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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.

Tag: Jean Phillipe Le Guellec

  • Canada Off-Form in Sochi, But Knows What to Work On

    Canada Off-Form in Sochi, But Knows What to Work On

    Scott Gow, here competing at World Championships last month, had the best Canadian performance in Sochi.
    Scott Gow, here competing at World Championships last month, had the best Canadian performance in Sochi.

    For Canada’s biathlon team, the past weekend’s races in Sochi weren’t exactly how you might hope to baptize a new Olympic course.

    “Bummer day?? More like weekend!” Jean Philippe Le Guellec wrote in reponse to questions from FasterSkier. “There are no painful questions, just straight facts.”

    And here are the facts: Le Guellec had a pretty miserable time, finishing 77th in the individual race and 52nd in the sprint. Canada placed 15th in the relay, where Le Guellec struggled in the leadoff leg, requiring five spare rounds. The Canadian men failed to score points in any race; Scott Gow’s 49th-place result was best in the sprint, while none of the team made the top 60 in the individual.

    (Unlike Le Guellec and Perras, Gow told FasterSkier that he was “very happy” with his races, especially with clean shooting in the sprint: “My shooting let me down in the individual, but it came back into form for the next two races.”)

    The women didn’t fare much better. The high point was likely the relay, where they raced to a very respectable tenth-place finish. In the individual, Megan Heinicke didn’t start and Rosanna Crawford didn’t finish; Megan Imrie’s 57th place was better than any of the team’s results in the sprint.

    Le Guellec admitted that the team just does not have the form that earned him his first World Cup win earlier this year, or a string of career bests for Scott Perras and Crawford.

    “The weekend was a complete drag,” he said after finishing 52nd in the sprint despite clean shooting. “I don’t know where my ski shape went, but it was not with me on the skis! There’s simply nothing to add there.”

    The Quebec native added that he had been sick in Oslo, and perhaps was still recovering. He hoped that by the World Cup finale, he’d be back to skiing a bit faster.

    Perras was similarly frustrated, saying that he was “definitely not happy” with his races. He thought that the team’s yearly plan just hasn’t allowed them to be fast this late in the season.

    “I have felt decent here, but like Oslo the skiing wasn’t my best,” he wrote in an e-mail. “We trained hard and put in a high amount of high intensity early this year, and I think we came into the season all cylinders firing. I think we are just in a bit of a lag and it should get better but I might run out of time.”

    The relay, which Perras anchored, was a particularly tough pill to swallow.

    “I think there are two times this year people really wanted to be on – World Championships and the pre-Olympic World Cup,” he wrote. “But with sub par skiing and shooting I am left disappointed. I was really disappointed after the relay today that I couldn’t catch Belarus, whom we are currently in a fight with for top 15 Nations Cup.”

    With just three races to go, Canada is ranked 16th in the Nations Cup, just 42 points behind Belarus (a World Cup win is worth 60 points). Making up the margin in Khanty-Mansiysk, where racing starts on Thursday, is doable, but the team will have to find their ski legs to make it happen.

    The incentive is definitely there: currently allowed just three starters per World Cup, moving into the top 15 would mean gaining a quota spot. Having three starters is tough for a number of reasons: it’s hard to score the points needed to move up, and it often means not fielding a relay team, unless someone can be recruited from a different nearby competition.

    But among the cheerful aspects of the weekend was the fact that, at last, the Canadian men were traveling with more than a full team. In a bid to win back some points, they brought four men, with Kurtis Wenzel competing in his very first World Cup as the third leg of the relay. He acquitted himself well, using just one spare round.

    “We had to push hard to get a fourth man out here,” Le Guellec said. “Since we generally miss Oberhof, and a relay, it’s really hard for us to stay in that top 15 benchmark given the tough competition. So missing the relay here on top of that was unthinkable.”

    Plus, there was another guest: Brendan Green, who along with Le Guellec led the team last season, but has been out for more than a year with a difficult recovery from a herniated disc. Green was in no shape to race, but he came along to see the venue anyway.

    “B-man was out here to get his own glimpse of the venue and tracks,” Le Guellec said. “It was honestly overwhelming to see him on skis and really good to see him out and about!”

