 2017 IBU World Championships in Hochfilzen, Austria. (Photo: Glen Crawford)
Meanwhile, Christian Gow matched Bailey’s shooting to move from 32nd up to 23rd and collect a new personal best.
“I was super happy with it, finally breaking into the top 30,” Gow said. “I have been in so many races right around that cusp. So it feels good to get into it.”
Before the competition, it hadn’t seemed like things were off to an auspicious start. Yet Gow kept an open mind and began to feel better and better.
“Starting today, I didn’t feel very good warming up,” he admitted. “I felt exhausted still from yesterday, and my legs just felt kind of dead. The first loop of the pursuit was crushing. I was kind of like‚ ‘Okay, there is 2.5 out of 12.5 done…’ I don’t know, it was looking a little bleak, but then something changed on the range, and all of a sudden I just felt fine on skis. And I felt like I was fine on the last lap. I was pretty hurt, but I am really happy with the race.”
32nd had been the best sprint result of Gow’s career, so he was starting the pursuit in fast territory. That added some pressure.
“Looking at my skiing yesterday, it wasn’t great,” Gow said. “And a lot of the guys around me were guys that are some of the strongest skiers, who just missed too many yesterday. So they had two or three misses and were at my [level] with three more hits. So I knew today was going to be a lot of work, but I kept together on the range really well, I am happy about that. It was great to feed off the fast guys out on my loops. And sometimes your realize, ‘Oh wait, that pace isn’t so bad, I can manage that’.”
His older brother Scott Gow had seven missed shots to drop from 25th to 47th (+3:56.0), and Brendan Green missed five to slip from 38th to 52nd (+4:19.5).
Laura Dahlmeier of Germany (far right) was in control of the women’s pursuit for almost the whole race. With just one penalty, she used her position to calmly secure a gold medal. (Photo: Glen Crawford)
HOCHFILZEN, Austria—For Germany’s Laura Dahlmeier in the 10 k pursuit today, it was another gold medal. One to match the mixed relay from this World Championships, a follow-up to her silver in the sprint, and a repeat of the pursuit gold from last year’s edition.
“I’m very happy about the three medals — it’s really like a dream, two gold medals and one silver,” Dahlmeier said in a press conference. “The next races I will try to give my best, especially with the team. We are really strong, and we have the possibility to be on the [relay] podium or to win the gold medal. I will fight.”
For Gabriela Koukalova, it was simply another medal. After winning the sprint, the Czech overcame some ammunition problems and three penalties to fight back for bronze in the pursuit.
“I was a little bit nervous, and I had some problems with ammunition,” she said. “It didn’t shoot, three times. So in this moment I said, goodbye, my medal.”
Not so fast: she earned the medal after all.
Darya Domracheva of Belarus setting up to clean another five targets en route to a silver medal. (Photo: Glen Crawford)
But perhaps the most joy on the pursuit podium came from the silver medalist, Darya Domracheva of Belarus.
Domracheva has won a fat handful of World Championships medals before, as well as three Olympic golds.
But success at this Championships was not guaranteed. Domracheva took the 2015-2016 season completely off, then some more time off to have her first child. She didn’t return to the World Cup until January of this year, and her best individual result since then was 13th place in the sprint in Ruhpolding.
Furthermore, Domracheva had finished 27th in the sprint here in Hochfilzen. That put her 1:25.6 behind Koukalova starting the pursuit.
Yet Domracheva wasn’t content to shoot for the teens or twenties. She cleaned target after target, quickly moving up in the standings. By the time she left the final standing shooting stage, she had hit all 20 targets and moved all the way into second place.
“I can say that some time ago, my name from journalists was ‘the comeback girl’,” she said in a press conference. “Today I think I earned this name again. It’s a really good day for me.”
Leaving the final shooting, Dahlmeier had an 8.6-second lead on Domracheva, who had another 4.9 seconds on Koukalova.
Laura Dahlmeier all alone coming to the finish of the 10 k pursuit. (Photo: Glen Crawford)
Dahlmeier tried to just hold her lead, despite not feeling “so strong on the tracks”. Domracheva and Koukalova set out to catch her. But it wasn’t easy.
“I tried to go maximum what I can — of course I tried also to catch Laura, but she was strong on the last loop,” Domracheva said. She ended up losing three more seconds to the German on the final 2.5 k.
But her second goal was to stay ahead of Koukalova, and that one she accomplished.
“I didn’t know what happened behind me,” said Koukalova, who was only sure she had secured a medal 500 meters from the finish line. “I saw only Darya. It was only three seconds [up to her], but in the moment, very far away. I didn’t have energy to catch her.”
And so Domracheva completed a comeback in impressive style, moving from 27th up to second place (+11.6) over the course of just ten kilometers. Koukalova was left with bronze (+16.6).
“I think the most difficult element was to combine all the elements of biathlon together,” she said of returning to top-level competition. “On some races for me it was good [skiing], on some races it was good shooting, and today I could say that I combined them together. The silver was the result from that.”
There was a tough fight for fourth place, with Irina Starykh of Russia – who returned this season from a three-year ban for blood doping – crossing the line first, +35.9.
