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.
The “International Biathlon Team” camp in front of the 30-point range at the sports school in Sirdal, Norway, with (front left to right) Norway’s Fanny Welle-Strand Horn, Tiril Eckhoff, and Elise Ringen, and Canada’s Rosanna Crawford, and (back left to right) Canada’s Brendan Green and Megan Heinicke, Norway’s Sinnøve Solemdal, Russia’s Ekatarina Yurlova, Finland’s Kaisa Mäkäräinen, American Susan Dunklee, Norway’s Marte Olsbu, and Canada’s Nathan Smith. (Photo: Matthias Ahrens)
It all started two years ago when Biathlon Canada’s head coach Matthias Ahrens struck up a conversation with highland-cow farmer Frode Oftedal at the World Cup in Oslo, Norway. There, Oftedal, also a biathlon enthusiast, invited the Canadians to come to Sirdal, Norway, for a training camp with the French team. The French biathletes had been returning to the sports school there to train since 2002 — because of Oftedal.
For Canada, the possibility became reality this spring when Ahrens asked Norwegian biathlon coach Arne Idland whether his A-team athletes (Rosanna Crawford, Megan Heinicke, Brendan Green, and Nathan Smith) could participate in the Blink rollerski festival in August. They could, and would, but before that, why not arrange a shooting camp with Norwegian personal shooting coach Joar Himle? Last year, the Canadians held a camp with Himle’s expertise at home in Canmore, Alberta. This time, they’d continue learning from him in Norway.
Three non-Canadians — Russia’s 2015 world champion Ekaterina “Katja” Yurlova, Finland’s Kaisa Mäkäräinen and American Susan Dunklee — caught wind of the camp and asked Himle if they could join, Ahrens explained in an email.
Of course they could, and the self-proclaimed International Biathlon Team was born. In the last few months before the nine-day camp in late July, Ahrens contacted the participants from various nations — including Norway and France — to coordinate workouts.
“At the end of the year World Cup party in Khanty-Mansiysk, I met Joar Himle,” Dunklee explained in an email. “He mentioned that he might put together an international women’s shooting training camp this summer around the Blink Festival. I was immediately interested.”
The “International Biathlon Team” enjoys some leisure time during a volleyball match at the sports school in Sirdal, Norway. (Photo: Matthias Ahrens)
Tonstad, the site of the Sirdal sports school where the athletes would stay and train, was just a short drive from Sandnes, where Blink is held annually. For Dunklee and other Blink participants, such as Crawford, Heinicke, Green, and Smith, that made it an easy choice for a training venue before Blink.
“Shooting has traditionally been my weaker link as a biathlete and my major focus for this training season,” Dunklee explained. “I spent the spring brainstorming how to speed up my shooting times with the US coaches and sports psychologist and we have taken satisfying steps already. We decided it might also be beneficial for me to cast the net a little wider too. Joar’s camp worked very well with the timing of the Blink Festival, which I was already planning to race, and our team’s Europe camp. I heard that some top World Cup athletes were planning to attend. It sounded like an opportunity worth trying out.”
Meanwhile in late July, the rest of the US Biathlon A-team, except Lowell Bailey, who got married July 11, attended a training camp in Östersund, Sweden.
“This part of the camp we are focusing on specific biathlon training,” U.S. women’s coach Jonne Kähkönen explained in an email. “There’s a really good roller loop at the stadium and a full range that typically has varying winds — no change this time, so good wind practice. We have already had a couple of sessions with some Swedish athletes joining in to mix it up and provide additional challenge on the head to head stuff at the range.”
They planned to stay there until Aug. 3, when Dunklee, Bailey and Leif Nordgren would rejoin the team after Blink for a week at the ski tunnel in Torsby, Sweden.
“Next week in Torsby the biggest focus is on the skiing and technique work,” Kähkönen said of the second part of their European camp.
The Sirdal training camp crew (from left to right): Biathlon Canada Head Coach Matthias Ahrens, Brendan Green, Nathan Smith, Katja Yurlova, Kaisa Makarainen, Susan Dunklee, Rosanna Crawford, and Norwegian personal shooting coach Joar Himle. (Photo: Matthias Ahrens)
In Sirdal, Canada brought its A-team, including Crawford and Heinicke, to work out with Yurlova, Mäkäräinen and Dunklee. Smith and Green coordinated sessions with some of the French men.
“We’ve been having discussions together as a group about different aspects of the shooting process,” Dunklee wrote. “Joar believes in the value of athletes taking ownership of their own training and in the value of learning from other people’s approaches. We have also benefited from sharing the range here with the French and Norwegian women’s teams and collaborating on a few workouts.”
“It’s been great getting to chat with other athletes at meals and see what they’ve been up to during the summer,” Crawford wrote in an email.
She explained that all of the morning workouts included everyone —“Kaisa, Katja, Susan, Megan and the boys,” while afternoon training was a bit more individualized. They worked on shooting twice a day with Himle, including some shooting drills with the French team one day and the Norwegian women another afternoon.
“We also got to go for a great classic ski with some of the Norwegian women,” Crawford wrote. “It’s a pretty impressive group of people with 3 of them having WCH medals!”
On Wednesday, the group parted ways, with several athletes heading to Sandnes for the Blink races from Thursday to Saturday. Afterward, the Canadian A-team will venture to Oslo for three days to train on the 2016 IBU World Championships course. Then Ahrens and Smith will return to Canmore, and Crawford and Green will venture to Östersund for a few more days of training.
“Our B-team is in Canmore and will go up to the Haig glacier next week before they leave for [the North American Summer Championships in] Jericho [Vermont] and the races there,” Ahrens explained. “Otherwise we are mainly training in Canmore until we go for a 2 week camp in Park City in the last week of September, first week of October.”
Canada’s Megan Heinicke (right) teamed up with Pietro Dutto of Italy to place third in the finale of the Frassinoro Biathlon Festival. (Photo: Davide Magnaghi)
Last weekend, a crowd of top international biathletes descended on the town of Frassinoro, Italy. Over a thousand years old but with just 700 residents, Frassinoro is home to one of the most ardent biathlon fanclubs in Italy. As part of their love for the sport, the clubs volunteers set up a summer biathlon festival each year.
Megan Heinicke was one of those who attended. The Canadian two-time Olympian, who lives in Klingenthal, Germany, traveled eight hours to get some facetime with her international friends and some race-intensity shooting workouts.
That included a time trial, shootouts, and a mixed-gender relay, where Heinicke and Italy’s Pietro Dutto teamed up to finish third.
Dorothea Wierer of Italy leads teammate Nicole Gontier, Eva Tofalvi or Romania, and Megan Heinicke of Canada in the finale of the Frassinoro Biathlon Festival. (Photo: Davide Magnaghi)
“From a direct training perspective, the races are really short and it’s nothing really training relevant,” she said. “I think it’s way more interesting just to go there for a few days. You’re in this awesome little valley and on the day before the race we did an uphill rollerski together. There’s some international training sessions, and that was for me as much or more valuable than the event itself.”
But the shortness of the rollerski loop – just one kilometer – didn’t take away from the value of the competitions for Heinicke, who has seen little head-to-head competition or even training so far this season.
She’d recommend it to “anyone, a colleague or a fan,” she said.
For the last four years, the village has constructed a four-lane shooting range in their soccer field just for the competition.
“They build wooden ramps, sort of, or paths, from the path into the soccer field, and they cover everything so it’s possible to rollerski there,” Heinicke said. “So it’s pretty funny, but it’s amazing because it works really well. Everything is created from nothing.”
Not for long. Federico Fontana, a wax tech who this year will be working with the American team this season, told FasterSkier that at long last, permitting came through to build a real shooting range and a rollerski loop.
International crowd: World Cup athletes from Italy, Slovenia, Romania, Canada, Estonia, and Great Britain – with many a World Championships medal between them – came to Frassinoro. (Photo: Davide Magnaghi)
“The first part of the work will start soon just the time for bureaucracy!” he laughed.
Fontana and the town’s other biathlon enthusiasts see it becoming a regional hub for the sport.
“Our goal is to build a summer training center and bring in our town teams and athletes, and complete with summer facilities,” he said. “We have a lot to offer during the winter with more than 50 kilometers of cross-country ski trails.”
Those trails have made Frassinoro a big place for cross-country skiing, even if its population is small. Tonino Biondini won national championships in the 1970’s, and more recent stars like Sabina Valbusa and Arianna Follis are now connected to the area too (Valbusa coaches juniors there). Besides Fontana, two other Frassinoro men are World Cup wax techs, Gianluca Marcolini for Norway and Simone Biondini for the Italians. A young female athlete is also now on the national team.
All that might help explain the atmosphere of the summer competitions.
“They call it a biathlon festival, and it really is a festival,” Heinicke said. “It’s a small town but they have a massive party tent and it feels like the entire town is there. To watch the races, and there’s also kids races and other events. There’s food in the tent, a big party, an awards ceremony. It’s very family-friendly, with everyone from kids to grandparents in attendance.”
Could something like this ever work in North America?
“Yes, but the big challenge is to build the hype,” Heinicke said. “Well, no, the biggest challenge would be to get international people, because the travel is so far. But for sure the kind of setup, to have a sort of nordic festival with some summer races and some kids events and some sort of party, cultural atmosphere, I can definitely see that as something that would be just a really cool, positive sport event anywhere.”
In that scene, Heinicke found herself going head to head with World Cup podium finishers Dorothea Wierer and Nicole Gontier from Italy, and Romanian World Cup winner Eva Tofalvi in shootouts.
Athletes and volunteers at the festival. (Photo: Davide Magnaghi)
Summer Training and Fall Plans
For Heinicke, that was perfect. After moving to Klingenthal this spring, she hasn’t been focusing on shooting, instead getting her feet under her and developing her training strategy.
“The time trial actually went pretty well,” she said. “This was my first shooting with race-pace intensity. I hit nine, and thought, okay, I still got it from the winter! So that was good.”
The relay didn’t go as smoothly – both she and Dutto shot “relatively poorly”, she said. (Tofalvi and Dominik Windisch of Italy teamed up for the win.) But it was still a good introduction back into shooting with intensity.
“Of course in the moment you really want to hit the targets, just like ever,” she said. “It’s fun and you want to win. But it’s totally no pressure and it’s totally fun.”
With shooting buoying her to best-ever finishes last season on the World Cup – she was in the top 15 four different times – Heinicke is now focusing on ramping up her ski technique and speed to be more competitive in the 2015-2016 season.
Heinicke competing in the finale. (Photo: Davide Magnaghi)
“Skiing-wise I think it will be a lot of technique this summer,” she said. “I saw from myself a few times last season that the potential was there to be more competitive in terms of ski speed and I feel like, and I got a lot of feedback, that ski technique is an area where I have possibly the most potential for improvement. This year I have already started with really specific ski technique goals and I’m planning on putting a lot more time into working on some details that I hope I can bring onto skis.”
She trains almost entirely alone in Klingenthal, where she moved because her son’s father lives there. For a week, she’ll train in Klingenthal and spend time with her son; then she’ll head to Ruhpolding or Oberhof, the biathlon centers of Germany, for time on the shooting range.
Klingenthal is a ski jumping and nordic combined center, but the nearest biathlon range is an hour away.
“It’s not too bad,” she said of the situation. “The rollerski track here is really fun. There’s lots of places to run and road bike. All the standard stuff is full speed ahead.”
Also full speed ahead are plans for other international trips this summer.
“I’m really looking forward to July because the top two Canadian men and women have a training camp in Norway,” Heinicke explained. “That includes me and I’ll join my team again. We’ll have a short training camp and then participate in the Blink festival. I’m super excited about that.”
She will also return to Canada in August with her son for a family wedding, and spend almost a month training there. After that, there’s German rollerski championships. She’ll likely spend time in the ski hall in Oberhof, and then the season will be about to start.
“I’m discovering a lot about myself, and I need to find different ways to communicate over the distance with friends and teammates and my coach,” Heinicke said. “Everything is long-distance this season. And I need to keep the motivation really high to work on the details, because I’ve never had a training year where I’m doing 80% of the work alone.
“On the plus side, it’s incredibly flexible!” she laughed.
Nathan Smith (left) on the podium at 2015 Biathlon World Championships in Kontiolahti, Finland. (Photo: Fischer/NordicFocus.com)
Biathlon Canada has announced its nominations for the 2015-2016 national team, and twelve athletes made the cut.
The team will be led by four senior athletes who had personal bests on the international stage last season. Calgary native Nathan Smith won a silver medal in the 10 k sprint at World Championships, and followed it up with his first World Cup victory, in a 12.5 k pursuit at the next World Cup.
Two teammates nipped at the podium in World Cup racing: Rosanna Crawford notched fourth- and fifth-place finishes, while Brendan Green finished fifth in a sprint in Antholz, Italy. Joining them on the “A” team will be Megan Heinicke, who collected four different career-best top-15 finishes over the course of the season.
The “B” team will be made up of a combination of senior athletes with championship experience, and younger athletes making the jump to the World Cup. Veteran and Olympian Scott Perras, as well as World Championships competitors Audrey Vaillancourt, Scott Gow, and Julia Ransom, have kept their spots. So too have Emma Lunder, who earned a career-best second place in an IBU Cup sprint this season, and Macx Davies, Christian Gow, and Sarah Beaudry, all of whom are beginning to see World Cup action.
Of that group, the Gow brothers had the biggest impact on the World Cup, teaming up with Smith and Green to finish fifth in the 4 x 7.5 k relay in Oslo, Norway, this season.
Only one athlete from last season’s team was not re-named. Zina Kocher, a three time Olympian, started the season on the World Cup but had a top finish of 48th. After moving down to the IBU Cup, she matched Lunder’s second-place result on home turf in Canmore.
Head coach Matthias Ahrens is signed on with the team for another year, along with coach Roddy Ward. Kathy Davies was added to the staff as an assistant coach.