    The recon Green was performing serves the same purpose as the test races: to learn what to tweak in the next year of training in order to be the best at the Olympics. For Le Guellec, the course previews were both a bit intimidating, and a bit familiar.

    “I definitely have my work cut out for me given the profile of the course,” he said. “It resembles Valcartier a whole lot, but I haven’t trained at home in the winter for close to a decade. Two weeks for Christmas doesn’t count!”

    Perras, though, more or less liked the courses.

    “I like the venue – the views are amazing and I live in Canmore,” he said. “The trails are hard and I like it that way. But the downhills are a bit much. I like to see a course where you have to use your head to win and you need to be in shape, without having to worry that someone is going to take you out.”

    So perhaps being bold, brave, and a good downhiller are a few notes that the racers will tuck away to remember while they’re training.

    With specific goals to work on now that he’s seen the venue, Le Guellec won’t let the bad results keep him down for long. After all, he’s been through this before.

    “The weekend doesn’t affect my confidence for next year,” he said. “We’re in a whole other part of the season right now, so this is not how it’s going to go down next year. The same thing happened before Vancouver: it didn’t go so well at the World Cup the year before. Then 2010 rolled around.”

    He was referring, of course, to his sixth, 11th, and 13th-place performances at the last Olympics. He doesn’t see any reason that can’t happen again – or something even better.

    Perras agreed.

    “I certainly haven’t lost any motivation and feel that I know what I need to accomplish this training season to make sure next year is my best,” he wrote. “The Canadian team isn’t done with Sochi. I feel next year is going to be the peak of many of my teammates’ careers in biathlon.”

     

  • World Championship Recap, And Photo Gallery of the U.S. in Ruhpolding

    World Championship Recap, And Photo Gallery of the U.S. in Ruhpolding

    Susan Dunklee shooting in the 15 k individual, where she finished fifth. NordicFocus/USBA.

    On Sunday, IBU Championships wrapped up in Ruhpolding, Germany, after eleven days of exciting racing that saw both dominating performances from overall World Cup leaders and refreshing victories and medals from lesser-known athletes.

    The big winners at the championships were Martin Fourcade of France and Tora Berger of Norway; Fourcade picked up three individual gold medals in the sprint, pursuit, and mass start, along with silver in the men’s relay. That was almost matched by Berger, who won gold in the individual and mass start races, along with gold in the mixed relay and bronze in the women’s relay.

    The Swedish team also had phenomenal results. Carl Johan Bergman had what is probably the best result of his life, winning bronze in the sprint and silver in the pursuit. His wife then gave birth to their first child and he visited home before returning to place sixth in the mass start, a race where his teammates Bjorn Ferry and Fredrik Lindstrom took silver and bronze. Helena Ekholm also won bronze in the individual.

    Slovenia, meanwhile, gave talented underdogs everywhere a reason to keep dreaming after they crossed the line first in the mixed relay and ended up with silver due to a time correction from a target malfunction. Then a few days later Jakov Fak took gold for real, winning the men’s 20 k individual.

    Other leading World Cup athletes also saw success, with Magdalena Neuner of Germany and Darya Domracheva of Belarus going 1-2 in the sprint and then swapping places in the pursuit.

    In the relays, traditional power prevailed, with Norway taking the men’s title and Germany the women’s. The two countries had the most fans in attendance at the championships, leading to a party atmosphere for those victories.

    The U.S. team was led by a fifth-place result from Susan Dunklee in the women’s 15 k individual and a tenth-place finish from Tim Burke in the men’s 10 k sprint. Lowell Bailey placed 20th in both the sprint and pursuit, and Dunklee also placed 17th in the mass start.

    The Canadians saw JP Le Guellec ski to 14th in the sprint, while Zina Kocher finished in the top 30 of every race she entered. Megan Heinicke had a strong individual race, placing 30th.

    Below are links to FasterSkier’s race reporting from the Championships (results can be found at the IBU Datacenter); we also wrote about USBA’s development program, featured an interview with Eurosport commentator Sigi Heinrich, asked the U.S. women why their hair was pink, and gave you audio and video of the atmosphere at biathlon’s biggest venue. At the bottom is a gallery of new photos – while FasterSkier was on course, our reporter was also scurrying around doing interviews and missed some of the action. To fill in some of the gaps, the United States Biathlon Association has shared a collection of photos from the Nordic Focus Picture Agency. Enjoy!