After her it was Justine Braisaz of France in fifth (+36.1), teammate Marie Dorin Habert sixth (+36.3), and Finland’s Kaisa Makarainen seventh (+37.2).
Good But Not Perfect for American Trio
Susan Dunklee of the United States started two bibs and a few seconds behind Domracheva, and had begun her own ascent early in the race. Despite a penalty in the first prone, she moved from 29th up to 26th. Then with a clean second prone and a single miss in the first first standing, she was into the top 15.
The U.S. women’s team of Clare Egan, Susan Dunklee, and Joanne Reid at the finish. The fourth team member, Maddie Phaneuf, will get back to racing in the individual after missing the top-60 cutoff for the pursuit: “I am also really excited for Maddie, because she is a really strong shooter and she has been struggling this week — she is a little frustrated, so really excited to see what she does,” Reid said. (Photo: Glen Crawford)
“My start position today was not as high up as I wanted it to be, but it’s a great opportunity and the time [gap to better places] was not that big,” Dunklee said. “So if I shot well, I would just move up a few positions with each shooting, and just have a good race and keep moving… The first loop was a blast, tucking in behind Justine [Braisaz] and Darya [Domracheva], just trying to relax.”
In the last standing stage, though, things came apart, with two more misses. That knocked Dunklee back out of the top twenty. She tried to battle back on her skis, but by the finish was tiring. Dunklee landed 22nd, +1:44.7 after being so close to the top ten.
“Of course the race wasn’t like that,” she said of her initial plan.
She’s still looking for her best performance at the Championships, and has another chance in the 15 k individual and then, depending on how that goes, likely in the mass start.
“I came into these championships really nervous, and not dealing with that pressure as well as I wanted to,” Dunklee admitted. “And I think that affects me in a way. It’s hard to perform well when you are overly nervous, I think it’s good to have some nerves. But now I am finally feeling a bit more relaxed and more normal, more like my normal self, which is a good thing.“
On course, she passed teammate Clare Egan, who had started with bib 20. Egan shot better than Dunklee – just three misses – but wasn’t feeling the best on her skis.
Clare Egan (USA) and Rosanna Crawford (Canada) on course. (Photo: Glen Crawford)
“I think I’m just a little bit tired from doing the mixed relay and the sprint,” Egan said. “It’s just one of those days… I was starting 20th place. This was a much higher starting position than I’m used to, so the people around me are going faster and it’s just tough competition. I have a feeling with the altitude here, that the [15 k] individual could be a better pacing distance for me. I felt like the first lap for me [today] was like a 5 k pace, not a 10 k pace for me. I think I’ll be better in the 15 k.”
Egan landed 41st (+3:01.3), and still had things to be pleased about. Her three penalties matched her best shooting ever in a four-stage race.
“I shot 1-0-2-0 and I’m really especially happy about cleaning my last stage,” she said. “So my shooting, I’m happy with that. I hoped that I would not have moved back 21 places with solid shooting, but I think there must’ve been a lot of good shooting today. Mostly the issue was my skiing today. I didn’t have what it takes to move up. I would have needed to shoot perfectly to maintain my [top-20] spot.”
Egan was right: 16 women shot either clean or a single penalty. And that meant a lot of people moved up: Starykh from 24th to fourth, Braisaz from 28th to fifth, Italy’s Alexia Runggaldier from 43rd to 15th, Norway’s Marte Olsbu from 54th to 16th. The list went on. With three or four penalties, it was hard for the likes of Egan or Dunklee to do so well.
Joanne Reid (center) on the range in Hochfilzen. (Photo: Glen Crawford)
While Dunklee shot quickly – she tied for the third-fastest shooting time of the day – Egan and the third American starter, Joanne Reid, took the opposite approach.
“I was trying to clean prone, because when you are behind in prone you have a really hard time skiing and catching up with the group,” Reid explained. “So I was trying to take my time in prone. Maybe today I took a little bit too much time in prone, but I hit them, so nobody can complain too much about it.”
Egan, too, was steady and purposeful.
“I have a really active mind that’s easily distracted, so I have to be really deliberate about focusing on only my position and my trigger work,” she said. “And I did that on my last stage, so I’m happy with that.”
For Reid, the slow shooting paid off. She had only one penalty in the competition – a miss in the last stage.
“It’s been a little tricky for me, just because I am still learning wind,” said Reid, who finished 38th in just the second World Championships race of her career.
“And this range is really susceptible to wind. A little woosh and the wind flags… it’s just a lot of clicks. And I don’t even remember to always look at the wind flags. That’s something I’m working on. But I love it here, I love this course. It’s fun.”
For Canada, Rosanna Crawford finished 43rd with three penalties (+3:04.3).
A year ago, she didn’t have a single result worse than 29th in the whole World Championships. She has had a difficult 2017 season, like much of the Canadian team.
“I’m just so frustrated,” Crawford said at the finish. “The sprint felt like almost getting closer back to normal. Then today again, I just couldn’t move. I couldn’t stay with anyone around me. It’s hard. You want to know what you did wrong so you don’t do it again.”