Ukraine’s Valj Semerenko (r) celebrates her first World Championships victory on Sunday in the women’s 12.5 k mass start at 2015 IBU World Championships in Kontiolahti, Finland. She beat Germany’s Franziska Preuss by 6.2 seconds. (Photo: Kontiolahden Urheilijat/Risto Kuittinen)
KONTIOLAHTI, Finland — Perfect shooting wins the race, at least that was the adage that summed up the women’s 12.5-kilometer mass start on the final day of 2015 IBU World Championships.
Valj Semerenko, a 28-year-old Ukrainian with an Olympic gold medal from last year’s relay and multiple World Cup podiums, sat quietly in the pack throughout most of Sunday’s mass start. She didn’t charge to the front on the first lap, like Darya Domracheva of Belarus did. Instead, she positioned herself in the top 20 of 30 starters and waited for natural opportunities to move up.
Opportunities like the first prone stage, where she and 17 others cleaned on a bluebird, windless afternoon. Semerenko moved into 11th, 15.3 seconds back from Domracheva in first.
While the Belarusian set off for another blistering lap, leaving the range 8 seconds ahead of Russia’s Ekaterina Yurlova in second, Semerenko squeezed into the top 10 before the second shooting.
There, she cleaned again, along with nine others, including Domracheva. As Domracheva set out again in the lead, 6.5 seconds ahead of Russia’s Daria Virolaynen, it seemed like the race could very well continue along the same lines — with Domracheva jetting off the front.
That is, until Domracheva missed two in the third stage and dropped to eighth.
Ukraine’s Valj Semerenko (r) leads a five-woman chase pack into the range during Sunday’s 12.5 k mass start at 2015 IBU World Championships while chasing Darya Domracheva of Belarus (not shown), with Gabriela Soukalova of the Czech Republic, Germany’s Franziska Hildebrand, Russia’s Daria Virolaynen, and Germany’s Franziska Preuss, respectively.
Behind her, Semerenko led a chase pack of five into the range, with the Czech Republic’s Gabriela Soukalova, Germany’s Franziska Hildebrand, Virolaynen, and Germany’s Franziska Preuss, respectively.
The Ukrainian cleaned the first standing stage the fastest, heading out on her fourth lap two seconds ahead of Hildebrand and Preuss, and three seconds ahead of Soukalova — all of which cleaned as well. Domracheva was left with two penalty loops, emerging 36 seconds behind them.
Soukalova, Preuss and Semerenko took turns leading over the penultimate lap, while Hildebrand fell off the pace. In the final standing, Semerenko hit the last of her targets to complete her perfect 20-for-20 day, sending a clear message to the 29 women behind her. She left the range 19.1 seconds ahead of Preuss, who had her first penalty of the race in that stage, and Hildebrand cleaned her fourth stage to move back into third.
“I left the shooting range with Franziska Hildebrand and I thought, ‘Oh god, it’s going to be a hard loop,’ because she’s really in shape at the moment,’ ” Preuss recalled in a post-race press conference. “When I had a look back, I thought, ‘There are much more athletes now.’ I just wanted to give everything.”
While Preuss pushed to close the gap on the last lap, she couldn’t quite reach Semerenko, who finished 6.2 seconds ahead of her for her first World Championships title in 34:32.9.
“I was thinking that when I win, I’m gonna take the Ukrainian flag,” Semerenko told the IBU through a translator. “But when I got to the end with all the people chasing me, I just forgot with all the stress.”
She added that she was grateful for the support of her sister, Vita Semerenko, who has been sidelined this season with an injury.
“I would like to thank her for her support here, and actually she was at the track at the last hundred meters to give me the flag, but I only noticed her when I passed her,” Semerenko said with a laugh.
“I’m the champion and I’m so happy about it,” she said in the press conference. “It is important not only for me but also for my country. I’m full of emotion.”
While IBU Overall World Cup leader Darya Domracheva (Belarus) led the first half of Sunday’s 12.5 k mass start, she missed two standing targets and placed fourth in her last chance to medal at 2015 IBU World Championships in Kontiolahti, Finland. (Photo: Kontiolahden Urheilijat/Kari Kuninkaanniemi)
On the final lap, Italy’s Karin Oberhofer, Domracheva and Soukalova all caught Hildebrand, overtaking her before 11.8 k.
By the finish, Oberhofer dug deep to hold off Domracheva for bronze, finishing 2.1 seconds ahead of her and 12.6 seconds behind Semerenko. The Italian had rebounded from two early penalties — one on each prone stage.
“I had wonderful skis, I tried to do my best and I’m very, very happy,” Oberhofer said through a translator.
While Domracheva took fourth (+14.7) with the fastest overall course time, Soukalova was another 11.5 seconds behind in fifth (+26.2). Hildebrand finished sixth, 5.5 seconds later, and Germany put three in the top eight with Laura Dahlmeier in eighth (+39.9).
For Preuss, the silver matched her World Cup career best, in which she placed second in the mass start in January in Ruhpolding, Germany. On Friday, she helped the German women’s team achieve gold in the relay.
“The week started really good for me with my [21st] birthday [on March 11], then the gold medal in the relay,” Preuss said. “It was absolutely amazing to stand on top of the podium and unbelievable, and today, the second individual medal in the mass start, it’s really amazing.”
Dunklee 20th, Heinicke 24th
Susan Dunklee (US Biathlon) en route to 20th in the women’s 12.5 k mass start at 2015 IBU World Championships on Sunday in Kontiolahti, Finland. (Photo: USBA/NordicFocus)
Susan Dunklee narrowly qualified for the mass start in the 30th and final spot available after winning a tiebreaker with Finland’s Mari Laukkanen (Dunklee had the single-best individual result between of the two of them in 12th at these World Championships).
Considering that, she was grateful to have made it.
“It was kind of like an icing-on-the-cake moment,” Dunklee said after the race. “I’ve done what I needed to do at these championships, now I can kind of relax and have fun and see what happens. Sometimes I have my best races when I’m in that position. That didn’t happen today, but it could have.”
Dunklee finished 20th, 2:01 behind Semerenko, with five penalties: one on each prone stage, two in the first standing and another in the final standing.
“I haven’t seen where my shots went yet, but I have a feeling I had a couple split-outs,” she explained. “I could’ve sworn one of the standing I had a paddle quiver, but not fall. … I had a couple that felt like good shots, but I don’t know what happened. You miss one, it puts you right away toward 20th place coming into the second shooting, and then if I keep missing one, that holds steady. I knew [I needed to] not miss one if I wanted to move up.”
While the 29-year-old Dunklee left the range in 23rd after the last stage, she skied the fifth-fastest course time overall to finish in the top 20. She ended World Championships with two individual top-20 results, eighth place in the mixed relay, and 12th in the women’s relay.
“I always set really high goals for myself,” Dunklee said of her season overall. “I got a few top 10’s this year. I was hoping for more for sure. I was hoping to get to them earlier in the season, too. I’ve made some huge improvements with my ski technique. My shooting percentage I think has been a little more consistent, and now I’ve got a lot of things I know I want to work on as soon as summer rolls around.”
There is still one more stop on the World Cup circuit, with a sprint, pursuit and mass start in Khanty-Mansiysk, Russia, this coming Thursday through Sunday.
Megan Heinicke (Biathlon Canada) on her way to 24th in the women’s 12.5 k mass start at 2015 IBU World Championships on Sunday in Kontiolahti, Finland. It was only the second mass start of the 26 year old’s career.
Canadian Megan Heinicke qualified for Sunday’s race as well in 26th, for the second mass start in her career. She competed in her first two months ago at the Ruhpolding World Cup, where she placed 23rd.
“When I was zeroing today, I had to look at my coaches like, ‘Um, prone, prone, standing, standing, right?’ ” she said of the shooting order.
Heinicke got that down, hitting 19 of 20 targets with a single prone miss. One of nine women who shot 95 percent or better, she finished 24th, 2:22.2 behind the winner.
“That was a pretty awesome end to the season,” Heinicke said. “That was my last race and I had really good shooting again with just one miss.”
In the last eight days of individual racing, Heinicke tallied four top-30 results (including the mass start), with 21st in the 15 k individual, 23rd in the sprint and 28th in the pursuit. In all of those races and the women’s relay on Friday, she hit at least 90 percent of her targets.
“I guess I had really high expectations shooting-wise because I’ve been shooting so well,” Heinicke said of the mass start. “Skiing, I know to expect it to feel hard. We had really great skis this week so I was kind of trusting the skis to be good, and I just wanted to try to ski smart … and not kill myself the first few runs up the hill and make sure I was kind of settled enough for good shooting.”
Heading into her last lap, after cleaning her third-straight stage, she glanced at the scoreboard and saw that she was 20th.
“I was like, top 20, is it possible?” the 26 year old said. “… Mostly I was like, ‘It’s your last race, be ready to fight. Just kill yourself if you have to.’ ”
Despite a long bout with illness leading up to World Championships, which derailed some of her skiing fitness, Heinicke explained she was excited about the gains she’d made in shooting.
“This year has been a really big step forward for me in terms of shooting and consistency, so every time this keeps happening, I’m just … super happy, super relieved, and really, really motivated for next year,” she said.“I feel like I’m at maybe 60 percent of my potential skiing, with health and training things, so I’m like, ‘Oh, if I have a healthy season next year, if I can maintain the shooting, then I’m just really motivated about the potential.’ ”
She was also inspired by performances she’d witnessed by her teammate, Rosanna Crawford, as well as Dunklee.
“I’m watching … what they’re able to achieve, and I’m just like, ‘OK, I want to fight to be there, too,’ ” Heinicke said.
The start of the women’s 4 x 6 k relay at 2015 IBU World Championships on Friday in Kontiolahti, Finland, with Germany’s Franziska Hildebrand (4) near the front with Belarusian Nadezhda Skardino (3), Canada’s Megan Heinicke (10) at left, and American Susan Dunklee (21) near the back right. (Photo: USBA/NordicFocus)
KONTIOLAHTI, Finland — Not long after finishing the women’s 4 x 6-kilometer relay at 2015 IBU World Championships, Laura Dahlmeier sprinted past reporters to jump into the arms of one of her teammates, her rifle still attached to her back.
A German sports broadcaster employee quickly ushered the 21-year-old Dahlmeier and her three teammates to the Sportschau platform overlooking the stadium where they had just destroyed the 25-team field.
In the minutes before, Dahlmeier built on a 30-second lead her teammate Vanessa Hinz established on the third leg to anchor Germany to a 1:00.3-minute win. Hinz had used just one spare in prone to clean both her stages and skied the second-fastest third leg to leap from third into first — and considerably ahead of anyone else.
The German women’s relay rushes the finish line to greet anchor Laura Dahlmeier, who secured their win by more than a minute over France in the 4 x 6 k relay at 2015 IBU World Championships in Kontiolahti, Finland. The German team included Franziska Hildebrand, Franziska Preuss and Vanessa Hinz. (Photo: Kontiolahden Urheilijat/Kari Kuninkaanniemi)
With Franziska Hildebrand and Franziska Preuss skiing first and second, respectively, the Germans combined to secure gold ahead of France in second and Italy another 5.8 seconds back in third.
“I think it was a dream of all of ours to be world champion and now the dream is true,” Dahlmeier said in a press conference after her team used six total spares and avoided any penalties for the win in 1:11.54.6.
France, with Anais Bescond, Enora Latuilliere, Justine Braisaz, and Marie Dorin Habert (the latter of which had already won two golds at these world championships), had nine spares and one penalty from Braisaz on the third leg. Habert lifted them from fourth and 1:18.8 behind Germany to silver — her fourth medal in as many races in Kontiolahti, including silver in the mixed relay — using two spares in prone and none to clean standing.
The Italians, with Lisa Vittozzi, Karin Oberhofer, Nicole Gontier, and Dorothea Wierer, led through the second exchange after Oberhofer elevated them from fourth to first with four total spares and the fastest course time of the second leg. Gontier started out 2.5 seconds ahead of Czech Republic, but slipped to third after using two spares on each of her stages.
“I’m not so in shape now and I have to thank my teammates, they are so strong,” Gontier said in the press conference.
She tagged Wierer in third, behind Germany and Russia, respectively. Habert and Wierer both overtook Russia’s anchor Ekaterina Shumilova in the final stage, where Shumilova used two spares, Habert cleaned, and Wierer used one. Wierer left the range in third, 0.6 seconds behind Habert and about 10 seconds ahead of Shumilova in fourth.
“I was so worried about the Russian girl and I thought, ‘I don’t want fourth position,’ ” Wierer said. “I really give all for the team, but I was really, really nervous.”
The team that didn’t lack confidence was Germany, with three women under the age of 23 (Hildebrand is the oldest at 27).
“We are a young team and a strong team and it’s a perfect day for us,” Dahlmeier said after cleaning both her stages to tally her second World Championships medal (following her individual silver in last weekend’s pursuit).
“We are the best team,” she told Sportschau.
Russia, with Ekaterina Glazyrina, Daria Virolaynen, 15 k individual gold medalist Ekaterina Yurlova, and Shumilova, finished 10.7 seconds off the podium in fourth. Norway placed sixth, Ukraine was sixth, Belarus took seventh, and the season-long relay favorites, the Czech Republic (which won the mixed relay) finished eighth, 3:11.7 behind the winners.
The Czechs came through the first exchange in 12th after Eva Puskarcikova’s first leg, 26.4 seconds out of first, and Gabriela Soukalova lifted them to second, 2.5 seconds back. They fell to eighth during Jitka Landova’s third leg, in which she had a standing penalty and six spares. Anchor Veronika Vitkova used three spares and had two penalty laps in prone, then went on to clean standing before finishing eighth.
Canada 10th, U.S. 12th
While the Germans drew a significant amount of attention with their win, two North American squads stood together near the finish, cheering their teammates on with each passing lap before waiting to congratulate their anchors as well.
Rosanna Crawford (Biathlon Canada) racing the second leg in the women’s 4 x 6 k relay at 2015 IBU World Championships in Kontiolahti, Finland. Despite a penalty, she brought her team from 14th to 11th, and the Canadians finished 10th. (Photo: Biathlon Canada/NordicFocus)
Canada’s second leg, Rosanna Crawford was one of them, standing near the finish and looking for her teammate Julia Ransom, who had anchored their team to 10th.