    Thursday March 1, Mixed 2 x 6 + 2 x 7.5 k Relay

    Race Report | U.S. report | Canadian report | Photo Gallery

    Saturday March 3, 7.5 / 10 k Sprints

    Men’s report | Women’s report | North American men | North American women | roundup

    Sunday March 4, 10 / 12.5 k Pursuits

    Men’s report | Women’s report | Canadian report | U.S. report

    Tuesday March 6, Men’s 20 k Individual

    Race report | Canadian report | U.S. report

    Wednesday March 7, Women’s 15 k Individual

    Race report | Susan Dunklee story | U.S. report | Canadian blog post

    Friday March 9, Men’s 4 x 7.5 k Relay

    Race report | U.S. report | Canadian blog post

    Saturday March 10, Women’s 4 x 6 k Relay

    Race report | U.S. report | Canadian report

    Sunday March 11, 12.5 / 15 k Mass Starts

    Men’s race report | women’s race report  | North American blog post

    Photos from Nordic Focus Via the U.S. Biathlon Association

  • Skiing, Shooting Woes Combine In Disappointing Day for Canadian Men

    Skiing, Shooting Woes Combine In Disappointing Day for Canadian Men

    Jean Phillipe Le Guellec leads Michael Greis of Germany during the individual race.

    RUHPOLDING, Germany – As has been the case so many times this week, the Canadian men’s team was simply not satisfied after the 20 k World Championships individual on Tuesday.

    “The course was nice,” Jean Phillipe Le Guellec told FasterSkier, struggling to find some positive notes from the race.

    His performance, he said, was not one of them.

    “My shooting was just – there was nothing I could do,” he lamented. “You can’t come in too hard to the range, it’s impossible to do because you have that long downhill. There was no wind. It was easy conditions. I have no excuse, I have no idea what the hell happened. They just didn’t go down.”

    Le Guellec, who finished 14th in the sprint, usually paces the Canadian team – and without partner in crime Brendan Green, the squad has relied on him more than ever this week for strong results.

    But in the individual, where errors are penalized by a minute of added time rather than a 150 meter penalty loop, Le Guellec missed six shots over four stages. He didn’t have a single clean five-target bout.

    That dropped the Shannon, Quebec, native to 71st, the last of the Canadian men.

    Instead of Le Guellec, the team was led by Scott Perras, who missed three shots and placed 45th.

    “It was definitely my best race so far, mostly because of the shooting,” Perras told FasterSkier. “I got to ski around a lot of good guys, so that definitely helped me out in the early part. My form is not quite where I want it to be still. I don’t know why.”

    After finishing in the top 30 in a pair of sprints earlier this season, including in Oslo just three weeks ago, Perras had high expectations that he was peaking for World Championships. But he placed 50th in the sprint and 54th in the pursuit, and has felt sluggish all week.

    “In between Christmas and now I felt good,” he said. “It was nice, and then here, it’s just rough during the days even when I’m not skiing. The skiing is actually better than the other 23 hours of the day. I was just hoping for more.”

    Nathan Smith finished 61st and Marc-Andre Bedard 69th with four penalties apiece.

    For Le Guellec, even though the race was a disappointment, he was perhaps not as frustrated as he might have been in other years. At the end of last season, Le Guellec came down with mononucleosis and missed several months of training.

    “Coming into the season I had no expectations whatsoever,” he explained. “I had to take two months off after the season, and then obviously you get sort of de-trained in a way. After that I was doing zone one and I was going like 180 [beats per minute heart rate]! I was going bonkers.

    “So I’m happy with the season,” Le Guellec concluded. “My Worlds started strong, but they ended with a – I wouldn’t say a bad note, but I was hoping for better. Right now I only have half the training load that most people had for the last year, so we’ll see. The relay is on Friday, and I’ll try to have fun then and just enjoy the rest of them.”