Benedikt Doll of Germany has never won a World Cup — but he did take World Championships gold on Saturday in the men’s 10 k sprint in Hochfilzen, Austria. “In the end, there was the fight with Johannes [Bø]… I thought Johannes will make it. It was crazy in the end that it was me on the top,” he said at a press conference. (Photo: Glen Crawford)HOCHFILZEN, Austria—On a day when the wind seemed like only a flutter, it could still throw the World Championships biathlon field into disarray.
Take Martin Fourcade, the best biathlete in the world this year. He missed two shots out of ten: one in prone, and one in standing.
“When I crossed the finish line, I expected to be top ten,” the Frenchman said in a press conference. “Then when I saw the race I expected for top five.”
He ended up third – a pleasant surprise.
Ten men shot clean, and four of them landed in the top six. Benedikt Doll of Germany claimed his first top-level win – at World Championships, no less, and by just 0.7 seconds over Norway’s Johannes Thingnes Bø. Both shot clean and were late starters; the race came down to whether or not Bø could keep a 9.3-second lead over Doll on the final 3.3 kilometers. He couldn’t.
The men’s 10 k sprint podium at 2017 IBU World Championships, with German winner Benedikt Doll (c), Norway’s Johannes Thingnes Bø (l) in second, and France’s Martin Fourcade (r) in third. (Photo: Glen Crawford)
“It’s not so fun to go out of standing as the leader and lose seconds and be number two at the finish,” Bø said. “Especially when it’s that close… I did a quite good race and I was really fighting on the last loop. The last two kilometers I was really fighting deep. My head wanted to win today, but my legs couldn’t follow the head. That’s why I was in second place.”
Doll, meanwhile, had seen Fourcade (bib 4) finish before he even started. Knowing that he had two penalties in hand, Doll saw his chance.
“I know that if I can make a perfect race, I can win,” he said. “The whole season I had always problems with my shooting. So I had really good feeling at the zeroing, especially standing shooting, I felt really sure… After the fourth shot in standing, there comes something in my mind that says, if you make a clean shooting you maybe will get to be World Champion. I hit the last target. I think that was one of the best moments today.”
“This year I have really tried to step back from worrying about where I end up on the result list and focus on the quality of what I’m doing, both in shooting and skiing,” he said. “Today I went out and really tried to execute the technique that I wanted to execute. And also on the range, to do what I have been training on the range all year to do. Some days it doesn’t work, and today it worked.”
The top finish for the home team went to Julian Eberhard, who placed seventh (+35.5) despite two penalties.
Three in the Points for Canada
Much like Fourcade, Canada’s top finisher Scott Gow had two penalties and was relieved that much of the rest of the field struggled as well. He landed 25th, +1:22.4, for the second-best World Championships finish of his career.
“I was definitely disappointed,” Gow said of the missed shots. “But I knew that if I wanted to be in the pursuit or have a good result I had to go extra hard. So that was my motivation… It’s a solid result, to be honest. I’m really lucky that everyone else also missed today. Martin is winning [right now] with two misses. So I’m in the same ballpark as the top part of the field, which is good. Because otherwise I’d probably be close to the [top-60 pursuit qualification] bubble.”
Gow attributed the misses to nerves, saying it was “all me” and not the tricky wind.
“I was just too much inside my own head for the first shot — I just pulled it,” he explained. “Then the rest of the five were fine. Then I had the opposite in standing, where the first four were great, and I just tensed up and missed the last one… My sprint racing has been quite strong, especially in the first trimester where I cleaned every sprint. I was trying not to think about that and just do what I did in those races, but at an event like this the pressure is extra high.”
Canada’s Christian Gow racing to 32nd in the men’s 10 k sprint at 2017 IBU World Championships on Saturday in Hochfilzen, Austria. (Photo: Glen Crawford)
His brother, Christian Gow, did clean all ten targets and landed 32nd (+1:30.6).
“I shot clean, obviously a big advantage,” the younger Gow said. “It looks like the field isn’t shooting so well, so that’s important. Skiing wasn’t exactly where I’d like it to be. I felt like I pushed really hard and left it all out there, but I’m not sure why.”
All in all, he said, he was satisfied with the race: “I just went out and did what I could, and I’m happy to be here and happy to have done that.”
Team veteran Brendan Green will join the brothers in the pursuit after finishing 38th (+1:36.4) with one penalty. Green was disappointed with his skiing as well.
“The skiing, it just hasn’t been there this season,” he said. “I tried my best. I gave it my all. But for sure I was hoping for more.”
Macx Davies, who finished 79th (+2:53.4) with two penalties, agreed: “It has been hard finding my legs this season.”
For the Canadian team, it will be back to the drawing board to try to regain speed before next season’s Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea.
“It’s hard,” Green admitted. “I have been trying to take it trimester by trimester. At this point of the season I’m just trying to ride out the season and do the best that I can. Once we’re back home, we are definitely going to sit down and evaluate and see where things might have gone wrong.”