Audrey Vaillancourt had tagged Ransom in 10th, improving one place after Crawford put her in 11th at the second exchange. Ransom, a 22-year-old World Championships rookie, used two spares on each of her stages to help the team meet its personal goal: a top 10.
She held off Austria’s Katharina Innerhofer by 0.5 seconds to finish 10th, 3:39.5 behind Germany. In total, the Canadians used 10 spares and had one penalty (which came on Crawford’s standing stage).
“Megan [Heinicke] tagged me off into a great spot, [and I] came in prone … with the group,” Crawford explained.
She had entered her first stage around 12th after Heinicke tagged her in 14th, 33.8 seconds out of the lead. (The team’s first leg, Heinicke used a single prone spare and cleaned standing.) Crawford cleaned prone, then went on to use three spares in standing while trying avoid the penalty loop, which she ultimately had to ski around once.
“Standing, I came in and missed my middle shot and loaded my first spare quickly and missed,” Crawford explained. “As I loaded my last spare, I took my rifle down and shook my legs out and missed.”
Not only did the penalty loop cost her, but the three spares, which she estimated takes her six to 10 seconds to load apiece, set her back as well. Regardless, Crawford skied the sixth-fastest second leg to tag Vaillancourt in 11th, 1:08.6 behind the leader.
Audrey Vaillancourt (Biathlon Canada) during prone shooting earlier this week at 2015 IBU World Championships in Kontiolahti, Finland. She was the third leg of the Canadian women’s relay that finished 10th on Friday. (Photo: Biathlon Canada/NordicFocus)
Vaillancourt, 23, went on to use two prone spares and cleaned standing outright to bring the team to 10th, 1:45.3 out of first.
“I didn’t really know what place I was in at any time, it was just good to always have a pack of people [around me],” Vaillancourt said. “I passed people in the standing so that felt awesome. It’s always such a good feeling, like, ‘Yeah!’ … I was a little tired on the last lap, but I’m happy.”
Ransom used two spares in prone, rising to ninth, and then two more in standing to drop one spot to 10th.
“I saw eight and ninth ahead of me on the climbs,” she recalled. “You’re just gunning for those and didn’t look back.”
In her first World Championships relay, Ransom said she was “terrified” to anchor, “mainly because I saw the start list and saw a lot of medalists hanging out in the fourth [leg] with me.
“In zero I was pretty nervous, but you quickly fall back into race mode,” she added. “Even though you start with [Belarusian Darya] Domracheva, you put it aside. Once I was on the track and I could feel like I could ski like myself it was fun and I loved it.”
Rosanna Crawford (Biathlon Canada) trails Nadzeya Pisareva of Belarus during the second leg of the women’s 4 x 6 k relay at 2015 IBU World Championships in Kontiolahti, Finland. The Canadians went on to place 10th. (Photo: Biathlon Canada/NordicFocus)
Overall, the Canadians were pleased with their performance, with two relative newcomers on the team. While it’s Vaillancourt’s second World Championships, this season was her first full time on the World Cup.
“[Last night], we talked about that if we all bring our A-game, a top 10 is realistic and a top eight would be the perfect race,” Crawford said.
“I don’t think that we can say that we had a perfect performance as a team today, so I think that makes it even more awesome that we made our goal,” Heinicke said. “We have been mixing up our relays a ton this year. This is only the second time us four have raced together and we have never had this order. Lots of experiment; it’s been good.”
Dunklee Fastest First Leg
The Americans tied their season best in 12th, with Susan Dunklee, Hannah Dreissigacker, Annelies Cook, and Clare Egan. Despite starting in the seventh of nine rows at the start, Dunklee skied the fastest course time of all the first legs to put her team in third, 3.7 seconds behind Poland, which led through the first exchange.
“I almost prefer starting in one of the back rows,” Dunklee explained in an email after the race. “I love the rush of having to maneuver through the pack and chase people down. It just feels like a really fun game. It helps a lot that my fitness is in peak form right now, and the course suits my strengths with that big wall climb.”
Susan Dunklee (US Biathlon) follows Germany’s Franziska Hildebrand (r) into range for the first shooting in the women’s 4 x 6 k relay at 2015 IBU World Championships in Kontiolahti, Finland. Germany went on to win, and the Americans placed 12th to match their season best.
By the 1.3 k checkpoint, Dunklee had skied up to second behind Hildebrand.
“I don’t know how Susan just careened to the front of the pack like that,” Heinicke observed. “It was pretty impressive. I was in the second half and it was the most aggressive mass start I have ever been in, so much bumping and ski stepping and poles. It was a little bit chaotic and also exciting.”
Dunklee held her position in second entering the range for the first time, where she used two spares and had some trouble unhooking her sling from her arm. Dunklee left the range in 21st, 26.5 seconds behind Hildebrand, who cleaned without any spares.
The American spent the next lap skiing up to 12th before cleaning her standing stage to improve to seventh. Poland’s Monika Hojnisz cleaned her second-straight stage without any spares to take the lead, 2.4 seconds ahead of Russia.
Meanwhile, Dunklee left the range 14 seconds back in seventh. Over the next lap, she skied back up to third, tagging Dreissigacker 3.7 seconds out of the lead.
“I’m getting used to that; I expect Susan to hand off to me in the top five at least,” Dreissigacker said. “I should be getting better at it, and I still seem to be struggling with get being put in that position. I think I’ve always liked being one of the chasers not one of the chased.”
Coming into the range for the first time, Dreissigacker was fourth behind Poland, Italy and Russia, respectively. There, she had to use three spares to hit all of her targets.
“I kind of pulled off two shots accidentally, just way too fast with the trigger,” Dreissigacker explained. “I think I was a little excited, my fingers had gone a little bit number for some reason. … Using the third spare is always really bittersweet. You’re bummed that you had to use three, but you’re always so happy you hit that last one and didn’t do a penalty loop.”
Hannah Dreissigacker (US Biathlon) skied the second leg for the U.S. in the women’s 4 x 6 k relay at 2015 IBU World Championships in Kontiolahti, Finland. After receiving the tag from teammate Susan Dunklee in third, she came through the second exchange in 10th. The Americans finished 12th. (Photo: USBA/NordicFocus)
She left the range in 11th, 37 seconds behind Russia up front. In standing, Dreissigacker used two spares to head out for her final lap in 10th.
“Hoping that one of these days I can use not quite so many spares,” she said.
Dreissigacker tagged Cook in 10th, 1:06 out of the lead. Cook used two spares in each stage to hand off to Egan in 11th, 2:05.4 back.
“That is not like awesome shooting, but I think we all had a little bit of the nightmare of the last relay, where we had six penalty loops, in the back of our head,” Cook said, referring to the last World Cup relay in Oslo, Norway, where the Americans were in 18th before being lapped. “So we were all kind of like, ‘OK! I’m really happy that didn’t happen again!’ I felt really good skiing and it was fun. I felt like I was in the mix, which is exciting.”
In terms of team goals, she said they didn’t target a specific place.
“We didn’t do that many relays this year [and] we’ve got some new faces,” Cook said. “I think for us, it is just about getting experience … We have had a pretty steady relay team the last few years so now we are kind of rebuilding that up. Today we just wanted to have fun and to feel like after the race, we would all be in good moods and happy.”
In her first World Championships, Egan anchored the U.S. to 12th, 3:44.8 behind Germany and 0.8 seconds out of 11th. The 27-year-old US Biathlon development skier cleaned her first stage to move into eighth after prone, then used three standing spares, which put her back in 13th.
“I wish I had just used two [spares] because we would have been 10th instead of 12th,” Egan said, estimating it takes her about 20 seconds to load each spare. “That is my only regret. I got really close … I passed one person and I finished within a second [of 11th].
“This is my first relay that I have not had two penalty laps in standing. So big improvement for me,” she added. “I just tried to ski my own race and remember that I am always trying to gain experience.”
At the end of the day, Dunklee pointed out that 12th matched their best result of the season.
“It certainly wasn’t a perfect performance and there were several teams within reach ahead of us. I think it is good to be hungry for a higher place and know the possibility is there, but this was also result we can finish the season feeling proud of,” she wrote.
Russia’s Ekaterina Yurlova reacts after sealing her first career victory and podium on the World Cup level at IBU World Championships on Wednesday in the women’s 15 k individual in Kontiolahti, Finland. (Photo: Kontiolahden Urheilijat/Kari Kuninkaanniemi)
KONTIOLAHTI, Finland — When Ekaterina Yurlova earned two bronze medals at the IBU Open European Championships in Otepää, Estonia, her dad told her: “OK, now your next step is World Championship,” she recalled.
That was just over a month ago. On Wednesday, the 30-year-old Russian pulled out a surprise win to answer her father’s prophecy: a gold at 2015 IBU World Championships in the 15-kilometer individual. She had started 93rd of 105 women in the race and ended up as the only one with perfect 20-for-20 shooting.
“I said to him, ‘You’re crazy,’ ” Yurlova explained in a post-race press conference. “But now I think he’s not crazy.”
Yurlova herself looked stunned at the finish, holding her head and closing her eyes as it all set in at once. She had a great run throughout the evening race in front of 10,800 spectators — rising to third with a clean first shooting and the third-fastest course time on the first lap. After hitting all of her targets on her second stage, the Russian sat in fourth behind Italy’s Karin Oberhofer in first and the Czech Republic’s Gabriela Soukalova and Veronika Vitkova in second and third, respectively.
Fourteen seconds out of the lead after that first standing, she rose to second with a clean third stage. Soukalova, who started fourth and remained as a top contender from start to finish, cleaned those three initial stages as well, and leaving the range for her second-to-last lap, she was 15 seconds ahead of Yurlova.
The time gap went out the window when Soukalova came into the range for the last time and missed one for a one-minute penalty. While it took some time for Yurlova to tick off the laps 89 starters later, she ended up cleaning her fourth-straight stage to take the lead, 32.8 seconds ahead of Soukalova.
Ever since she finished, Soukalova had the time to beat in 41:55.4, holding off Finland’s local favorite Kaisa Mäkäräinen by 1.2 seconds. That time held up until Yurlova crossed the line 23.2 seconds faster in 41:32.2.
For the third time in her career, Yurlova cleaned an four-stage individual race. It was also her first podium and victory at the World Cup level. Her previous World Cup best was fifth in a mass start two seasons ago in Pokljuka, Slovenia.
“This is my first race of this World Championship and I wanted to be in podium,” she said. “It was my dream, but I never know that I can win.”
The women’s 15 k individual podium at 2015 IBU World Championships, with Russian winner Ekaterina Yurlova (c), silver medalist Gabriela Soukalova (l) of the Czech Republic, and Finland’s bronze medalist Kaisa Mäkäräinen (r). (Photo: Kontiolahden Urheilijat/Kari Kuninkaanniemi)
While Soukalova’s longtime lead at the finish didn’t stand, she said at the press conference that she was happy with silver. She and her team won gold earlier at these Championships in the mixed relay.
“It’s awesome and it was a really difficult season,” Soukalova said. “I didn’t think that I’m able to get a medal from this championship, but that’s nice.”
She wasn’t crushed when she was bounced from the lead by such a late starter. In fact, she didn’t realize she was in the hunt for gold until her last lap.
“I thought it’s gonna be really nice to [finish] in top five,” she said.
While Soukalova posted the fifth-fastest course time and Yurlova’s time ranked 19th (although her range time was notably quick in fifth), Mäkäräinen, who started 36th, was the fastest on course in the the five-lap race.
Hailing from the nearby city of Joensuu, where most of the World Championships accommodations are located fewer than 20 kilometers south of Kontiolahti, Mäkäräinen earned her first medal of the championships — bronze — 24.4 seconds off the win.
She cleaned prone but missed one on her first standing and another on her second prone before cleaning her final standing. The two misses put her two minutes back, and while she slipped into 11th after the third stage, she was back up to fifth leaving the range for the last time.
A fast last lap put her in contention with Soukalova for what looked to be the win at the time (well before Yurlova).
“In the first standing I had a lot of difficulties,” Mäkäräinen said in the press conference. “My legs were shaking right before I started to shoot. I missed the first target and I thought, ‘This is not going to work now,’ but I fight with every shot and I hit the last four. I was really lucky also there. And in the prone, I don’t really know what happened, maybe I was waiting too long, and the last shooting I don’t remember anything.”
She did remember hearing how far she was behind Soukalova going into the last lap. It was 27.2 seconds, to be exact.
“I never thought that I could be so close [at] the finish line,” Mäkäräinen said. “I knew that I did a good jump in a last loop so I wasn’t too sad about that.”
While she acknowledged she was slightly relieved with the medal (which she took by 0.4 seconds ahead of Italy’s fourth-place finisher Dorothea Wierer), Mäkäräinen added that wasn’t how she preferred to view her bronze.
“It was a new day today, new race, I did my job pretty OK,” she said. “I’m happy that I had a good day in the World Championships.”
Darya Domracheva of Belarus missed three on her first standing to slide into the 50’s overall after the second stage. By the third stage, she had recovered to 27th with another clean prone, but she had one more penalty on the last standing to finish 16th, ultimately 2:54.6 behind Yurlova.
Dunklee 12th for U.S.; Canada’s Heinicke Tallies Third-Straight Top 30
Susan Dunklee (US Biathlon) racing to 12th in the women’s 15 k individual on Wednesday at 2015 IBU World Championships in Kontiolahti, Finland. It was her best individual result of the championships so far. (Photo: USBA/NordicFocus)
American Susan Dunklee started 30 seconds after Mäkäräinen in bib 37. While she missed two standing to fall back into the 30’s, Dunklee cleaned her next two stages and missed one on the last standing to end up 12th (+2:43.0). She had the sixth-fastest course time (4.5 seconds behind Soukalova, who was fifth fastest on course).
While Dunklee called the early misses, “not an auspicious way to start,” she explained that they took the pressure off. She thought, “It’s not gonna be a perfect race, but I can just focus on doing my normal thing,” she explained in a post-race interview.
After her first prone, she caught a glimpse of the board her coaches showed her out on course, which indicted where her shots landed outside the target. For the next prone, she made a couple corrections.
