Tag: Marie Dorin

Henkel Doubles Up in Fort Kent; Studebaker Makes Mass Start

Sara Studebaker (USA) on her way to 27th in Saturday's 12.5 k pursuit. Photo, flyingpointroad.com

Germany’s Andrea Henkel skied to her second straight World Cup win on Saturday in Fort Kent, besting her teammate Magdalena Neuner by 25 seconds in the 10 k pursuit.

Neuner and Henkel came into the final shooting stage together, and Neuner, a stronger skier, looked to have the race wrapped up when she hit her first four targets. But her last round went awry, and she couldn’t overcome the 25-second deficit she accumulated in the penalty loop—not with Henkel going clean.

France’s Marie Dorin was third, moving up from bib number seven as one of just three women to hit all 20 of her targets.

Sara Studebaker (USA), meanwhile, was the top North American in 27^th, using a solid 17-for-20 shooting to collect her fourth top-30 in as many individual races. The result helped her become the last woman to qualify for Sunday’s mass start—her first ever—despite struggling on course.

“Out on the tracks, it was not my day,” she said. “On the range, three penalties, with the way I was feeling today skiing—I think it was a good result for me…To not have your best day and still be in the top 30 is pretty good.”

Three Canadians started, in Rosanna Craword, Claude Godbout, and Zina Kocher, but all of them struggled on the range and were lapped.

Germany's Andrea Henkel racing to the win. Photo, flyingpointroad.com

At the front, it was a battle between Henkel and Neuner—the first and third starters—for the latter part of the race.

Their teammate Miriam Goessner, the second starter, was in the mix until the second shooting stage, when she came apart and missed four shots.

Goessner typically struggles with her rifle, but she had held together in Friday’s sprint and raced to second place with just two penalties. Her seven total misses in Saturday’s pursuit knocked her back to 10^th, but at just 20 years old, she’s still got plenty of time to figure things out on the range.

“I know if I was 19 or 20 years old, I’d have to collect experience, too. I think it’s normal—when she’s 24, I think she’ll be a really, really good biathlete,” Neuner said.

Neuner herself isn’t known for her prowess in shooting, and indeed, she missed two shots in her first stage on Saturday. It took her two more loops with no misses to draw even with Henkel, who hit 14 of 15 in her first three trips to the range.

When the two came back to the stadium for their final shooting stage, Neuner knew that if she hit all her targets, she’d likely win. But a hiccup on her last shot cost her the race.

“I was thinking, and this was not very good,” she said.

With a third place from Friday’s sprint and a second place on Saturday, Neuner will get one last crack at a win in Fort Kent in Sunday’s mass start. But to do it, she’ll have to scale the course’s massive climb—which she called the “Mount Everest of biathlon”—five more times.

She’ll also have to contend with Henkel, who is on a tear here after less impressive results last week in Presque Isle, where she was still on the mend from an illness.

In two races in Fort Kent, Henkel has won both, hitting 29 of 30 total shots. And over the 10 kilometers of skiing on Saturday, she was just 30 seconds off Neuner, who had the best course time of the day.

To win on Sunday, Neuner can likely afford just one more penalty than Henkel—not to mention the fact that there will be 28 other women gunning for the victory.

“I think it will be a tough race tomorrow,” Neuner said. “But I think my chances are good.”

Link to full results.

February 12, 2011
Berger Takes Women’s Pursuit in Presque Isle; Studebaker 28th

Biathlon is a tough sport to dominate, with millimeters often meaning the difference between a missed target, and a win and second place. But over the past few weeks, Norway’s Tora Berger has still been close to unstoppable, with five victories in her past six races.

After a minor hiccup in Friday’s sprint—in which she finished second—Berger was back to the top spot on the podium on Sunday, topping France’s Marie Dorin and Belarus’s Darya Domracheva.

Sweden’s Helena Ekholm, who started first after her win on Friday, was tenth, taking seven penalties. Sara Studebaker was top American, finishing 28^thwith six penalties, dropping her 14 places from her starting position.

“Today wasn’t the race that I wanted to have, but I was still 28^th, and that’s pretty good,” she said. “This was a fantastic weekend for me.”

Like the men, the women had to contend with nearly a foot of fresh powder that dropped on Presque Isle’s trails overnight. The men had skied it in somewhat, but the going was still tough.

“Conditions overall were pretty challenging—really soft track,” said American Haley Johnson, who moved up four places from her starting position of 42^nd, to finish 38^th. “You had to have a good strategy, to ski light and not push too hard and not be too powerful—work a little bit against your instincts.”