U.S. Team Solid Behind Bailey’s Fourth Place
While Bailey’s flower-ceremony appearance highlighted the U.S. results, all four starters made the top 40. That’s easily under the top-60 cutoff to appear in Sunday’s pursuit.
Leif Nordgren placed 26th (+1:24.3) with one missed shot. After injuring his toe in an accident in November and missing almost the entire first period of World Cup racing, as well as part of the second, Nordgren said the result was just fine.
“The one miss I had was a really bad one, so I’m kind of pissed about that,” he said. “I tried to take my time and make sure that all the shots were quality. Nine of them were, one of them was not. [On skis] I actually felt good. It has been kind of an interesting year for me with the whole toe thing, so I don’t have that many races yet… I’m not unhappy with where I am right now. What happened happened and I can’t really change it now. I can just do my best.”
Sean Doherty had also missed more than half the World Cup season to date, thanks to mononucleosis. He missed two shots in prone and finished 39th (+1:37.7).
Right behind him was Tim Burke, who missed two shots in standing to finish 40th (+1:38.6).
“I just got out of rhythm trying to get that second shot,” he said.
Like some of the Canadians, Burke has been working to find his ski speed. It didn’t show up today, at least not the way he wanted it to.
“I have no idea,” he admitted about his skiing. “I’ve been feeling good training, I’ve just felt really flat so far racing this, pretty much this entire year. I don’t know what’s going on… I had to take a break after the first few days of the [pre-Championships] training camp because I felt so bad. Not sick, I felt totally healthy, just really really flat. So I really only had about a week preparation. I was hopeful – I had a few sessions where I felt like, oh, maybe it’s coming back. But I haven’t felt that yet in a race.”
For seven of the eight North Americans, though the pursuit will be a chance to see if head-to-head racing can bring the fire. 15th and 55th place in the sprint were separated by one minute; the opportunity to move up in the field is huge.
And if anything was proven in the sprint, it’s that shooting well could mean a lot.
“Even on a day like today where it seems like it’s pretty calm, the shooting is really challenging,” Burke said. “Especially in prone. So I’m hopeful that I can get something going tomorrow. Just being around other people, being able to ski with other fast guys — maybe that can help me find the rhythm a little better.”
Norway’s Johannes Thingnes Bø (l, on ground) after finishing second in the men’s 10 k sprint at 2017 IBU World Championships in Hochfilzen, Austria. (Photo: Glen Crawford)
Lowell Bailey fighting his way to fourth place in the 10 k sprint at 2017 IBU World Championships in Hochfilzen, Austria. (Photo: USBA/NordicFocus)
HOCHFILZEN, Austria – The U.S. men’s biathlon team got off to a slow start this year. Sean Doherty had mononucleosis. Leif Nordgren injured his toe in a freak accident and had to miss weeks of competition. And Tim Burke said he has felt “flat” all season.
Many have been frustrated…
“Except for Lowell!” Burke exclaimed, referring to teammate Lowell Bailey. “One of the benefits of having a strong team is that when some of us have been struggling for different reasons, it’s great to have someone doing well. It brings up morale for the team a lot, and he has been that guy for us this season.”
Lowell Bailey (US Biathlon) racing to fourth in the men’s 10 k sprint on Saturday at 2017 IBU World Championships in Hochfilzen, Austria. (Photo: Glen Crawford)
The men’s 10 k sprint at World Championships was no exception. Bailey shot perfectly and finished fourth, 29.5 seconds behind Benedikt Doll of Germany, a first-time World Champion.
When he crossed the finish line, Bailey was in second place. But he was later knocked off by later starters.
“I am really happy with the result,” he said. “It’s the wooden medal, as they say in Germany. But I think more important to me is that I really feel like I did everything that I could do today. This was what I could do for the day, and I guess I can be proud for that.”
That gives Bailey the second-best Championships result ever by an American. Burke won silver in 2013 and Josh Thompson in 1987, both in the 20 k individual. Bailey’s fourth-place finish is the next best result, and the best ever in a sprint competition.
The first key to his success was clean shooting. A number of top racers had a tough time on the range: Martin Fourcade of France, for instance, missed a shot each in prone and standing. He finished third (which he considered a miracle – in the post-race press conference, Fourcade admitted that with two penalties the best he had initially hoped for was a top ten).
“Yeah, it’s tricky wind here,” Bailey said. “It’s sensitive. It moves the bullet quite a bit for a relatively small amount of wind. I spent a lot of time on the range before the race just standing and watching the flags, and getting a good idea when I zeroed what the wind was. And what I would do if it shifted one way or the other.”
Doll and runner-up Johannes Thingnes Bø of Norway both cleaned, as did Bailey, sixth-place Krasimir Anev of Bulgaria, and six others scattered throughout the field.
“When I came into prone, the wind was about where I zeroed, at about four o’clock left to right,” Bailey explained. “So I kept my zeroing the same, and just — the one thing I have learned over the years is it’s better to be aggressive and decisive in the range. Go with what your gut feeling [is], rather than second-guessing yourself. So I tried to be decisive.”