    Full results

    Race Report

  • Canada’s Le Guellec, Kocher Finish 26th in World Champs Pursuits; Team’s Seven Starters Have Mixed Success

    Canada’s Le Guellec, Kocher Finish 26th in World Champs Pursuits; Team’s Seven Starters Have Mixed Success

    Canada's Megan Imrie (2nd from left) was already attacking on the first hill out of the stadium.

    RUHPOLDING, Germany – Two Canadians had high hopes for Sunday’s pursuit: Jean Phillipe Le Guellec was 14th after Saturday’s World Championship sprint, and teammate Zina Kocher 18th. They were poised, it seemed, to have career-best finishes.

    Le Guellec had never finished in the top ten at World Championships, but started just 12 seconds outside it on Sunday. Kocher was shooting for a top-16, which would have guaranteed her funding through Athletics Canada for the next season.

    Bjorn Ferry (SWE), Le Guellec, and Dominik Landertinger (AUT).

    But neither of them hit the mark, and both ended up 26th at the end of the day.

    Le Guellec later wrote in an e-mail that he “wasn’t in such a good mood” after his 12.5 k, four-stage race.

    “Looking at results, obviously I stumped down quite a bit,” he said. “The race was going ok until the last shooting basically.”

    Le Guellec started off strong, cleaning his first stage and moving into the top ten, where he skied with Lowell Bailey of the U.S. and Andreas Birnbacher and Simon Schempp of Germany. Even after missing a shot in the second stage, he dropped no lower than 11th, and was back into ninth after a clean third stage.

    But in the last stage, he missed two shots. Le Guellec’s ski speed also didn’t do him any favors – he said after the sprint, too, that he had felt slow – and rather than regaining places on the final loop, he lost them.

    “I came out of the penalty loop in 17th,” he explained. “The last lap was no different [than the others], and I got passed by seven guys in the last kilometer of the race. I had nothing in the tank to fight back and dropped to 26th.”

    The Canadian, who placed 11th in this event at the 2010 Olympics, was very frustrated with his skiing; his course time was just the 38th-fastest of the day, and with only a single athlete (Roland Lessing of Estonia) cleaning the race, his solid shooting could have gained him more spots.

    “My skis were fast once again, but my ski shape was not great, and it’s not like the sprint where I felt not so good but actually did decent,” Le Guellec lamented. “I was getting passed by trains on all laps. With only a day of rest before the individual, I’m hoping my form will be better.”

    Kocher (r) and Poland's Krystyna Palka in their first standing bout.

    Kocher faced an opposite problem in her 10 k pursuit. Starting 18th, she immediately missed two shots and dropped to 27th.

    “Right off the bat, it had me a little bit off my game from the get-go,” she told FasterSkier in an interview at the finish line. “At the beginning I kept it easy, that was kind of my plan, just to draft and come in sure of myself. It didn’t quite work out when I missed two.”

    Kocher had discussed earlier the difficulty of dealing with the 16th-place requirement, and she said that after her initial errors, some of the pressure actually disappeared. After cleaning the second stage, she skied in the low twenties, and it seemed that with half the race still remaining, she might reach her goal after all.

    “When I was around 20th, I was like, ‘okay, I’m back in the game,’” Kocher said.

    But she struggled in standing, missing one and two shots in the two stages, and wound up, just like Le Guellec, in 26th.

    “I guess it was just a really hard race,” she said. “On that last standing I was getting pretty shaky. It was pretty hard work skiing today. So it’s not what I wanted, I really wanted 85 or 90% shooting, and that would have put me in that top 16 for sure.”

    Now, both racers are left looking forward to the longer, four-stage individual races which will be held Tuesday and Wednesday. His next race would be a challenge, Le Guellec admitted, especially in the deep, soft snow that has characterized the competitions so far.

    “The 20 k course is very demanding, and this is without taking conditions into account,” he wrote.

    Kocher was more positive, and pointed out that with two top-thirty finishes, she was in good shape to snag a position in the exclusive mass start race.

    “I’m psyched for the individual, and now I might have a good chance for the mass start,” she said.

    The Rest of the Canucks

    Megan Heinicke and Italy's Michela Ponza approaching the range.