During one lap, Dunklee skied with Germany’s Laura Dahlmeier (in bib 21) and Ukraine’s Valj Semerenko (in bib 20), which she said helped her push her tempo.
“There were times when I wanted to back off a bit, but Laura was pulling and gapping me a bit and I was like, ‘I can’t let her get a gap because I’ll lose the draft,’ ” Dunklee explained.
Dahlmeier went on to place sixth (+40.5) behind Russia’s Daria Virolaynen in fifth (+37.9). Semerenko finished 15th.
With her best shooting of the week so far and best individual result at these World Championships, Dunklee was pleased to be feeling back on track.
“My biggest problem the last couple days has been just getting my head back on straight and finding the fun again and the normal race feeling,” she said. Last weekend, she placed 42nd in the sprint and 34th in the following pursuit.
“The sun came out late afternoon today, and while we were warming up there was a soft, golden light and it made me really relaxed and happy,” Dunklee added. “I felt excited about the start of the race.”
Regardless of whether Wednesday’s result is enough to qualify Dunklee for the 30-person mass start on Sunday, she said she was happy. “I’m glad to have had a good one,” she said.
“While we were warming up there was a soft, golden light and it made me really relaxed and happy. I felt excited about the start of the race.” — Susan Dunklee, 12th
Canada’s Megan Heinicke tallied her third-consecutive top 30 of the week, placing 21st (+3:23.3) for her World Championships career best. She hit 19 straight shots before missing her final target.
Megan Heinicke (Biathlon Canada) racing to 23rd in the 7.5 k sprint at 2015 IBU World Championships on March 7 in Kontiolahti, Finland. In Wednesday’s 15 k individual, Heinicke placed 21st for a career best at World Championships (and at the Olympic level).
“I’ve hit 20-for-20 twice already this year so I feel like there was 15 thoughts going through my head, like, slow motion during the last shot,” she reflected. “I’m so, so happy with 19, but I’m pretty sure I missed the last shot because I was thinking, ‘Oh, I’m going to hit 20!’ ”
During the race, Heinicke wasn’t sure it was going so well. On her first lap, she heard her team’s staff tell her she needed to ski faster.
“I was like, ‘Oh gosh, this is going to be a disaster,’ and then actually, I kind of felt better lap by lap,” she said less than a week after recovering from a monthlong illness.
“I was prepared for way worse,” Heinicke said of World Championships overall so far. “I fought hard out there. I really delivered what I was able to. There’s always the ‘if’ thought: if I was in better shape and skiing four-percent faster, but I mean, I’m happy with it.”
Dunklee’s U.S. teammate, Annelies Cook was on track for a breakthrough performance after cleaning her first three stages. The third starter, she found herself in second after the third shooting behind Soukalova and at the end of the day, her time leaving the range for the second-to-last lap ranked sixth.
US Biathlon’s Annelie Cook (second from l) on the range with Slovakia’s Jana Gerekova (l), among others during one of her two standing stages in the 15 k individual on Wednesday at IBU World Championships in Kontiolahti, Finland. (Photo: USBA/NordicFocus)
However, in the final standing, Cook missed four shots — the first, second, fourth, and fifth — to fall toward the back of the pack. She ended up 47th (+5:26.8) with four penalties.
“My heart is a little broken,” Cook said afterward. “I blew it. I just wanted it so bad and I tried too hard. Classic case of wanting it too much. Everything else felt easy and relaxed. I tried to stay relaxed the whole race, not come into the range too gassed, and I think the conditions were really good today so that made it a lot easier …
“Sometimes biathlon is really mysterious,” she added. “You don’t know what makes one [race] good from the next, but the last stage was just bad. I was too tense and I was just trying to hard.”
World Cup rookie Clare Egan, also of the U.S., notched her second-best result of her career in 51st (+5:45.7) after back-to-back clean stages for her first prone and first standing. She went on to miss two in the third stage and two more in the final standing.
Clare Egan (US Biathlon) during one of two shooting stages in the women’s 15 k individual at IBU World Championships on Wednesday in Kontiolahti, Finland. She placed 51st for her second-best result of World Championships and her career. (Photo: USBA/NordicFocus)
“’I’m still learning, especially with the standing, so any time I can even just miss one in standing is great,” Egan said. “My best World Cup place coming into world champs was 73rd, and I’ve done way better than that so far so I’m really psyched.”
In placing 40th in the sprint last Saturday, she qualified for last the pursuit, where she placed 52nd. While Wednesday marked another top result for the 27-year-old Egan, she said it was her brother’s presence that made her day.
“My brother Graham flew in today from New York so he was out there on the course with an American flag,” Egan said. “That was my favorite part of the race.”
Also for the U.S., Hannah Dreissigacker placed 67th (+6:49.7) with five penalties (2+1+1+1).
“Ones are OK, twos are bad,” Dreissigacker said of the number of misses per stage. “That’s sort of where my standard is for myself. If I had [missed one each time], I would be, like, not a good day, but not bad. But five, I mean, that’s too many.”
She described feeling flat during the race and attributed it to possibly hunger.
“I don’t think I ate enough because it’s such a late-in-the-day race,” she said of the 6:15 p.m. start. “I was getting kind of hungry before the race and I felt like I kind of ran out of energy. I’m not sure I timed that quite right. I should have known better…
“For some reason, I’m just sort of struggling a little bit here in general,” Dreissigacker added. “Today was tough because I actually felt OK for the most part. The last three stages I missed the last shot every time, which is sort of a classic biathlon mistake. I think I guess I must not have followed through enough.”
Two Canadians had five penalties as well: Audrey Vaillancourt (2+0+1+2) and Julia Ransom (2+1+1+1). While Vaillancourt placed 79th (+8:05.3), Ransom in her first World Championships was 84th (+8:23.9).
“It’s just a bad week on the range,” Vaillancourt said. “It’s hard to start with two misses, and you’re like, ‘Nice, now I have three more bouts to go.’ ”
Typically a strong shooter, she added that sometimes that’s the way biathlon goes.
“Some weeks you just don’t get that feeling of, it’s easy,” she said.
And Vaillancourt didn’t think her off week had anything to do with the stakes at World Championships.
“I’ve been fighting all year to get my place here. It’s not like I’ve been thinking of only World Champs all year,” the 23 year old said. “To me, it doesn’t really make a difference if I do super well on the World Cup or super well at World Champs because it’s not like I’m really close to a top eight.”
After the pursuit three days earlier, in which she placed 57th, Ransom explained she focused on getting into a “better headspace” for the 15 k.
“I was so overwhelmed and I was excited, but also really distracted [during the pursuit] so I kind of brought it together and I really wanted to focus on pacing,” she said. “We don’t do a lot of individuals; this is definitely the hardest one I’ve ever done, and I think I found a happy medium with the pacing. Maybe a little too easy, but I’m learning.”
Like several North Americans, she struggled with her first prone and had two early penalties.
“The wind had changed on me, which I wasn’t expecting,” Ransom said of her first shooting. “I [made] a big correction for prone … I’ve been struggling with standing the last couple weeks, so I’m glad I kind of brought it back to a half-decent level. It’s a work in progress. These World Champs have been an interesting experience.”
Perhaps the most disappointed North American of the day was Rosanna Crawford, a medal hopeful, who finished 87th (+9:05.1) with eight penalties (2+2+2+2).
“It was really bad,” she said.
Before World Championships, she and her boyfriend Brendan Green, also on the Biathlon Canada national team, discussed the worst that could happen in Kontiolahti, Crawford explained.
“The worst that could happen is a really bad race,” she continued. “It’s not that bad in the scheme of life, but this is something I’ve dedicated my whole life to and to not achieve my goals is disappointing. I feel like I’m letting down everyone who’s helped me get here, and I know I’m capable of so much more.”
On Tuesday, Crawford watched a Finnish TV interview with U.S. cross-country skier Kikkan Randall.
“Kikkan was talking about how disappointed she was with the Olympics, and yeah, you set these big goals, but then you also need to set the goals of being able to leave a championship happy,” Crawford said. “I don’t think I did that. I didn’t set those goals and even if I had, I didn’t achieve them. I didn’t do what I know I’m capable of today, and I really wanted another chance in the mass start and now that’s not gonna happen.”
The final race of World Championships, the 12.5 k women’s (and 15 k men’s) mass start includes the top-15 ranked competitors on the World Cup circuit with 15 others who do exceptionally well at worlds. The sprint and pursuit carry a hefty weight (with the sprint factoring into the start of the pursuit), and the individual races are the last ones to count toward the mass start.
Based on a provisional start list, Heinicke and Dunklee have qualified for Sunday’s mass start in 26th and 30th, respectively.
France’s Marie Dorin Habert celebrates her second win in two-straight races at 2015 IBU World Championships after taking gold in Sunday’s 10 k pursuit in Kontiolahti, Finland. She finished 15.3 seconds ahead of Germany’s silver medalist, Laura Dahlmeier. (Photo: Kontiolahden Urheilijat/Jarno Artika)
KONTIOLAHTI, Finland — Ask anyone who follows biathlon who the favorites were going into the 2015 IBU World Championships, and they would have been sure to mention Finland’s Kaisa Mäkäräinen and Darya Domracheva of Belarus. Of course there were others, but Marie Dorin Habert — the French skier who gave birth to her first child in September?
She couldn’t believe it, either.
“I don’t have words,” Habert, 28, said in a press conference following her third medal in as many races at World Championships and her second-straight gold. “It’s just crazy for me, and everything is right with me in these World Championships.”
After winning Saturday’s 7.5-kilometer sprint and starting with a 10-second lead in the women’s 10 k pursuit on Sunday, Habert kept herself in contention for another victory by hitting all of her targets in her first two stages.
The competitor who started closest to her, Weronika Nowakowska-Ziemniak of Poland, held her own in second for the first two stages as well, despite missing one on her second prone. She came out of the penalty loop 43.8 seconds after Habert, yet remained in second until the third shooting.
There, Habert came into standing first and missed two targets. Her clean streak had ended and some 12,800 spectators in the stands wondered what would become of Habert.
Germany’s Laura Dahlmeier racing to silver in the women’s 10 k pursuit on Sunday at 2015 IBU World Championships in Kontiolahti, Finland. (Photo: Kontiolahden Urheilijat/Kari Kuninkaanniemi)
Meanwhile, Germany’s Laura Dahlmeier, who started fourth, 29 seconds after Habert, had moved into third by the first stage despite an early prone miss. Dahlmeier cleaned the second prone as well as the first standing to leave the range 20 seconds behind Habert, who had just completed her two penalty loops.
“When I missed two, I said, ‘Ooh! It’s bad for me. I have to be fast,’ ” Habert recalled.
She went on to ski the second-fastest course time on her third lap and remained ahead of Dahlmeier. Both missed one in the second-and-final standing, and Habert headed out on her third lap with a 27.3-second lead.
Meanwhile, Nowakowska-Ziemniak had two additional penalties on her third stage to slip to third, 43.8 seconds behind Habert. While she cleaned her final stage, she left the range in fourth, five seconds behind Russia’s Ekaterina Shumilova, the only woman to hit all 20 of her targets.
The final clean stage lifted Shumilova, who started sixth, from fourth to third — until Nowakowska-Ziemniak tracked her down on the final lap.
“I asked myself, ‘Weronika, do you fight, or do you get just a fourth place and it’s still OK?’ ” Nowakowska-Ziemniak reflected in the press conference. “After one second, I answer to myself, ‘Of course, I am fighting.’ I was trying to catch [Ekaterina] as fast as possible and I did it quite fast … On the uphill, my coach told me she’s twenty meters behind me, so I realize that, yes she fall down, and then I push even harder to not let her catch me.”
“I asked myself, ‘Weronika, do you fight, or do you get just a fourth place and it’s still OK?’ After one second, I answer to myself, ‘Of course, I am fighting.’” — Poland’s Weronika Nowakowska-Ziemniak, pursuit bronze medalist
While Nowakowska-Ziemniak left the Russian behind in the race for bronze, Habert continued to forge ahead up front, entering the finishing straight alone and grabbing a large French flag from the sidelines. She waved it proudly and completed her trifecta of medals (silver in the mixed relay, gold in the sprint, and now gold the pursuit), crossing the line first in 30:07.7. Dahlmeier finished 15.3 seconds later for silver, her first World Championships medal.
Poland’s Weronika Nowakowska-Ziemniak en route to bronze in the women’s 10 k pursuit at 2015 IBU World Championships in Kontiolahti, Finland. (Photo: Kontiolahden Urheilija/Jarno Artika)
“I’m totally happy. It was a big dream since I was a little child,” the German said in the conference. “Now I have this silver medal and it’s a perfect day for me, and also, I’m really happy for Marie. It’s perfect.”
Nowakowska-Ziemniak finished 31.6 seconds after Habert and 17.1 seconds ahead of Shumilova for bronze, her second medal in as many races after notching her first World Cup-level podium on Saturday.
“It’s crazy because I was waiting so many years to be on the podium and yesterday I get the first medal and today the second,” Nowakowska-Ziemniak said. “I was feeling much better on the track, but the shooting range I wasn’t perfect, but it’s still a medal so I’m really happy.
“You can’t imagine how happy people in Poland were with the medals because in the winter sport, this winter wasn’t so good for the Polish teams, for ski jumpers and cross-country skiers,” she added. “So the medal in biathlon, it was something really, really important for the association and for my teammates.”
Marie Dorin Habert of France racing to gold in the women’s 10 k pursuit at 2015 IBU World Championships on Sunday in Kontiolahti, Finland. It was her third medal in as many races at these World Championships and second-straight gold.
Habert simply stated: “I’m more happy than yesterday.”
Saturday’s sprint bronze medalist, Valj Semerenko started 20 seconds after Habert and ended up 19th (+2:23.8) after missing three on her first prone. She had another penalty on her second stage, then cleaned her first standing before missing two more for a total of six penalties.
Mäkäräinen could lay claim to the most impressive ski of the day, racing up from 35th to 12th with the fastest overall course time. She finished 1:28 behind Habert with two prone penalties and a standing miss.