The wind, another factor in the men’s race, was even worse for the women. Not a single one cleaned the four-stage race—the closest was Russia’s Ekaterina Iourieva with one penalty, in 22^nd—and Berger won despite four missed shots.

As far as tough shooting races go, Studebaker said, “this was right up there, just with the challenging snow conditions making people more tired anyway—and then come into the range and it’s windy, it’s really tough.”

On the range, Berger and Dorin took divergent approaches to dealing with the wind. Dorin was deliberate in her shooting, taking between 30 and 40 seconds for each stage.

Berger, on the other hand, was aggressive—her trips to the range were just 20 to 30 seconds, and her total shooting time was the fastest of any woman. Dorin lost 44 seconds to Berger over the four stages, a gap larger than the margin of victory, which was ultimately half a minute.

“She shot like she does all the time,” Berger’s shooting coach, Egil Gjelland, told FasterSkier. “She has to attack if she wants to win.”

February 6, 2011
Broken Bones Can’t Stop Slovakian Biathlete

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The crowd at the women's 7.5k sprint at the 2010 Olympic Games.

Breaking two bones in your hand a month before the Olympic Games doesn’t sound like good preparation. But it sure didn’t hurt Anastasia Kuzmina.

Shaking off an early miss, as well as the injury she suffered in early January, the Russian-turned-Slovakian won her country’s first Olympic medal in biathlon—and its first-ever gold in the Winter Games—on Saturday in the women’s 7.5k sprint.

The announcers characterized Kuzmina’s win as a surprise, but her win comes after a silver medal in last year’s World Championships, affirming her ability to compete at the highest level after giving birth to her first child in 2007.

An early starter—bib 19 of 88—she faced a long wait after finishing to see if she’d won. But instead of standing around in the steady drizzle that fell all afternoon, Kuzmina said that she went inside to change, preferring to minimize the suspense. When she emerged, she found that she was the winner by a second and a half over Germany’s Magdalena Neuner. Marie Dorin (FRA) took the bronze.

Germany's Magdalena Neuner, en route to second place

Ivor Lehotan, the Vice President for Information of the International Biathlon Union—and a Slovakian—said that Kuzmina moved to the country two years ago to be with her husband and coach, Daniel Kuzmin.

While Slovakia had been knocking on the door with a number of fourth- and fifth-place finishes at various championships, Lehotan said that it took someone with Kuzmina’s combination of Slovakian calm, and Russian strength and passion—an ideal mix for biathlon—to take the program to the next level.

She missed her first shot of the day, in the prone stage, but then went on to hit the next four in that round, and all five in the standing. Kuzmina and Neuner, with one penalty each, were the only athletes in the top-nine who were able to overcome even a single miss—everyone else shot clean.

With the rain, and with temperatures above freezing, race officials applied fertilizer to the course to firm it up—making “a huge difference from yesterday,” according to American Laura Spector, who finished 77^th.

“It was really nice actually—it wasn’t deep or slushy or anything,” she said. “It was actually quite fast.”

Saturday’s race was the first-ever Olympic experience for the whole American team, with the exception of Lanny Barnes, and none of the women were able to crack the top half of the field. Sara Studebaker was the closest, in 45^th—just one spot away. Barnes was another place behind Spector, in 78^th, while Haley Johnson was 80^th.

Spector, Studebaker, and Barnes each had only one miss—a poised performance from the first two, given that they had never competed on such a big stage.

“I was really nervous this morning,” Spector said. “I just had to tell myself I know how to prepare for a race…and I think that really helped calm me down.

German fans in the stands

The stands were packed with boisterous fans in the stands near the range, with hundreds standing shoulder to shoulder on a small hill that sat just off to one side. Different countries had their own fan sections, each decked out in national colors and waving flags. But very few fans ventured beyond

the stadium, making for some quiet race trails and an odd contrast, Spector said.

The American team raced in some sharp new spandex—American flag-themed, with stars and stripes on the shoulders. Studebaker said that they were an improvement on the old, solid blue suits.

Haley Johnson sporting the new American uniform

“You can actually tell who we are, which is great,” she said. “The dark blue suits—they tend to get blended in with everybody else.”

The Canadians women had an off day, led by Megan Tandy, who shot clean to finish in 46^th. Zina Kocher, who regularly had been in the top-20 this season, missed three shots and finished 65^th, while Rosanna Crawford and Megan Imrie were 72^nd and 76^th, respectively.

February 13, 2010