    Team Canada started the day on Sunday with lots of opportunities – they had put a total of three women and four men in the pursuit out of four possible starters in each race in the sprint. The rest of the team had started much lower down the results sheet, but there potential to move up.

    Of the remaining starters, Megan Imrie and Megan Heinicke both gained at least ten places, with Imrie advancing from 51st to 39th and Heinicke from 52nd to 42nd.

    Imrie used strong shooting to make her move, only missing a single shot and gradually picking up a few places in each loop. Her racing earned her World Cup points, which are awarded to the top 40, for just the sixth time this season.

    Heinicke just barely missed that cutoff, but had a strong race as well, cleaning both prone stages and then missing a single shot in each standing stage.

    In the men’s race, Nathan Smith started 45th and after going zero-one in prone had moved up to the low 30s. But in his first standing stage, he had difficulty with the wind and missed three shots, dropping back down further than his starting position. He missed a single shot in the final stage and finished 43rd.

    Nathan Smith leading Scott Perras around the penalty loop.

    “Even the [stage] where I hit four, it was a hard four to hit,” Smith said of the standing stages. “It wasn’t easy. Maybe I should go a little bit easier into the range – I went a little bit too hard on the last large hill because I was trying to stay with guys.”

    Despite the frustration of his shooting, Smith told FasterSkier that he thought his skiing had improved from Saturday, and that it was good to have head-to-head competition and better peers on the trails, compared to the sprint where he was seeded with mostly slower skiers.

    “It was fun,” Smith said. “Especially on the flat part, there was some headwind, so it was a lot easier to stay behind someone. I think I only got to do that one lap – sometimes I had to pull the guys. But you could tell that there was a big difference.”

    Scott Perras started 50th and ended 54th on the back of six penalties, while Marc-Andre Bedard moved up from 55th to 52nd.

    Bedard said the race was “rough, but fun,” and that his four penalties were not enough to gain spots at this level of competition.

    “The fastest skiers are already up front,” he explained. “So to climb up from far behind – if you’re top 30, that’s good for moving around, but if you’re in the back, like 50s, to climb up then the others in front have to do very badly, because usually on the World Cup nobody shoots under 80%.”

    Like Le Guellec, Bedard said his skiing could use some work – but he wasn’t completely discouraged about his prospects for the individual race.

    “The skiing was not so strong, so I really concentrated on my shooting,” he said. “That pace was good for the individual, but a little too slow for the pursuit.”

    Full men’s and women’s results

    Men’s and women’s race reports

    Marc-Andre Bedard in action.

     

  • World Championships Sprint Roundup: Bergman’s Baby, Neuner Is Cold As Ice, and Much, Much More

    World Championships Sprint Roundup: Bergman’s Baby, Neuner Is Cold As Ice, and Much, Much More

    Tarjei Bø of Norway leading Jaroslav Soukup of the Czech Republic on the range; Bø, who finished third in this race last season, placed 17th.

    RUHPOLDING, Germany – With more than 250 racers contesting yesterday’s World Championships 7.5 and 10 k sprints, there was plenty of news that didn’t make it into our race reports – both from international stars and from our own interviews with U.S. and Canadian athletes. Here are some of the notable bits that we couldn’t fit in:

    – Bronze medalist Carl Johan Bergman of Sweden wasn’t really expecting a medal yesterday, but he was expecting something else – a baby. His wife, Norwegian biathlete Live Kjersti (Eikeland) Bergman, was due yesterday but hasn’t yet given birth. “Carl Johan is always very focused when he is there, for the most part,” she told Swedish daily Expressen before promising to “keep the baby in” until after Sunday’s pursuit so he could concentrate on winning another medal.

    – Bergman and French gold medalist Martin Fourcade hammed it up in the press conference when a journalist asked Bergman “what kind of person Fourcade is for you.” After making some jokes with his competitor, Bergman answered the fairly awkward question by saying Fourcade was an excellent biathlete, and that at least they had a good ski company in common (Rossignol).