Domracheva had the second-fastest course time, 33 seconds slower than Mäkäräinen, yet rose from 25th to finish seventh with two total penalties — one on the second prone and another on the second standing.
Gabriela Soukalova of the Czech Republic improved from 18th to fifth (+58.0) with a single miss on the first stage, and Germany’s Franziska Hildebrand went from 10th to sixth (+1:00) with two penalties.
Despite temperatures around 40 degrees Fahrenheit with misting precipitation, conditions were firmer and even icy for the women’s race — which followed the men’s pursuit earlier in the afternoon.
Crawford, Heinicke in the Top 30
Rosanna Crawford (Biathlon Canada) on her way to 25th in the women’s 10 k pursuit at 2015 IBU World Championships in Kontiolahti, Finland. She started 32nd.
Among the North American women, Rosanna Crawford of Canada knocked off seven places to finish 25th (+2:51.5) after starting 32nd, 2:13 after Habert.
While she missed two early prone shots, Crawford cleaned her second stage to move back into the top 30. One more miss on her first standing put her in 27th leaving the range, and she proceeded to clean her final stage.
“On my first prone, I shanked one to the left, one to the right and one to the center,” Crawford explained. “Usually when I see that on the board I say, ‘Oh you idiot, just hit the frickin’ targets,’ and I did.”
All things considered, with the sixth-fastest range time and 24th-ranked course time, she said she was happy.
“To be 32nd [yesterday] and two-thirds back was very surprising so I was happy to make some points and still know I’m in it for the rest of the championships,” she said. “Two less misses on that first one would have been glorious.”
In doing so, Crawford would have matched her boyfriend Brendan Green’s 95-percent shooting in the men’s pursuit. “I’ll let him have it this time,” she said.
Also for Biathlon Canada, Megan Heinicke finished in the top 30 for the second-straight race after starting 23rd. She ended up 28th (+3:19.4) with 90-percent shooting, missing one early prone and another target on her last standing.
Megan Heinicke (Biathlon Canada) en route to 28th in the women’s 10 k pursuit at 2015 IBU World Championships in Kontiolahti, Finland. She started 23rd.
“I’m … relieved,” Heinicke said. “Two times in the top 30, I’m really glad with that and considering my fitness coming in, I basically feel like I put pretty close to my best out there. Tried to ski tactically, skied behind people when I could.”
Sick for much of the last month, she explained her expectations for her skiing form were low coming into World Championships.
“I need to count on the shooting and I’m really glad I brought it together,” she said. “I’m kind of sad about the prone miss because that one was really on me, and I was like, ‘Oh dang it, you just did that,’ but the standing miss, I don’t actually know what happened so I’m not gonna beat myself up about it either way.”
On most of Heinicke’s best days, there’s a common theme: her strength in shooting. While she excelled in shooting as a junior, she said she struggled with it in the last few seasons. However, this season, she felt more at ease.
“I’ve had some big changes in my life recently and I’m feeling a lot more relaxed and a lot more balanced,” Heinicke said. “I’m under a lot less pressure, internal and external, and I’m just enjoying it. Instead of standing there, like, ‘Please hit this, let it be OK,’ or really worrying about results, I’m way more task-oriented and I’m like, ‘Oh yeah, I worked on this, and I’m confident.’ ”
Dunklee Third-Fastest Skier
American Susan Dunklee had the third-fastest ski time after Mäkäräinen and Domracheva, and improved from starting 42nd to finishing 34th (+3:58.1) despite six penalties.
Susan Dunklee (US Biathlon) started 42nd and skied up to finish 34th in the women’s 10 k pursuit at 2015 IBU World Championships in Kontiolahti, Finland.
“The prone shots that I missed were really bad shots,” Dunklee said after missing two in each of her first two stages. She went on to miss two apiece in both standing stages.
“Skiing felt better today. The shooting was more normal speed, and I’m really happy after yesterday,” she added. “You start getting this little seed of doubt in your mind about your shooting ability when you pull a stunt like that, so I was glad to have normal-feeling shooting even if it wasn’t a great percentage.”
While 42nd wasn’t where she had hoped to end up in the sprint, which has implications for next Saturday’s mass start (as does the pursuit), Dunklee made sure to push to the end.
“Partway around the last loop yesterday, I reminded myself, ‘You are a fighter. I don’t care how you’re doing, that’s part of who you are and you’ve got to live up to that today,’ ” she recalled. “So that’s what I did.”
The second U.S. woman in her first-ever pursuit, Clare Egan started 40th and finished 52nd (+6:29.2) with seven penalties (1+1+3+2).
Canada’s World Championships rookie, Julia Ransom placed 57th (+8:02.8) after starting 52nd. She also missed seven (1+2+2+2).
“My legs were basically cooked from yesterday,” Ransom said. “To have consistent misses, that was hard and I feel like it was something that I had to get out of my system. It was my first pursuit on the World Cup and I had to pay my dues.
“I really enjoyed racing,” she added. “There are some parts where you miss and you’re near the back and you want to cry, the bottom lip starts to quiver a bit, but at the end of the day I’m proud that I made it here.”
With two days off until the next race in Kontiolahti (the women’s 15 k individual), most of the racers were excited for a break.
“I’m going to start with a massage and go from there,” Ransom said.
The women’s podium in Saturday’s 7.5 k sprint at the 2015 IBU World Championships in Kontiolahti, Finland. (From l-r) Weronika Nowakowska-Ziemniak of Poland (2nd), Marie Dorin Habert of France (1st), and Valj Semereko of Ukraine (3rd). (Photo: Fischer/Nordic Focus)
KONTIOLAHTI, Finland – While many men complained of the blustery Finnish weather in Saturday’s 2015 IBU World Championships sprint, they would soon become thankful for their race conditions after the start of the women’s sprint. Just half an hour before the start of the race — a 7.5-kilometer sprint — the wind strengthened and was joined heavy snow, making for blizzard-like conditions on the second day of competition in Finland.
While the weather did its best to subdue the competitors, it was Marie Dorin Habert of France who landed on top of the podium. She earned her first-ever World Championships gold in addition to a first-career victory after cleaning prone and missing one shot in standing to notch a time of 22.16.8. Behind her was Weronika Nowakowska-Ziemniak of Poland, the only competitor to clean both prone and standing. The Polish biathlete, whose silver medal is the first podium of her career, finished 9.6 seconds back. Rounding out the podium was Valj Semereko of Ukraine, who missed one in standing to cross the line 19.7 seconds behind Harbert.
Saturday began with numerous expectations, the most popular of which was a predicted showdown between hometown-favorite Kaisa Mäkäräinen and overall IBU World Cup leader Darya Domracheva of Belarus. Mäkäräinen, who started with bib 6, battled the worst of the weather and faced a slow course that had barely been skied-in ahead of her. When she reached the first shooting stage, the 32 year old had posted the fastest course time on the first loop. But her lead would soon be gone as the Finnish skier missed three shots to the audible shock of the crowd. Mäkäräinen eventually missed two more shots in standing to finish 35th.
Kaisa Mäkäräinen of Finland was a favorite in the 7.5 k sprint but ultimately finished 35th.
Next up was Dormacheva in bib 10. The Belarusian had a promising start after missing one shot in prone and skiing the fourth-fastest course time, but eventually succumbed to the conditions in standing where she missed four of five shots to ultimately finish 25th.
With the two favorites out of contention, an opportunity was presented to the rest of the field. Semerenko, in bib 4, had already finished and posted the time to beat after notching the fastest range and shooting times of the day. Habert, in bib 16, wasn’t far behind Domracheva and chased the Belarusian. In the process, she posted the fastest cumulative time in the first lap. Her second and third laps were the second and third fastest of the day — enough to move her past Semerenko.
Meanwhile, Nowakowska-Ziemniak was three starters behind the Frenchwoman. Where she failed to match Habert in course time she overcame in range speed, earning the seventh overall ranked time on the day. After she cleaned the second round of shooting, the Pole worked to make full use of her advantage. In the end, however, it wasn’t enough to overcome Habert.
According to Habert, she knew before the race that a podium was likely but never expected to take her first individual gold in the 7.5 k sprint.
“I didn’t expect it was possible for me” she said in a press conference. “I wanted to be on the podium, but to win I think that it’s too hard for me, but it was done so it was nice.”
Habert explained that she didn’t mind the conditions, but acknowledged that her favorable view of the strong wind and blowing snow was likely due to her victory.
“It was hard conditionsn but it’s right for me so I’m happy for these hard conditions,” she said. “It was hard on the track because of the snow and shooting range because of the wind, but today it was nice for me.”
Valj Semereko of Ukraine racing to bronze in Saturday’s 7.5 k sprint at teh 2015 IBU World Championships in Kontiolahti, Finland. (Photo: Fischer/Nordic Focus)
The French biathlete gave birth in September. While she trained during her pregnancy, Habert said that she was uncertain as to how she was able to come back for such a successful season.
“Maybe I’m stronger before,” she explained. “I don’t have an answer of this progress, but I’m happy I’ve progressed.”
In second place, Nowakowska-Ziemniak said that she believed the 2015 World Championships would be her last prior to her podium. With Saturday’s silver medal, however, the Polish biathlete said that the joy of being on the podium might convince her to stay in the sport longer.
“I didn’t win, but I’m sure that I am the most happy person today here,” she said in a press conference. “It’s an amazing moment here in my career.”
Two of Nowakowska-Ziemniak’s teammates also finished in the top 10, with Krystyna Guzik in fifth and Magdalena Gwizdon in seventh. The bronze medalist explained that although the Polish women faced a hard season where results failed to live up to expectations, she was proud of her teammates for performing when it mattered.
“As a team, we’ve got many problems during this season with the shape but I’m triple happy that the whole team showed today that we are really strong and we deserve to be this high in the world,” she said. “I’m very happy for myself and for my teammates also.”
The sprint’s bronze medalist, Semerenko, has been on the podium four previous times this season and said that her main objective on Saturday was to achieve a solid position for Sunday’s pursuit.
“This is indeed a very good season for me,” Semerenko said. “I’m very happy about this race although I didn’t expect to be on the podium today, but I wanted to be close for pursuit race.”
Megan Heinicke racing to 23rd in Saturday’s 7.5 k sprint in Kontiolahti, Finland at the 2015 IBU World Championships. (Photo: Fischer/Nordic Focus)
Canada’s Heinicke Skis to 23rd; North Americans Left Wanting More
The snow and wind took a hard hit on the North Americans as they battled the elements to ski and shoot to the best of their abilities.
Canada’s Megan Heinicke was ultimately the top finisher in 23rd after missing one in prone and cleaning standing. Although she had the 78th-fastest course time, Heinicke was able to notch a top-30 result with precise shooting and the 18th-fastest range time.
“I was really happy with the shooting,” Heinicke said in a post-race interview. “Standing I was really satisfied with because I waited and I took the shots in the right moment. Usually standing shooting in the wind is something I’m not super confident about, and I feel like it’s been a weakness over the last years, so I’m really satisfied with the standing today.”
Heinicke was originally slated to start World Championships on Thursday in Canada’s mixed relay, but sat out to continue recovering from illness in Germany.
“I have been sick for 17 days out of the last 30, and I have two more days of antibiotics to go so I flew in late and didn’t do the mixed relay,” she explained.
The 26 year old said she entered Saturday’s sprint with no result-oriented goals, but instead was focused on shooting well and skiing smart. She was also aided by the earlier success of her teammate Nathan Smith, who was the first Canadian male to earn a World Championships medal after placing second in the preceding 10 k sprint.
“I was getting ready for the race and I was like, ‘I’m not gonna cry, just focus on your own race,’ ” Heinicke said. “I feel like we have a few athletes that have been flirting with the podium so it’s just really, really amazing to have someone do it.”
Behind Heinicke in 32nd was teammate Rosanna Crawford. The 26 year old, who was one of the first starters in bib 5, just ahead of Mäkäräinen, dealt with the worst of the blowing snow but managed to notch the 10th-fastest split in the first loop after cleaning prone. It was in standing that Crawford ran into trouble, ultimately missing three shots and losing precious time.
“I knew it was going to be the hardest in standing,” Crawford said in an interview. “Maybe I accepted defeat before I even got to the range.”
Susan Dunklee racing to 42nd in Saturday’s 7.5 k sprint at the IBU World Championships in Kontiolahti, Finland. (Photo: USBA/NordicFocus)
Once in the penalty lap, Crawford explained that the loop was incredibly slow due to the new snow and lack of skiers ahead of her.
“The penalty loop was awful because nobody was had been skiing in it,” she said. Crawford added that while she faced an “uphill battle” in her quest to qualify for the World Championships final mass start next weekend, she is looking forward to racing again.
The next North American and top U.S. biathlete in the women’s sprint was World Cup newcomer Clare Egan. A late starter, Egan said she benefitted from the break in snowfall that occurred midway through the race. However, the break in weather wasn’t the only reason for her success. According to the former University of New Hampshire skier, the steep hills on the 2.5 k course suited her skiing and aided her in qualifying for her first World Cup-level pursuit.
“[The course] has a really big climb in it and I pushed up that climb,” Egan said. “I’ve been working a lot with our coaches since we’ve been here on how to ski the flats and I think I did a pretty good job with what we’ve been working on.”
Egan missed two shots in both prone and standing, but said that compared to her previous World Cup shooting record, Saturday’s performance was an improvement. Prior to the World Championships sprint her previous best result was 73rd in a Nove Mesto sprint earlier this season.
“I wish I would have shot a little better, but honestly, I think I missed four in standing in both the other World Cup sprints I’ve done. Today I only missed two so that was an improvement and hopefully I’ll keep improving,” she explained.
Just two places behind Egan was veteran U.S. biathlete Susan Dunklee. The 29 year old has consistently placed in the top 30 and is no stranger to the top 10. In the sprint, Dunklee explained she lost confidence in the shooting range. She missed one in prone and two in standing, and marked the 101st-ranked range time of 103 finishers.