Another key was shooting fast. Bailey had the second-fastest total shooting time of the entire 106-man field. He finished just 1.2 seconds ahead of fifth-place Ondrej Moravec and his shooting time, six seconds faster than the Czech’s, helped him get there.
“I worked all year on the sports psychology front, to not worry so much about the results but worry about the quality of my performance,” Bailey said. “Things like getting to my first shot in 11 seconds, taking an aggressive shooting cadence, efficient range times, and all this dorky biathlon stuff that I have been working on for years, really. But if feels good to put it all together.”
If you can put together that kind of a shooting performance, a merely “good” day on skis can still net a great result. Bailey had the 23rd-fastest course time, and said that he didn’t exactly feel like a superhero on Hochfilzen’s big, rolling climbs.
“It wasn’t one of those days where you go out and you don’t feel any pain,” Bailey laughed. “It definitely hurt, a lot. But I think the ski speed was there, and we had a really good preparation camp that set us up well for the race. So I think I am truly happy with everything about the race today.”
It has been a big year for Bailey. He is now a father – his wife and daughter joined him and U.S. support team at the finish as he waited for the flower ceremony – and he has played a major role as one of the International Biathlon Union’s Athlete Representatives, lobbying hard for anti-doping reforms in the wake of the McLaren report.
On one hand, that’s a lot to handle. But on the other, the University of Vermont graduate (who double majored in political science and environmental studies) isn’t shocked that he is able to turn in some of the best performances of his career despite having so much on his plate.
“I always make sure that training and biathlon is the priority,” he explained. “And then, if I can fit things in, I try to do this Athlete Representative thing. I always have that kind of threshold in my head. If it’s ever too much then I will say, okay, I’ll do it later. Biathlon always comes first. But on the other hand, I good balance can be really positive. And I know every athlete is different, but definitely for me having balance in my life is crucial. Having my family as something I can be [about] away from biathlon, and being with my family and not worrying about sport.”
While Bailey has been focusing on process rather than results or standings, his teammates were not at all surprised at the numerical, record-book aspect of his most recent result.
“He has been really close all year,” Burke said. “He’s been between 10th and 20th almost every single race. Any time you have the ability to consistently do that, you also have the ability to be on the podium.”
But if Bailey has been a rock for his teammates this season, he is still humble about it. And he believes in them. In the second relay after Nordgren and Doherty returned to the World Cup, the team finished sixth, and Bailey says there’s more to come. He has a shot at the podium again on Sunday in the pursuit – but he is also looking forward to the relay.
“Honestly I don’t feel any pressure, because I know all four guys that are here can pop a podium race any day,” Bailey said. “And I wouldn’t be so surprised at all if one of them did that in these World Championships. And as much as there have been some setbacks for Sean [Doherty] and Leif [Nordgren] with health issues, I think we are all in a pretty good place right now… If you kind of analyze and read between the lines in the results it looks pretty good for our team. I think it may have been a slow start for some athletes, but if I were a betting person I would bet on the U.S. guys.”
Gabriela Koukalová of the Czech Republic celebrating her first individual victory at a World Championships (or Olympics) on Friday after winning the women’s 7.5 k sprint at 2017 IBU World Championships in Hochfilzen, Austria. (Photo: Glen Crawford)
It was a day of redemption. Both for a biathlon superstar and for the best North American in the women’s 7.5-kilometer sprint at the 2017 International Biathlon Union (IBU) World Championships in Hochfilzen, Austria.
A year ago, Czech Republic’s Gabriela Koukalová (back then starting under her maiden name Soukalová) was disappointed when she failed to win any medal at the Oslo World Championships, twice placing fourth, once fifth, and twice sixth with her team. She won the overall World Cup that season, but not being on the podium at the highlight event of the year still stung.
Gabriela Koukalová (Czech Republic) racing to her first individual World Championships gold on Friday in the women’s 7.5 k sprint at 2017 IBU World Championships in Hochfilzen, Austria. (Photo: Glen Crawford)
“I had a lot of expectations,” Koukalová recalled in a post-race press conference on Friday. “And I was only fourth all the time. A lot of ‘potato medals’ as we say in the Czech Republic.”
Now after a sprint race that had been suspenseful from the first to the very last starters, she stood on the top of the podium at the flower ceremony in Hochfilzen, smiling but with tears welling up in her eyes after winning her first individual title at IBU World Championships (or Olympic Games) in a time of 19:12.6 minutes with no penalties.
“I am not able to describe my feelings,” Koukalová told the IBU in an interview afterwards. “I had a lot of thoughts about this position in the last months. It’s amazing. I did not believe that I am able to win a World Championship.”
A day ago, US Biathlon’s Clare Egan was also disappointed when she ran out of spare rounds and shot a penalty in the mixed relay, causing her team to fall back.
“It is a horrible, horrible feeling to take your team from podium contention to 17th place at world championships,” Egan stated in a US Biathlon press release on Thursday.
She vowed to focus on the sprint race, and she sure did.