    – The translation is a little rusty, but Norwegian biathlete Synnøve Solemdal basically called gold medalist Magdalena Neuner “cold as ice” in an interview with broadcaster NRK. “It looks like she is relaxing on a Sunday before each race,” said Solemdal, who had much more trouble, missing four shots and placing 32nd. “She just stands there and enjoying herself and looking very relaxed. It does not seem like she has any nerves. It’s fun to watch… She has so much pressure on her, just like all the Germans. What she did today deserves respect, and it has been a big inspiration for me.” The piece included shots of Neuner being mobbed by German media, and reported that she was so busy that she didn’t make it to the press conference until an hour and a half after she finished the race.

    – In other Norwegian news, NRK reported that Ole Einar Bjørndalen has cut his shooting times in half since the 2002 Olympics, where he won four gold medals. The legend placed 21st in the sprint, but is not out of the running for the pursuit; he won the last World Cup pursuit in Kontiolahti, Finland.

    – Teammate Lars Berger boasted earlier that he could win the sprint. Instead, he missed four shots and placed 32nd.

    – The men’s race was rough for the home country. Despite high expectations, the team was led by Andreas Birnbacher in 16th place. The race marked the return of double Olympic gold medalist Michael Greis, who underwent foot surgery in August. He contested a few World Cup races this season, but the 35-year-old hadn’t competed since mid-January; he finished 26th yesterday.

    – Thanks to the combination of ice and slush, quite a number of biathletes fell during yesterday’s races; Tim Burke made it through cleanly, but was sporting a bloody shin from a bobble during his warmup. Ever gracious to the athletes, Eurosport put together a highlight clip of all the crashes, which you can watch here.

    – JP Le Guellec of Canada, who placed 14th, was actually impressed with how the organizing committee, led by TD Max Cobb, who is also the president of the U.S. Biathlon Association, dealt with the challenges of warm temperatures, sun, and slush. “I think the organizing committee did a really good job at salting the place, and making the more important spots harder,” he told FasterSkier. “But the sun is blaring, so there’s only so much you can do.”

    – Teammate Megan Imrie agreed, saying, “I’ve seen it a lot worse here with the slush, and I’ve also seen it very icy. So these conditions, I’ll take them.”

    -Meanwhile, Megan Heinickeis representing Canada at World Championships despite skiing just one World Cup this season; she lives in Germany and is not on the national team program, but attended trials races and qualified for the team. She was disappointed with her sprint but said that the pursuit might be better. “I think I’m just one of those people who has to get some carbon out of the system – generally I do better in the second race of back-to-back races, so I’m hoping I’m a little more engaged somehow,” she told FasterSkier.

    – U.S. racer Sara Studebakerwas upset after the mixed relay, but she thinks she’s on an upward trajectory after tying for 49th in the sprint, a result she called “fine” but nothing special: “If it keeps going from here it could be really good. I think pursuits suit me well – I can shoot well, usually. That can help a lot, and especially with prone, if you can shoot well then you can move up.”

    – Susan Dunklee was probably the best American hope for a good finish in the sprint, but she struggled right out of the start, missing three shots in prone. She spent the rest of the race pushing the pace on the trails and made the pursuit. ” That’s kind of my eternal strategy, is always to just take it out on the course, on skis, any time the shooting goes wrong,” she said.

    – Starting last in bib 118, Dunklee bumped a few people down the results sheet long after they thought they were safe. Teammate Annelies Cook received a bump, although she was expecting it, as she knew Dunklee was behind her. Starting with bib 115, Cook crossed the line in 60th, which would have made the cut for the pursuit. But Bib 116, Dorothea Weirer of Italy, finished one spot in front of her, and then Dunklee crossed the line and Cook ended up 62nd. “It just sucks,” she said. “So close. I was gaining and I knew it was really close, but then [Weirer] came in and pushed me out, and Susan came in… I’m bummed that I missed [three] shots. I think it was a decent race for me, otherwise.”

  • Canada Held Back By Slow Skiing, Disastrous Standing Stage by Kocher

    Canada Held Back By Slow Skiing, Disastrous Standing Stage by Kocher

    Canada's third racer, Jean Phillipe Le Guellec, leaving the range.

    RUHPOLDING, Germany – After placing sixth in a World Cup mixed relay earlier this season, the Canadian team came into today’s race at World Championships with high hopes. But they couldn’t handle the heat – literally, in this case, as temperatures neared 50 and the snow turned to slush.