“I’m really bummed,” Dunklee said after the race. “I spent more time on the range than maybe ever. I was one shot at a time because it was so windy and so gusty. I just kind of lost my rhythm and flow and confidence, especially in the standing.”
While Dunklee acknowledged the difficult weather was a factor in her shooting, she said it was a part of racing that every competitor had to deal with. According to Dunklee, she entered the sprint with the goal of performing at the level she’s been at in the 2015 season, but hoped for something even better.
“I did want it, maybe a little bit too badly,” she said. “That’s the curse.”
First-time World Championships competitor Julia Ransom of Canada cleaned prone to rank 13th after the first shooting but fell to 52nd position after missing three in standing. She said she was very pleased with her result, which was the best of her World Cup career.
“I’m pumped. It’s the first pursuit I’ve made on World Cup and it’s been a really big jump from IBU Cup to World Cup so I’m happy,” Ransom said.
Ransom is no stranger to Kontiolahti. In 2012, she earned a silver medal in the Junior World Championships pursuit. Although this year is her first senior World Championships, Ransom said that the experience hasn’t been too different from the World Cups she’s attended.
“It’s feeling relatively the same. Nothing too exciting, but racing at night is fun, different. We’re going to bed at midnight, waking up at 9:30 and 10,” she said. “It’s the same faces just different names.”
Finishing 61st, U.S. biathlete Hannah Dreissigacker was one spot away from qualifying for Sunday’s 10 k pursuit. Dreissigacker said that she was interested to review her shooting with her coaches, as she was surprised the wind affected her so negatively.
“It was windy so I’m sure that affected me. Normally in prone, I’m not intimidated by the wind. I take clicks and I’m confident,” she explained.
Teammate Annelies Cook finished 68th and said her skiing felt much better than it had all season. At the same time, she explained that she was disappointed in her shooting. “I felt good skiing, but I let myself down in my shooting,” she said. “I definitely struggled a lot in standing with the wind, and I made a careless mistake in prone, accidentally pulling the trigger when I didn’t mean to.”
Canadian Audrey Vaillancourt ended the day in 77th and said that while the day was bad for her, she was read to move on to the next race.
“When I came into prone it was like a tornado. Prone is not that bad normally. I don’t think I clicked enough. It was very, very hard today,” she said.
Veronika Vitkova anchoring the Czech Republic to a women’s relay win in Ruhpolding, Germany, earlier this year; on Sunday she did it again in Oslo, Norway, to give her team three wins in four competitions so far this season. (Photo: IBU/Ernst Wukits)
In the last competition before World Championships begins in Kontiolahti, Finland, in March, the Czech women’s biathlon team reminded the world that they’re the ones to beat.
Sure, Kaisa Makarainen of Finland and Darya Domracheva of Belarus are battling it out for the overall World Cup title, trading individual wins back and forth. And sure, a young but strong German team is making their mark.
But when it comes to relays, the Czech ladies reign like queens. In picking up a 28-second win in the 4 x 6 k competition in Oslo, Norway, on Sunday, they made it three wins in four relays so far this season. That fourth race? They finished second.
While the team has been strong in past, with Gabriela Soukalova and Veronika Vitkova winning and hitting the podium, they hadn’t won a relay until this season. Now, they can’t stop.
When asked how they pulled off the win, the Czechs emphasized that it was teamwork. And they joked with each other, too – and about themselves.
“I am the heaviest [skier] at the front, so I always have good skis on the downhills,” Soukalova told the IBU’s Jerry Kokesh. “It’s very fast.”
Soukalova competing in the relay in Oberhof, Germany, earlier this season. (Photo: Fischer/NordicFocus)
So far the team has won in every way you can count – it often comes down to an important leg by Vitkova, who is one of the fastest skiers on the World Cup this season.
Anchoring the team today, Vitkova came into the range for prone just ahead of Laura Dahlmeier of Germany. She used two spares – but Dahlmeier used one and stayed behind her, then used two more in standing and dropped to fourth. Instead of Germany it was Italy who moved from third up to second place by the finish, 28.3 seconds behind Vitkova’s winning time.
“Maybe Veronika on her first shooting, she made it funny too because we were afraid what would be next,” leadoff skier Eva Puskarcikova said. “But fortunately it went finally okay.”
Puskarcikova has had her standout moments, too. Her relay legs put her on the map before her individual results came through; she has six top-20’s to her name, but has not broken into the top ten. In the team’s win in Ruhpolding, Germany, earlier this season, Puskarcikova led after the first leg.
Sarah Beaudry anchoring the Canadian women’s relay to eighth place in Oslo, Norway, on Sunday. (Photo: Biathlon Canada/NordicFocus.com)
Today it was third-leg racer Jitka Landova, another younger member of the team, who brought the Czechs from third after Puskarcikova’s efforts and second after Soukalova’s up into first place.
“On the track it was the hardest for me,” Landova said. “Yesterday it was better for me. But on the shooting range I felt so much better.
Landova shot perfectly, not even using a spare round, and opened up an 18-second lead on Germany. Vitkova held onto that lead and the Czechs were dominant once again.
“It’s in hard training and a good sports group,” Puskarcikova said in the press conference of her team’s success.
“We had just a small team, and we didn’t have experience so much a couple of years ago,” Soukalova said in the press conference. “Now we are bigger, we are stronger, and we have a lot of experience. We didn’t have a special training for that, it comes with experience.”
France finished third, +45.9, and Germany fourth, +1:02.3.
Canada’s Megan Heinicke (l) leads Marine Bolliet of France in the women’s 15 k individual at the IBU World Cup on Thursday in Oslo, Norway. Heinicke cleaned to place 12th, one of four top-15’s this season. (Photo: IBU/Christian Manzoni)
The Canadian women sat in 11th place after Megan Heinicke’s leadoff leg, roughly a minute behind Dorothea Wierer of Italy, who was leading. Heinicke, who finished 12th in the individual competition on Thursday, used two spare rounds in prone and then cleaned her standing stage.
Rosanna Crawford took over and moved the team up to fifth, cutting almost 15 seconds off the time from the leaders. She used a total of two spare rounds and skied the second-fastest ski time of her leg.
After sitting out a few competitions with a bad head cold, Crawford feels like she’s back on track. She also finished 13th in the sprint competition on Saturday.
“I finally feel like I can push hard in a race and demand more from my body,” she wrote in an e-mail. “That cold I had took a lot more out of me than I thought and it’s nice to have this confidence boost going into World Champs. Our skis were really great today, so that made our job easier! I like the 2km course here, not too many hills and some good rolling flats. The snow was also pretty fast today, not breaking down as much as in the previous races.”
Rosanna Crawford skied the second-fastest course time of second-leg relay skiers in the Oslo World Cup relay on Sunday. (Photo: Biathlon Canada/NordicFocus.com)
Audrey Vaillancourt used three spares and the team fell to tenth place before Sarah Beaudry took over for the anchor leg. Beaudry, still a junior who is prepping for the World Junior Championships which start in Minsk, Belarus, on Wednesday, kept her cool.
A single spare in prone moved her up to ninth, and clean standing up to eighth. She held that position all the way to the finish line, eking out a 2-second “win” over a charging Nadzeya Pisarova of Belarus.
It was the best finish for the women’s team so far this season, despite having a younger squad than usual. This is Vaillancourt’s first season as a World Cup regular, and Beaudry’s first season appearing on the circuit at all.
At other points this year the relay squad has included Julia Ransom, who is just out of the junior ranks and will likely compete at World Championships (although the team is not finalized). Emma Lunder has also been on relay teams.
“Top 8 is great result for our young little team!” wrote Crawford, who has for the past several years competed on relay teams with fellow veterans Megan Imrie, who retired after the 2014 Olympics, and Zina Kocher, who has moved off the World Cup circuit for the time being.
“We have some really strong shooters right now which is key in relays,” Crawford explained. “I think 8 spares is the high end of spares we will be using in future relays. It’s great to have the enthusiasm from the younger girls, it’s really infectious. Beaudry really impressed me today with her first and last loops! Being able to hold onto that the group she was tagged with and then out sprint Belarus for 8th was great to watch! Can’t wait to see how her races at World Juniors will go.”
The U.S. women were in 18th place before they were lapped and pulled from the race.
Susan Dunklee (US Biathlon) racing to 11th in Thursday’s 15 k individual at the IBU World Cup in Oslo, Norway. (Photo: USBA/NordicFocus)
Leading up to Thursday’s 15-kilometer individual race, the first day of the IBU World Cup at Holmenkollen in Oslo, Norway, Susan Dunklee had been feeling tired and Megan Heinicke was still sick. Not ideal, but they had to roll with it.
Dunklee, of US Biathlon, formulated a plan to start conservatively and speed up if she felt she was up to it. Heinicke, of Biathlon Canada, assumed after 10 days of dealing with a cough that refused to let up, she probably wasn’t going to feel great. She missed last weekend’s entire World Cup in Nove Mesto, Czech Republic, because of it.
Yet the two toed the start line, and Dunklee went out seventh behind top competitors like World Cup leader Kaisa Mäkäräinen of Finland in bib 2 and Germany’s Franziska Hildebrand in bib 5.
After one so-called conservative lap, which ended up being the 15th-fastest first lap overall, Dunklee had already put herself in a strong position with a clean first prone. She missed one on the next standing to fall back a few places, but hit every target on her second prone to put herself back in the running for a top performance.
One final miss on her second standing gave Dunklee another minute penalty, and she finished third, 4:07.1 behind Mäkäräinen in first and 23.2 seconds behind Hildebrand, who was in second at the time.
“My shooting today felt very deliberate rather than the ideal automatic, but I focused on the basics — a relaxed stable position and trigger squeeze,” Dunklee explained in an email. “I knew I was having a great race going into the last stage and it was disappointing to miss that first shot.”
Like most of the 86 women that finished the race, she had some tricky conditions to deal with, with some fog during zero as well as during the race, although it was “never enough to totally obscure the targets,” Dunklee wrote. “Snow conditions were firm for the earliest starters but quickly deteriorated into deep corn. The fog created flat light conditions making it difficult at times to see the tracks or the berms in the downhill corners.”
She made a point to push over the “monster climbs,” saving just enough before the crest of each so she could go hard up and over.
“I knew I was having a great race going into the last stage and it was disappointing to miss that first shot,” she wrote. “At that point I told myself that my real test today was whether or not I could regain the right focus for those final four shots, and I did. I feel really good about that.”
At the end of the day, Mäkäräinen — an early leader who cleaned every stage and posted the fastest course times on each lap to keep everyone else more than a minute behind — won in 43:54.8 and Dunklee ended up 11th. The fourth-fastest skier on her last lap, the American clocked the seventh-fastest course time overall.
Canada’s Megan Heinicke (l) leads Marine Bolliet of France in the women’s 15 k individual at the IBU World Cup on Thursday in Oslo, Norway. Heinicke cleaned to place 12th, one of four top-15’s this season. (Photo: IBU/Christian Manzoni)
About 20 minutes after Dunklee started, Heinicke set out in bib 49, skiing middle-of-the-pack course times but cleaning each passing round to pick off the places.
“I had some clear ski technique goals to help myself stay focused on course no matter what … and I wanted to be confident in the range,” Heinicke explained in an email. “I have been shooting well recently, and with no wind, there was no need for me to shoot ‘extra carefully’ or slowly so I just wanted to relax and do my thing on the range without any special changes in approach because the the individual format.”
She ended up knocking down all 20 targets in the four-stage race, the longest women’s format on the circuit.
“I was pretty relaxed mentally until the last bout,” Heinicke reflected. “For the last standing, there was definitely that little dialogue going on my head with part of me thinking all those pre-mature happy thoughts about the possibility of hitting 20 and the other part of me just focusing on my job and each target. … I’m glad the ‘focused’ part of my brain kept the upper hand!”
Once she realized she cleaned the last stage, another thought popped into her head: “ ‘Oh jeez…I actually hit 20?!?!…again!’ ” she wrote. “But that changed pretty quickly into thoughts about skiing hard for the last loop.”
With a sense of where she stood from the Canadian staff out on course, she finished 11th initially and was bumped to 12th by Germany’s Laura Dahlmeier, who started 60th and placed fourth with clean shooting.
Two-tenths of a second back from Dunklee in 11th, Heinicke tied her personal-best 15 k result in 12th (after placing 12th in the 15 k in Östersund, Sweden, earlier this season), which was also her second-best World Cup result (she was 11th in last month’s sprint in Ruhpolding, Germany).
“Another top 15 finish is awesome and given that my health is still far from 100% I can’t complain,” she wrote. “At the same time it is a bit frustrating, this was one of my slowest skiing performance this season (although our skis were excellent) and I am confident that on an average, healthy day I would have posted my first top 10 finish with 20 hits today.”
Overall, her course time ranked 50th, while her shooting and range times were 16th- and 17th-fastest.
Kaisa Mäkäräinen of Finland celebrates her 14th IBU World Cup win in the women’s 15 k individual on Thursday in Oslo, Norway. (Photo: IBU/Christian Manzoni)
Six of the top seven women shot 20-for-20, including Mäkäräinen, followed by the Czech Republic’s Veronika Vitkova in third (+1:20.9), Dahlmeier in fourth (+2:28.2), Poland’s Monika Hojnisz in fifth (+2:51.5), and Ukraine’s Juliya Dzhyma and Iryna Varvynets in sixth and seventh, respectively.
Mäkäräinen couldn’t remember the last time she cleaned a four-stage race. According to RealBiathlon, she’s done it four times in her career and never before in a 15 k.
“I think it was in the 2011 World Championships, but the big thing is that it was in a 15 k,” she told the IBU. “I woke up this morning and felt confident, but I was a bit worried about the fog when I came to the first prone. I was wondering if I could see the targets … In prone I had to be very careful, to take every shot carefully and not miss.”
Darya Domracheva of Belarus broke the trend in second with one penalty on her first prone, which set her 40 places back. The 30th starter, she went on to clean every round thereafter and skied the second-fastest lap times after Mäkäräinen to work her way back to second, 1:18.3 back.