“I know that a positive outlook is a prerequisite for a good race,” Egan wrote in an email to FasterSkier after Friday’s sprint. “My performance in yesterday’s mixed relay was one of the more brutal failures of my biathlon career, and I certainly struggled to rebound and lost some sleep over it. One decisive factor in my mental turnaround was a message I got this morning from my cousin Liz Egan. She reminded me of my very own words from my recent blog post: ‘How you do one day has absolutely no bearing on how you might do the next.’ It’s so true and I needed the reminder!”
Clare Egan (US Biathlon) racing to 20th place in the women’s 7.5 k sprint at the 2017 IBU World Championships in Hochfilzen, Austria (Photo: USBA/NordicFocus)
Taking her time on the range (with the 92nd-ranked shooting time among 101 starters in the sprint) became beneficial when Egan shot clean in both stages to avoid any penalty laps on Friday.
“I had a good plan for my shooting execution today and I stuck to it for 10 shots and it worked,“ Egan wrote. “That doesn’t always happen so I’m grateful it worked today. I had to take 4 clicks in prone (about the distance from the center of the target to the edge), which is fairly significant but clearly the right choice. In standing I focused on getting the set up perfect, which took a while but paid off.“
Egan skied the 31st-ranked course time overall, and was able to pick up the pace on the last loop when she knew she was fighting for a top position (22nd loop time).
“I started my last loop as [Biathlon Canada’s] Megan Tandy was starting her first. Knowing I had someone right behind me pushed me.“
She crossed the line in a time of 20:25.0 in 20th place, 1:12.4 back from Koukalová.
For Egan it was her second-best result in an individual World Cup race, only behind a 16th place in Östersund, Sweden, at the beginning of the 2015/2016 season. And it was her best result (excluding relays) in her third World Championship, improving 20 positions on a 40th place (also in the sprint) from 2015 in Kontiolahti, Finland.
Throughout the race, the athletes at the top changed repeatedly as some of the favorites including France’s Marie Dorin Habert in bib 1 and Finland’s Kaisa Mäkäräinen in bib 4 had picked the first start group, while others such as Germany’s Laura Dahlmeier chose positions in the middle, and Koukalová in bib 96 or Norway’s defending world champion Tiril Eckhoff starting in bib 101 had opted for a start at the very end of the field.
On a clear and sunny day with mild wind, it seemed unclear which starting positions would be the most advantageous. Several of the favorites starting early incurred penalties, and it took a while until the first starter remained clean in both stages.
That was Russia’s Irina Uslugina, replacing her teammate Ekaterina Glazyrina at the last moment after Glazyrina had been provisionally suspended by the IBU and taken out of the start list about an hour before the race began, creating additional unrest. Uslugina emerged as Russia’s top finisher on Friday, but was ultimately a bit too slow on the course to contend for the medals and ended up 15th (+1:03.6).
After missing just one target and skiing fast, Dorin Habert initially held the lead in the finish narrowly ahead of Slovakia’s Anastasiya Kuzmina, before she was bumped out of first by her teammate Anaïs Chevalier. Then, two Italians secured preliminary positions on the podium, but it was not Italy’s star Dorothea Wierer (who went on to finish one position behind Egan in 21st), but Wierer’s teammates Lisa Vittozzi and Federica Sanfilippo.
Starting with bib 64, Germany’s Dahlmeier began the race at a controlled pace for her ability level, and also took her time on the range (with the 43rd-ranked shooting time) in order to stay clean in both stages. Then on the last loop, Dahlmeier skied the fastest time of the day, and in the finish she had improved on Chevalier’s time by 21.1 seconds.
But the last word in this race had not yet been spoken, as Koukalová had only just started. She set the best time after her prone stage, narrowly ahead of Kuzmina, and kept pushing hard on the next loop coming into the standing stage with a lead on the field. Shooting clean again, Koukalová left the range with a 10.5-second lead on Dahlmeier.
With her coaches shouting split times from the side of the track, Koukalová did everything to carry her lead into the finish, but after initially expanding it to 12 seconds, it began to shrink up the last climbs.
Pushing out of a tunnel and up the inclined finishing stretch in Hochfilzen with her long earrings dangling side to side, Koukalová rescued a 4-second lead to Dahlmeier into the finish, which also knocked Chevalier down to third place (+25.1) and Vittozzi off the podium by a mere 0.2 seconds (+25.3).
Despite the ungrateful place, it was Vittozzi’s best career result in an individual race, and also the second-best career and best World Championship result for Sanfilippo in fifth place (+31.9).
“I am a little bit disappointed, because yes of course I dreamed about the medal,” Sanfilippo told the IBU in an interview. “But today with my fifth place I have to be happy. And in any case, we will see what happens in the next days.”
All of the top six, including Dahlmeier’s teammate Vanessa Hinz (+37.9), shot clean in both stages.
“I think it was a very clever decision by our coaches,” Koukalová told the IBU when asked about her late start group. “I think it helped me a lot, because I was feeling that my skis [were] faster and faster every loop … And I heard a lot of information about Laura, that she was just 10 seconds behind me [in the split times]. I did not believe it [would be] enough because I know her very well, and I realized she was very fast mainly on the last part of the track.”