    “Everything in the sun is pretty soft and mushy,” second-leg racer Zina Kocher told FasterSkier after the race. “It’s actually a pretty hard race, not just because of the snow – I can handle the slush – but it’s really hot. I’m dying right now!”

    Instead of the top result they had envisioned, the Canadians found themselves in 18th place at the end of the day.

    “It was disappointing,” Kocher sighed. “I think we all wanted a top eight.”

    That seemed out of reach for the Canadians right from the start. They were already at a disadvantage after losing Brendan Green to a back injury, but they were still not expecting to be sitting in 19th-place after Megan Imrie’s scramble leg.

    “Megan shot pretty well, but I haven’t talked to her, and I think she fell,” Kocher said.

    Kocher starting on her leg of the relay, still optimistic about gaining places.

    Kocher is currently ranked 23rd in the world, and seemed like a sure bet to pull Canada up through the field. But the usually speedy Alberta native wasn’t as fast today, and after one stage had only gained two places.

    Then, in standing, disaster struck. Kocher used all three spare rounds and was still left with three black targets. She had to ski three penalty loops, which is practically unheard of in relay racing. After the race, Kocher explained that the harsh 4 p.m. light, which created a stark contrast between bright sun and dark shadows, had been a challenge in the standing stage.

    “In zero I actually had a piece of white paper covering my right eye, and yesterday when I was training I thought that by the time I would race I wouldn’t [need] that,” she said. “But I should have worn it because by the time I came in for standing, I had a really hard time distinguishing the white and the black, so I really struggled.”

    Kocher dropped to 20th, and was unable to make up any ground on the final two-kilometer loop.

    Despite only using a single spare round, Jean Phillipe Le Guellec was also unable to move up. Anchor leg Nathan Smith gained two spots, but the team still landed about ten places lower on the results sheet than it was hoping.

    “Being that there’s no wind, and it’s a downhill [into the range], people are shooting really well,” Kocher said. “We just couldn’t get that gap back… I just tried to go for it, but it really didn’t work out at all, I’m very, very disappointed.”

    While Kocher’s difficulty on the range is an easy scapegoat for the team’s poor result, ski times were also slow. Imrie had just the 20th-fastest course time of the 27 scramble skiers, while Kocher – who was justifiably tired from skiing nearly an extra half a kilometer in the penalty loop – and Le Guellec were the 16th-fastest skiers on their legs. Smith’s time was the 12th-best among anchors.

    Still, in terms of improving, Kocher’s shooting woes are the most straightforward to fix.

    “Definitely I’ll be figuring out something, if it’s sunny again, how to deal with that,” she said. “And just remembering that it’s one race, we still have a few more, and all of our individual races.”

    Race report

    Results

  • American Men Unable to Capitalize on Sprint Success, Burke Leads with 16th in Nove Mesto Pursuit

    American Men Unable to Capitalize on Sprint Success, Burke Leads with 16th in Nove Mesto Pursuit

    Tim Burke led the U.S. team in Nove Mesto today. Photo: NordicFocus/USBA.

    With the U.S. men’s team notching their best day ever in Saturday’s sprint, hopes were high that the team could place athletes in the top ten or even the top five in today’s pursuit.

    But although the Americans were frequently close, they couldn’t pull it off. After starting with bib 6, Russell Currier missed a shot in the first prone stage which dropped him to 12th; and while Tim Burke, starting with bib 11, was able to clean both prone stages and move into the top ten, penalties in the standing stages dropped him back out of it.

    Burke finished 16th, leading the American team.

    “I was very happy with my skiing today but I just could not quite get the shooting together for the last two stages,” he wrote in an e-mail to FasterSkier. “I felt comfortable and I thought I was taking good shots but the targets just would not fall.”

    He was able to stay in the top 20 despite five penalties thanks to his skiing: Burke notched the ninth-fastest time over the 12.5 k course. He missed a block of training in the spring and early summer after getting surgery for compartment syndrome, but at this point in the season it’s not slowing him down.

    “I feel like I am getting stronger on the skis with every race now so I am really looking forward to next week,” he said. “Hopefully I can finally combine a good ski race with solid shooting.”