Darya Domracheva of Belarus racing though the fog to second despite one penalty in the women’s 15 k individual at the IBU World Cup in Olso, Norway. (Photo: IBU/Christian Manzoni)
“The tracks were very deep and it was very hard; you had to find a part that was just a little harder but as the race went on, those spots became less and less,” Domracheva told the IBU.
“Nineteen-of-20 is not bad. Kaisa was really strong on the shooting range and the tracks and I think the result might have been the same even if I hit that one target.”
Hildebrand took eighth with two misses, one on each of the first two stages, Gabriela Soukalova of the Czech Republic started ninth and finished ninth with one miss on her third shooting, and France’s Anais Bescond missed one on her last stage to place 10th, 2.5 seconds ahead of Dunklee.
The second Canadian, Rosanna Crawford in bib 14 came out raring to go after crossfiring in the Nove Mesto sprint and pulling out of that race, which made her ineligible for the pursuit last weekend.
“I was looking forward to getting back on the race skis and redeem myself from last week’s disaster,” Crawford wrote in an email. “I love Oslo! So being here definitely put me in a good mood. The tracks were fast and the sun was shining for our two training days.”
She aimed for precision on the range and felt like she accomplished that on her first three bouts with clean first and third stages and one miss on her first standing. In the final standing, she missed two more for a total of three minutes of penalties.
“I’m really disappointed with my last shooting. That was not necessary,” she wrote. “Coming into the last shooting I knew that with a clean shooting a great race was possible. I tried to keep my mind clear and focus on the process, but I think I got a bit ahead of myself. The fog was tricky in standing today. You really had to search out the target. But as the results show a lot of women had a great shooting day today, so no excuse.”
Crawford finished 28th overall, 6:07.2 back from Mäkäräinen.
“I am happy to be in the top 30 pretty consistently this year. But I know what’s possible with 100% shooting,” she added. “Even on an off skiing day if I hit 100% it can be a race I’d be proud of.
“We had an amazing day for all three of us today,” she added, referring to Heinicke and Audrey Vaillancourt, who finished another 30 seconds back in 30th for her career best. “With both Megan and Audrey hitting 20/20 and Audrey getting her first top 30! Today definitely makes up for our lack of nation cup points in Nove Mesto!”
After her perfect-shooting day, Vaillancourt, 23, explained in an email that she focused on hitting each shot individually.
“I think taking the focus away from the total result helped me a lot,” she wrote.
Before the race, she felt calm and ready, and best of all, she liked the course, which featured “hard climbs, fun downhills, rolly sections.” With good shooting, she hoped for a top 40.
“I was really trying to be in the moment during today’s race so I basically took it one hill, one lap, one shooting bout at a time,” Vaillancourt wrote. “This helped me not to get overwhelmed and made me feel confident about the last shooting. It was just one of those days when it feels really easy on the range.”
She added that she was “relieved to finally have really good race. It feels great to see that I, too, can be up there on a good day,” she wrote.
Hannah Dreissigacker (US Biathlon) racing to 33rd in the IBU World Cup 15 k individual on Thursday in Oslo, Norway. (Photo: USBA/NordicFocus)
Hannah Dreissigacker placed 33rd for the U.S., 21.4 seconds after Vaillancourt, with clean shooting in every round except her second — where she missed three.
“On the whole, I’m happy with my race and placing,” Dreissigacker wrote. “In biathlon you can always play the game of ‘where would I be if I’d hit one more shot…two more…etc’, and that is especially true of individuals.”
With three misses in her first standing, she explained it was hard not to think about what might have happened if she shot better on that stage as well.
“But in the end, I’m happy with shooting 85% and I’m glad to have come back and shot two clean stages after that bad one,” she wrote. “I definitely went a bit harder on the lap before the first standing stage, trying to catch a ride with a faster skier. I don’t regret it — that’s how you learn and get better! But I also have to learn from the bad shooting stage.”
The third of four American women in Thursday’s race, Annelies Cook placed 55th (+8:18.2) with three penalties (1+0+2+1). Clare Egan was 82nd (+12:29.0) with six misses (1+1+1+3).
Check back for the men’s 20 k report, featuring Canada’s Nathan Smith in 12th and American Leif Nordgren in 20th.
Germany celebrates their victory in Sunday’s 4×6-kilometer relay. (Photo: IBU/Christian Manzoni)
It would have been oddly quiet on the firing range, given that there were ten women lined up and ready to fire, if it had not been for the howling of the wind.
The dominant theme of the final day of World Cup competition in Antholz, Italy, Sunday was wind. Wind, and lots of it. Three weeks of back-to-back World Cup racing concluded this weekend, capped off with the 4 x 6 k women’s relay. While the men’s competition was plagued by a cold wind, the women’s competition was defined by it, as the wind whipped down the valley during the second leg.
The Czech Republic, which eventually finished second, was the only team in the entire field to escape without a penalty loop; Russia, placing fourth, was the only team with less than 10 spare rounds. Far more common was a tally of two or three penalty loops and 13-16 spares.
At the first handoff, the Czech Republic had the lead, the United States was in second after Susan Dunklee’s phenomenal first leg, and Poland was in third.
“I had some wind in standing,” Dunklee wrote in an email, “but luckily most of the people around me struggled too.”
Shooters struggle to fire in the howling wind. (Photo: IBU/Christian Manzoni)
On the second leg, however, the wind picked up.
During the second shooting stage, ten teams were standing on the mats, and the leader still hadn’t finished firing as all the women waited for the wind to die down. Snow swirled and flags whipped, but no bullets were fired. Gabriela Soukalova, of the Czech Republic, was the first into and out of the range, and her range time was 2:14. In contrast, her time on the previous round – before the wind picked up – was exactly one minute, including loading and shooting a spare round.
After Soukalova finally shot her third spare bullet and knocked over the final target the incentive to speed up firing returned. U.S. biathlete Hannah Dreissigacker, who had been in second place at the start of the standing leg, skied away with three targets left up. By the end of the leg, the U.S. had slipped to 12th.
By the exchange, Czech still had the lead, followed closely by Russia, then Ukraine, then Germany, then Italy.
The third leg was a grab bag of leads and exchanges, as one skier took the lead in prone only to lose it in standing. Tears streamed down the competitors’ cheeks as the wind and snow battered their eyes.
By the end of the third leg, Ekaterina Shumilova of Russia was in first, but barely. Germany’s Luise Kummer and Ukraine’s Olga Abramova were not far behind. And the bottlenecks at the last shooting had compressed the top ten teams to within 1:15, whereas they had been spread out over 2:34 after the prone stage – the wind had actually calmed as later competitors came onto the range, whereas the leaders had taken longer to shoot. At the tag, it was Russia, Germany and then Ukraine.
Dahlmeier, Germany’s anchor leg, ignored the swirling gusts of wind and coolly shot the five targets, leaving the standing leg 23 seconds ahead of Russia’s Ekaterina Glazyrina. After Dahlmeier cleaned standing, it was clear that she would ski away with the win.
Veronika Vitkova of the Czech Republic skied out in second, with Valj Semerenko and Glazyrina leaving the range at nearly the same moment, leaving the final 2 k ski as the battleground for the final spot on the podium. It was a battle won by Vikova.
The North Americans
“I had a great ‘open body’ feeling today on skis and during the last lap went into chase mode with little regard for pacing,” American Susan Dunklee wrote in an email. “It felt great to reel people in.”
Dunklee indeed had a strong final, passing four skiers and posting the fastest lap time for that leg. She tagged Hannah Dreissigacker into second place.
“The wind was unpredictable and hurricane-like at times, and then perfectly still,” Dunlee wrote in an email. “So shooting was a lottery Hannah and [anchor leg Clare Egan] had some bad luck with the timing of the strongest gusts.”
It was Egan’s first appearance on the World Cup – a difficult debut.
“Clare faced some incredibly difficult conditions in her first World Cup, but handled them admirably,” Dunklee continued. “She has a lot of potential and I can’t wait to see what she does once she starts to feel comfortable at this level.”
Annelies Cook skied the third leg, missing some shots but avoided the penalty loop. Cook tagged Egan to bring in the team in. Egan tried to take the day like any other.
“My goals for the day were to do my job well, just like any other day of training,” she wrote in an email. “Of course when I set my poles down on the shooting mat for the prone stage and they almost got blown away by gusting winds, I had to slightly adjust the ‘just like any other day of training’ part of my strategy.”
But her first time on the World Cup, and she had to modify her plans.
“I started shooting prone the same way I always do, in a rhythmic cadence that alternates breathing and pulling the trigger, but after missing the first three shots I took a different approach, waiting with the trigger half-pulled for any tiny break in the wind. That worked for me and I hit my last two targets and then all three spares, so I avoided going in the penalty loop.
“The wind was also a factor on the open parts of the course where snow had blown over the trail making it super slow, and there were strong headwinds. I was trying to channel Lindsey Vonn with a super strong tuck with my elbows in front of my knees at one point.”
The Canadian women placed tenth overall. Led by Megan Heinicke, the team consisted of Julia Ransom, Rosanna Crawford and Audrey Vaillancourt. It was this group’s first time doing a relay together, and they are optimistic:
“I think we can all be proud of our efforts today!” Ransom said, according to a press release from Biathlon Canada. “The wind was quite tricky with huge gusts coming from every direction.
“This was the first time us four girls have been a relay team together. This is a great starting block and I believe good things are going to come from this team!”
Susan Dunklee (US Biathlon) racing to a season-best eighth in Friday’s 7.5 k sprint at the IBU World Cup in Antholz, Italy. (Photo: Fischer/NordicFocus)
There’s something in the air, or a lack thereof, in Antholz, Italy. Maybe it’s the fact that the biathlon venue is nearly 2,000 meters, about 6,500 feet, above sea level. The combination of a lack of oxygen and its proximity to the sun and mountains seems to work wonders for some athletes.
On Friday, Susan Dunklee was one of 95 women in the IBU World Cup 7.5-kilometer sprint that found her way into the top 10 in Antholz.
The American’s eighth-place result — her season best — came a year after she placed fourth in the Antholz sprint for what was then her career best.
“Antholz has always been a wonderful place for me and a good place to recover from a mentally tough start to the year,” Dunklee explained in an email after Friday’s race, in which she finished 1:10.3 back from Belarusian winner Darya Domracheva, who posted the fastest time in 19:57.8. “I thrive with Italian sunshine, mountains, food, and snow.”
Susan Dunklee races to an eighth-place finish in the women’s sprint at the IBU World Cup in Antholz, Italy. (Photo: USBA/NordicFocus)
Before the start, Dunklee recalled what worked for her there last year, “Skiing BIG with a stretched-out efficient V2 alternate, holding back in key places on the loop to feel okay for the range, and taking several extra breaths before shooting,” she wrote. “The high elevation here is an added stress and it helps to have a plan for how to deal with it.”
The 12th starter on a bluebird afternoon, Dunklee cleaned her first shooting to leave the range in fourth, 6.2 seconds behind Domracheva, the race leader at the time. Dunklee went on to miss one shot in the middle of her standing stage, which she explained landed high.
“The follow-though looked a little off,” she reflected. “Usually the field makes extra shooting mistakes here because of the elevation, so I suspected I could have a great race with one miss.”
She was right. Dunklee headed out of the penalty loop and into her last lap still in fourth, 52 seconds behind Domracheva, who cleaned both stages. While the American held fourth position through the finish, she was later bumped four spots by Italy’s Karin Oberhofer (who placed fifth), Finnish runner-up Kaisa Mäkäräinen, Nadezhda Skardino of Belarus (who ended up seventh), Germany’s Franziska Hildebrand (who placed sixth), respectively.
With the 10th-fastest course time, Dunklee ranked 73rd on the range in terms of time spent there, which was all part of her plan. In order to shoot well, she had to hold back on both the race course and take her time shooting, she explained.
In doing so, she finished 19.9 seconds off the podium and 0.7 seconds ahead of ninth, which Germany’s Franziska Preuss and Poland’s Weronika Nowakowsak-Ziemniak tied for. Dunklee will start Saturday’s 10 k pursuit with Skardino, 1:10 behind Domracheva and 1 second ahead of Preuss and Nowakowsak-Ziemniak.
“Historically I find my stride for the season in Antholz, so I’m hopeful I can build on this like in past years,” Dunklee said of her season best. “But I know that I must continue to find the fun in each race experience if I want to sustain myself at this level.”
Domracheva Fast-and-Flawless for First
Darya Domracheva (Belarus) atop the IBU World Cup podium for the 21st time in her career after winning Friday’s 7.5 k sprint in Antholz, Italy.
An even earlier starter, Domracheva in bib 3 pushed herself to the brink with the fastest-course time and yet managed to be one of four women in the top 10 who cleaned both stages (along with Germany’s Laura Dahlmeier in third, Slovakia’s Jana Gerekova in fourth, and Skardino in seventh).
Her time wasn’t always the fastest. Later in the race, three women topped her through the first stage with clean shooting as well. Mäkäräinen was on track to give Domracheva a run, besting her time after the first shooting by 7.6 seconds. Ukraine’s Valj Semerenko ranked second after prone, 4.3 seconds behind Mäkäräinen, and Oberhofer cleaned to clock through in third, 6.6 seconds back.
Mäkäräinen remained in control heading into the stadium for the second-and-final stage, with a 6.4-second lead over Domracheva. However, she missed her first standing shot and the penalty lap cost her as she left the range in second, 20 seconds behind Domracheva.
“I missed my first in standing,” Mäkäräinen later told Domracheva as they chatted before the flower ceremony. “After that it was like fighting. It’s always bad when you miss your first.”
Domracheva nodded her head. Sometimes you missed; sometimes you didn’t. Fortunately for her, she fell into the latter category with her 21st World Cup win on Friday.
“Shooting clean this week and last week in the sprint is very good. I have not done anything different, but it is working,” Domracheva told the IBU. “I think the sun and good conditions help. It was an amazing feeling when I realized I was winning. But I did not want to celebrate too early.”
Upon finishing,sShe collapsed to her knees and awaited her fate. Mäkäräinen came within 26.9 seconds of her — the closest anyone would rival Domracheva all day. The overall IBU World Cup leader by 52 points over Domracheva, Mäkäräinen placed second, and Dahlmeier, the second starter, held on for third (+50.4) with clean shooting.