Gabriela Koukalová of the Czech Republic catches her breath on the ground after winning the women’s 7.5 k sprint at 2017 IBU World Championships in Hochfilzen, Austria. (Photo: Glen Crawford)
“When I saw four seconds [lead] in the finish I thought that I am sleeping, but I hope it is real,” Koukalová said at the press conference. “Is it real?”
Yes it is. And it is the fifth gold medal for the Czech Republic at IBU World Championships. The women’s relay team won the first title in 1993, then Kateřina Holubcová won a title in the women’s 15 k individual race in 2003, Roman Dostal in the men’s 20 k individual in 2005, and Koukalová herself won the mixed relay title in 2015 in Kontiolahti with Veronika Vitková, Michal Šlesingr and Ondrej Moravec.
Dahlmeier, the current overall World Cup leader ahead of Koukalová, was pleased with her result, following up her gold medal in the mixed relay a day before with another silver on Friday.
“This was the perfect race for me,” Dahlmeier told German TV broadcaster ZDF. “I shot clean, I felt great on the shooting range, and I was able to execute on the course what I had set out to do. This was my best race and I gave it everything I had. Today, Gabby was just stronger, that’s how you have to look at it… The second medal is a dream.”
“In the last part of the track, she is amazing and she is able to run fast like a horse,” a smiling Koukalová said at the press conference, drawing a big laugh from the attending media as well as Dahlmeier.
The women’s 7.5 k sprint podium at 2017 IBU World Championships on Friday in Hochfilzen, Austria, with the Czech Republic’s Gabriela Koukalová (c) in first, Germany’s Laura Dahlmeier (l) in second, and France’s Anaïs Chevalier (r) in third. (Photo: Glen Crawford)
At last year’s World Championships in Oslo, Dahlmeier finished third in the sprint before winning the following pursuit race.
“I will enjoy today’s success, and then I am already excited like crazy for the pursuit,” Dahlmeier told ZDF. “I think that is just my type of race. Four shooting stages, 10 kilometer, and then I will attack the very top again.”
For Chevalier, it was her first individual medal at IBU World Championships and her third medal overall. Similar to Dahlmeier, she instantly followed up on her silver medal with the French mixed relay from the previous day, and previously earned silver with the women’s relay in Oslo a year ago.
“I am really happy because I did not expect to have an individual medal,” Chevalier stated in the press conference, also echoing Dahlmeier’s comments. “I did a perfect race today, and two of the girls were better than me. So I have no regrets.”
Chevalier is going to celebrate her 24th birthday on Sunday, the day of the pursuit race.
Four North Americans Qualify for Pursuit
The second-best North American starter on Friday was Biathlon Canada’s Rosanna Crawford in 26th place with one penalty (+1:23.2).
Rosanna Crawford (Biathlon Canada) racing to 26th in the women’s 7.5 k sprint on Friday at 2017 IBU World Championships in Hochfilzen, Austria. (Photo: Glen Crawford)
Despite some tricky wind conditions, Crawford shot fast (with the 10th-ranked shooting time overall) and stayed clean in her prone stage, before incurring a penalty in standing.
“I struggled in zero [pre-race target practice] today, so am really happy to have cleaned my prone,” Crawford wrote in an email. “It was quite windy during zero and I had to make a big correction, but once the race started it was a much more manageable wind.”
Initially posting one of the best times after starting early in bib 12, she was pushed down in the standings as more and more athletes finished the race ahead of her, partly due to her middle-of-the-pack, 45th-ranked overall course time.
“This is one of my better ski ranks of the year,” Crawford commented. “I felt more normal out there today, we had good skis and the course held up well. I had a few people to chase down on my last loop, but for the most part skied the race alone. I skied better than the mixed relay.”
It was Crawford’s second-best result in a sprint this season, following her 21st place last month in Oberhof, Germany.
Susan Dunklee (US Biathlon) racing to 29th in the women’s 7.5 k sprint on Friday at 2017 IBU World Championships in Hochfilzen, Austria. (Photo: Glen Crawford)
Three positions behind her, US Biathlon’s Susan Dunklee finished 29th (+1:27.4) with three penalties.
Dunklee started very early in bib 3, getting some time on the TV broadcast. Just like the other early starters, the American had to deal with a bit more challenging wind conditions, though according to her they were consistent with the zeroing target practice and the course remained fair throughout the race.
“Every team had a different idea about when the track would be fastest,” Dunklee wrote in an email. “I have no complaints about my start position. I think the spectators enjoyed having the favorites spread out.”
On the range Dunklee took the opposite approach to Egan, shooting very fast (tied for the eighth-ranked shooting and fifth-ranked range time), yet unlike her teammate she missed one shot in her prone shooting stage and two more in standing, having to ski 450 extra meters.
Thanks to skiing the 11th-ranked course time overall and even faster on the last loop where she could ski behind Finland’s Mäkäräinen (who had the second-best course time of the day), Dunklee improved by 18 positions on the last loop to finish 29th.
“Kaisa was a great ride for my last loop and I enjoyed the opportunity to ski together with her and Julia [Ransom of Canada, who started a loop later],” Dunklee wrote. “It helped me dig into a deeper gear for my finishing push.”