    Bailey was just two places and seven second behind his teammate. He had three penalties, and moved from 21st up to 18th.

    “The shooting was again extremely challenging today, especially in standing, so I was happy to end the day with only three misses,” he told FasterSkier.

    Hakkinen on the hunt. Photo: NordicFocus/USBA.

    Jay Hakkinen, too, improved several places; after cleaning both prone stages and moving from 31st to 20th at the race’s halfway point, he lost his touch in the standing stages and missed two shots in each of them. Still, he finished 27th.

    That left Currier – the one who’d had the best shot at the top five, and who even after the initial penalty had seemed set to finish in the top 20. With a single missed shot in each prone stage and two more in the initial standing stage, he sat in 17th place. He was also skiing fast – at the end of the day, he owned the 13th-fastest course time.

    “Prone was decent and ski speed was great,” Currier told FasterSkier. “The wax techs really nailed it today.”

    Currier was ultimately done in by the wind, however, which roughly doubled in speed during final shooting stage, right when athletes’ legs begin to be particularly shaky and shooting becomes the most difficult. Currier missed four shots.

    “The wind was an issue,” Currier said. “Consistent wind isn’t the best, but it’s manageable. It’s the random gusts that make it impossible to deal with. That’s more or less what I had in the last standing stage.”

    After 600 meters of penalty loops, Currier tumbled to the mid-30s. Though he had an extra half-kilometer of skiing in his legs, he still attacked the final loop and skied into 35th place. As he crossed the finish line, he made frustrated gestures at the cameras.

    A few hours later, though, he was able to see his performance in a more positive light.

    Currier in one of the prone stages. Photo: NordicFocus/USBA.

    “Even though today was not a great race, it was not too much of a bad race either when you break it down,” he said.

    Overall, his results from his first weekend of World Cup racing this season leave him enthusiastic.

    “The original goal for the season was two top 40’s,” he explained. “Technically I can cross that one off the list now. I would really like to stay in the points from here on out just to prove that Saturday’s result was not a fluke of any sorts. This week’s race series proves that everything is on good pace. If I play my cards right it could be a very good season.”

    Hopefully, the men can continue to work together. At various points in today’s race, Burke and Currier, Bailey and Currier, and Burke and Bailey were together.

    “It was fun to be around both Russell and Lowell during the race today,” Burke said. “I think this helps give the race a more relaxed feel because it seems more like practice.”

    Bailey agreed.

    “It was great to have all the guys in it to the end today,” he said. “It was almost like one of our team time trials!”

    Mixed Results for Canadians

    After starting in 32nd and 35th positions, Canadians Brendan Green and Jean-Phillipe Le Guellec saw their races take opposite trajectories.

    For Green, the pursuit went pretty much as planned. He missed only a single shot over four stages and slowly crept up to 20th place.

    “The wind definitely still made a strong presence, but I took my time in the range, made sure my standing set up was solid, and thankfully ended the day with just one penalty,” he told FasterSkier.

    While he was pleased with what he called a “pretty good day”, the usually speedy Canadian said that he hasn’t felt his best. That was illustrated by his ski time, which was the 31st-fastest today.

    “I found the racing a little tougher on the whole,” he said of the pursuit. “I felt a little flat and more tired skiing today, but thankfully my shooting kept me in the game.”

    The same could not be said of Le Guellec, who missed six shots and did not finish the race. While several athletes shot just as poorly – Currier, for example, as well as last year’s overall World Cup leader Tarjei Bø of Norway – they had the luxury of starting with higher bib numbers, so even with many penalties they were still skiing in the mix.

    After Le Guellec’s missed shots, he was well out of the top 40, and decided to drop from the race instead of completing the final loop.

    The final Canadian starter, Scott Perras, started with bib 45, missed six shots, and dropped to 47th.

    Despite the team’s up-and-down fortunes and the difficult conditions here in Nove Mesto – which is a new addition to the World Cup schedule – Green said he had enjoyed his stay.

    “When the weather cooperates I like the venue here,” he told FasterSkier. “The course is solid and the fans are awesome! All in all I’m quite happy with my week of racing.”

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