“I was psyched to see Clare and Rosanna throw down strong performances when it counts the most,” Dunklee commented regarding the performances of Egan and Crawford. “Biathlon is one of the most mentally challenging sports out there because of the extreme ups and downs, and they have proved their resilience this season.”
In her first start at IBU World Championships, Joanne Reid finished 49th (+1:57.6) with a penalty in each of her shooting stages (1+1). With this result, Reid qualified for the pursuit with the third-best individual World Cup result of her career, the best being a 29th place from a 15 k individual race in Östersund, Sweden, earlier this season. The former standout cross-country skier switched to biathlon a little over a year ago.
“I absolutely love this course and had a great time,” Reid commented on her race, according to US Biathlon. “I can’t wait for the pursuit.”
For Canada, Megan Tandy finished 64th with one penalty (1+0), 2:20 minutes behind the winner.
“What can I say?” Tandy posted on her Facebook page. “I am satisfied with 9/10 shooting. I did my job today and while I am sad and frustrated with 64th place, I am also at peace knowing I did everything possible: every detail of training, sleeping, eating, activation, warmup, etc. but my body was just not able to deliver. I fought my hardest but felt empty. Whatever is going on with me, I am not in the shape I expected [this] season and my best is simply not enough. Tough.”
Julia Ransom (Biathlon Canada) racing to 65th in the women’s 7.5 k sprint on Friday at 2017 IBU World Championships in Hochfilzen, Austria. (Photo: Glen Crawford)
Her teammate Julia Ransom was one position behind in 65th with two penalties in her standing stage (+2:24.7, 0+2).
“Unfortunately the race today didn’t play out as I’d hoped, but I skied my heart out, soaked up some sunshine, and enjoyed those incredible fans!” Ransom wrote after on Instagram.
Starting late in the field in her first start at senior World Championships, US Biathlon’s 21-year-old Maddie Phaneuf shot clean in her prone stage, then missed two targets in standing to finish in 78th place (+2:56.6, 0+2).
“Well…frustrated with today’s results,” Phaneuf commented on her Facebook page after the race. “I was happy with my skiing on the first two loops and my prone shooting but not psyched on my standing shooting… hoping for better days here at World Champs. On the other hand, this is my second best result on the World Cup (out of the 5 individual races I’ve done). So happy to see my teammates doing well, all three placing in the top 50…Clare with clean shooting and getting her second best result ever in 20th!”
Emma Lunder (Biathlon Canada) racing to 84th in her first IBU World Championships race on Friday, the women’s 7.5 k sprint in Hochfilzen, Austria. (Photo: Glen Crawford)
Also competing in her first senior World Championships race, like Reid and Phaneuf, Canada’s fourth woman Emma Lunder missed qualifying for the pursuit in 84th, after incurring three penalties in her prone shooting stage before shooting clean in standing (+3:10.1, 3+0).
The IBU World Championships continue on Saturday with the men’s 10-kilometer sprint, followed by pursuits for both the women and men on Sunday.
Gabriela Koukalová of the Czech Republic celebrates her first individual victory at a World Championships or Olympics on Friday at 2017 IBU World Championships in Hochfilzen, Austria. She won the women’s 7.5 k sprint by 4 seconds. (Photo: IBU)
IBU World Championships (Hochfilzen, Austria): Women’s 7.5 k sprint
Gabriela Koukalová, formerly Soukalova, had been so close to a World Championships individual gold medal, yet through five World Championships and two Olympic Games, a world title still eluded her — until Friday.
In the second race of 2017 IBU World Championships (and first individual competition), the 27-year-old Koukalova, of the Czech Republic, raced to first in the women’s 7.5-kilometer sprint, edging Germany’s Laura Dahlmeier, the World Cup Total Score leader.
Koukalova started 96th and cleaned both prone and standing before finishing with the fastest time in 19:12.6 minutes. That bested Dahlmeier’s time by 4 seconds, after the German (in bib 64) also cleaned both stages and took the lead from France’s Anais Chevalier (bib 17). Chevalier remained on the podium in third, 25.1 seconds off Koukalova’s winning time.
Italy’s Lisa Vittozzi missed a medal by 0.2 seconds in fourth (+25.3).
US Biathlon’s Clare Egan shot clean and landed 20th (+1:12.4) for her best individual World Championships result by 20 places (she previously raced at 2015 and 2016 World Championships). Egan led three Americans in qualifying for the pursuit, with Susan Dunklee placing 29th (+1:27.4) with three penalties (1+2) and Joanne Reid in 49th (+1:57.6) with two misses (1+1). Maddie Phaneuf missed the top 60 necessary for the pursuit in 78th (+2:56.6) with two standing penalties (0+2).
Biathlon Canada’s Rosanna Crawford placed 26th (+1:23.2) with one standing penalty (0+1) and was the lone Canadian to qualify for the pursuit. Megan Tandy missed the top 60 in 64th (+2:20.9) with one miss (1+0), Julia Ransom followed 65th (+2:24.7) with two misses (0+2), and Emma Lunder was 84th (+3:10.1) with three penalties (3+0).
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