The women’s sprint podium in Antholz, Italy, with winner Darya Domracheva (c), runner-up Kaisa Mäkäräinen (l) and Laura Dahlmeier in third.
Gerekova started fifth and also nailed all 10 shots to put herself in fourth (+55.2). Oberhofer missed one standing but had the third-fastest course time (after Domracheva and Mäkäräinen, respectively) to place fifth (+57.5).
Mäkäräinen told the IBU after the race that she was “very happy” with her result after having a difficult time in three previous sprints.
“Every competition is different and maybe it is a miss by only 1 millimeter, but sometimes, the small things matter,” she said.
Leading three Germans in the top nine, Dahlmeier was especially excited for her first-career podium, jumping up and down before and during the flower ceremony.
“Today was a big surprise, but it was a perfect race,” she said. “I felt good on the tracks … Our team is very young and doing well right now; we have a very good team atmosphere.”
Domracheva will start Saturday’s pursuit with a 27-second head start on Mäkäräinen. Dahlmeier will go out third, 50 seconds back, followed by Gerekova (+55.0), Oberhofer (+58.0) and Hildebrand (+1:01) before Skardino and Dunklee.
Crawford 29th in First Race Back Since Oberhof
Four North Americans (two Americans and two Canadians) made the top 60 to qualify for the pursuit. In her first race back in 12 days, Crawford placed 29th with a single prone miss, finishing 1:48.1 behind Domracheva.
Canada’s Rosanna Crawford en route to fourth on Dec. 18 in the IBU World Cup 7.5 k sprint in Pokljuka, Slovenia. (Photo: Christian Manzoni/NordicFocus)
After a cold caused her to miss the entire last World Cup stop in Ruhpolding, Germany, and kept her from training for seven days (and shooting/skiing for eight), Crawford hoped for a top 40 and perfect shooting, like her boyfriend Brendan Green had done in four-straight races. On Thursday, with a 50-for-50 shooting streak, he posted a career-best fifth.
“My goal was a top 40 to keep on making points and still looking for that illusive 100% shooting in a non-relay race!” Crawford wrote in an email. “I’ll have to get a few pointers from Brendan!
“We started things off really slow not wanting to relapse back into the cold, but the sunshine and good Italian food helped get me back to normal,” she explained. “I still have a cough that I’m sure will hang around for a while.”
“It was so exciting watching Brendan’s race yesterday! I’ve know he’s had the potential to be up at the front and to see him get his first flower ceremony was really exciting! We’ve had some great results this year from a number of athletes and it’s been great to build off one another! It’s now a battle between Brendan and I of who’s going to get the first podium!!”
The 41st starter, Crawford’s time ranked 30th before the first stage. There, she missed her first shot to drop to 61st.
“I’ve struggled with prone shooting here in the past and knew that I needed to be slow and precise to hit the target,” she wrote. “Even though we live at 1400m in Canmore it’s hard to shoot at 1600m! I missed my first shot and then took two breaths between the next four to make sure I would hit them. It was by far the slowest I’ve ever shot prone but I am happy to only had one miss!”
Crawford knocked down her remaining targets to recover to 31st after the second stage and finish 29th. Her course time ranked 34th and she her range time was 66th.
During her last lap, Crawford heard she was in 20th, about four seconds from 16th.
“The finishing stretch is pretty tough here, long and flat and I was happy to be able to have a good push to the line,” she wrote.
On Saturday, she’ll start 1:48 back with Ukraine’s Juliya Dzhyma.
“I think this will be my first pursuit here, so I’m really looking forward to it,” Crawford wrote. “With some good shooting I hope to stay in the top 30 and then I’ll have a week of training before the next world cups to hopefully get back to where I was before Christmas!”
Annelies Cook during the women’s 7.5 k sprint in Antholz, Italy. She placed 67th. (Photo: USBA/NordicFocus)
Her teammate, Megan Heinicke placed 40th in the sprint, 2:07 back from Domracheva, with one miss in prone and another in standing. Heinicke’s shooting was faster — with the 19th-fastest range time — and she posted the 36th-fastest course time.
For the U.S., Hannah Dreissigacker made the pursuit by one-tenth of a second 60th (+2:44.3), with three penalties, one prone and two standing. She had the 16th-fastest range time and was 48th fastest on course.
Also for the U.S., Annelies Cook placed 67th (+3:01.5) with two standing penalties, and Maddie Phaneuf of the Maine Winter Sports Center was 93rd (+4:13) with three misses (1+2) in her first World Cup sprint.
Canada’s Julia Ransom placed 76th (+3:19.2) with three penalties (2+1), Audrey Vaillancourt was 83rd (+3:38.3) with a single standing miss.
Veronika Vitkova of the Czech Republic, eventually the third-place finisher in Sunday’s 12.5 k mass start in Ruhpolding, Germany, leads American Susan Dunklee in the third loop of the course. (Photo: USBA/NordicFocus.com)
In Friday and Saturday’s World Cup sprint races in Ruhpolding, Germany, it was clear that something was slowing down U.S. biathletes: their skis.
The U.S. team usually has excellent skis, Susan Dunklee told FasterSkier on Friday and also on Sunday after the mass start race, but the sprints were one of those rare instances of what Norwegians would call a smørebom, a waxing crisis.
“Our staff, they all work really hard and just like I’m disappointed when I don’t have a good race, they are disappointed when I don’t have good skis for my race, because they put so much effort into it and it means a lot to them to do a good job,” Dunklee said on Sunday. “This week we kind of struggled with the materials. But today they were good, and that was really nice [for everyone].”
Sure thing: in the 12.5 k mass start, Dunklee turned in the fifth-fastest course time. That’s a far cry from the sprint where she had said that she felt she had one of her best races of the season, but it didn’t appear that way on the results. On Sunday, she gave her team something to cheer for as she worked her way up to third place by the final shooting.
She had gotten there by shooting carefully for the first three stages.
“My first big goal today was to find the joy in racing,” she explained. “The second was to shoot really carefully in the prone stage, and take as much time as I needed to settle and make the shots. I kind of messed that up in the earlier mass starts this season.”
Determined to erase the memory of penalty-laden competitions earlier this season, Dunklee cleaned her first prone stage and picked up one penalty in the second. Then she cleaned her first standing.
Besides shooting, the American had also gotten into third place by following some very fast ladies. On the third lap, she left the range behind Veronika Vitkova of the Czech Republic, the most successful biathlete in Oberhof last weekend and eventually third in the mass start.
“I had good opportunities,” Dunklee said.
On the fourth loop, she followed Darya Domracheva, who had won the sprint and went on to win the mass start by 16.5 seconds over Franziska Preuss of Germany.
“It’s kind of hard to tell where you’re going to end up after shooting,” Dunklee said. “You just put your head down and ski through the pack. Suddenly, going into that last shooting, I was in third. I had no idea leaving the range that I was anywhere close to that. I just kind of followed Darya around the loop, and we got to the end of the loop and I looked up and there were only two people in front of me.”
Once she hit that final shooting stage, Dunklee picked up two penalties. She dropped to 16th place and stayed there all the way to the finish. She crossed the line a minute and 11 seconds behind Domracheva, who had cleaned the final stage and then skied the second-fastest final loop time to boot.
Despite the might-have-beens, Dunklee seemed satisfied and happy with her result. 16th is her best result so far this season.
“I definitely felt like the sprint result was not indicative of where I was,” she said. “I had a lot of confidence coming into today, and especially with my shooting coming together.”
That confidence was not much depleted by missing two shots in the final stage. That’s biathlon.
“I felt really relaxed there,” Dunklee said of that shooting stage. “It’s not the first time I’ve been in that situation. It reminded me of the mass start at Sochi, actually. So I’ve been there before, I know what it’s like, I can relax. I felt like I did a good job of that. I missed a couple of targets, but even though obviously things didn’t go perfectly, I felt like I did well.”
After ending last season on a high point – Dunklee got her first World Cup podium ever in Oslo, Norway, in the last weekend of racing – she has stayed ranked solidly in the top 25 this season, but had no spectacular results. The mass start felt like a step forward, she explained.
“It feels great to be back in the mix,” Dunklee said. “It was fun, it was exciting, and it’s confidence. I know I can be back there.”
In First Mass Start, Heinicke Hangs in for 23rd
Dunklee had just one fellow North American in the mass start: Canada’s Megan Heinicke, who earned the nod after finishing 11th in the sprint on Friday.
It was the first time Heinicke has ever made a mass start in top-level competition, and she was psyched.
“I was really happy to have qualified for the Mass Start today- it was the first of my career and it was painful but fun!” Heinicke wrote in an e-mail. “I wasn’t particularly nervous- just my usual level of pre-race tension/excitement. I think having started several relays this year really helped build my confidence about the mass start format- but still, skiing in a pack like that I think you can always learn something!”
Unfortunately, both Heinicke and Canadian head coach Matthias Ahrens agreed that the form which had gotten her to 11th place in the sprint was lacking. Heinicke said that her legs felt “heavy” and Ahrens noticed a bit less speed.
With just two penalties in the four-stage race, Heinicke finished 23rd, 1:48.2 behind Domracheva’s mark.
“I was very impressed by Megan’s skiing in the sprint which helped her to get into her first mass start,” Ahrens wrote in an e-mail. “Today she could not quite repeat the same ski form but decent shooting made her gain a few spots. In general she has been showing increasing confidence in all aspects of biathlon and that is showing in her results, I am excited to see what the second half of the season and especially World Championships will bring.”
The two penalties were both a frustration and a relief to Heinicke: she felt that she could have had one less, but she was also very happy with her standing shooting.
“On the whole, my shooting confidence is improving and I think that is helping me a lot,” she wrote. “I was quite a good shooter and suddenly started struggling with standing 2 seasons ago, so every small victory on the standing targets is good! There was one unnecessary prone miss but still, 90% is great and I was really focused on my job in the range despite the pressure of the mass start format and quite tired legs! I shot a little bit slower/less aggressively today. I think in prone that was a reaction to nerves and in standing it was a conscious decision fighting for each shot as my legs felt a bit shaky.”
Megan Heinicke (Biathlon Canada) racing to 59th in the sprint at the 2014 Olympics near Sochi, Russia.
Megan Heinicke had a little something called home-course advantage working in her favor on Friday, and for that matter, on Wednesday and this Sunday as well.
The 26-year-old Canadian from Prince George, B.C., has called Ruhpolding, Germany, her home since September. Lucky for her, the fifth IBU World Cup stop of the season was there, with races Wednesday through Sunday. And on Friday, the six-year Biathlon Canada veteran qualified for her first-ever mass start after placing a career-best 11th in the 7.5-kilometer sprint.
“This was one of my strongest skiing performances ever,” Heinicke wrote in an email after Friday’s race, in which she topped her previous World Cup best by one place (she was 12th in the 15 k individual at the beginning of the season in Östersund). “I simply felt strong and there is nothing more fun than fighting hard when you feel strong.”
The 16th starter out of 98 women, she finished 52.3 seconds behind the winner after shooting 90 percent with a clean prone stage and one standing penalty.
That put her in third overall after prone, and while her standing miss set her back to 10th and she slipped one more spot to 11th on the last lap, Heinicke initially finished fifth of 16 women.
“I was well aware that starting with bib 16 meant that there were still a lot of strong girls behind me so I wasn’t disappointed to fall back a bit [in the final results],” she explained. “I was really hoping to stay in 10th, but 11th is a new personal best and I am really pleased with the result.”
Throughout the race, she heard she was in contention with top women like Darya Domracheva of Belarus (who started 14th and ended up second) and Italy’s Dorothea Wierer (who started 19th and placed ninth). She wasn’t sure what that meant or where it would put her, but she felt strong and assumed she was doing well.
Going into the race, Heinicke had hoped for a top 30, but more specifically, to “glide longer in the flat sections and be a bit more explosive with higher frequency on the few steep sections,” she wrote. “Shooting wise I had been trying out some keywords and those were all I wanted to think about on the range.”
On Wednesday, Heinicke had another first, racing to second in the opening leg of the women’s 4 x 6 relay and putting her team 25 seconds from the lead at the exchange. The Canadians ended up 11th — not quite the team-best fourth they accomplished just over a year ago — but Heinicke saw it as a stepping stone.
“I had a great relay leg this Wednesday and had also had a great relay leg in Oberhof which had me feeling determined and confident,” she wrote. “I am slowly starting to feel more confident and I have this fierce determination to shoot well which is enough to keep me focused.”
The level of support she’s received has helped her as well.
“I have had some big life changes this fall and am feeling like there is no pressure on me and I think that has been good for my head,” she explained. “I am really motivated by having several personal bests this season and I feel like the return of my self confidence is good for me. I am planning to keep racing with the same determined, task-oriented approach and who knows what can happen! I certainly wasn’t expecting these results to come this year!”
With Friday’s result, Heinicke was one of two Canadian women to qualify for Sunday’s 12.5 k mass start. Rosanna Crawford sat out Wednesday and Friday because of a cold, but is currently 12th in the overall World Cup (making the top-30 criteria) and listed to start in bib 12.
In her first-career mass start, Heinicke will start in bib 28.
“I am glad I have been able to start our relay a few times so I am not feeling too nervous about starting in the pack,” Heinicke wrote.
Also for Canada on Friday, Zina Kocher placed 48th, 2:18.8 behind the winner — Fanny Welle-Strand Horn of Norway. After starting 96th, Kocher found herself in the top 20 after a clean prone and the 23rd-fastest course time on the first lap. However, she missed three in standing, which put her back from 31st to 65th with one lap to go. Kocher posted the 13th-fastest course time overall.
Audrey Vaillancourt finished 68th (+3:13.7) with a single prone penalty, and Julia Ransom, in her second World Cup sprint, was 81st (+3:55.8) with four penalties: one prone and three standing.
Dunklee: ‘One of my best performances of the year’
Susan Dunklee (US Biathlon) on her way to 26th on Friday in the women’s 7.5 k sprint at the IBU World Cup in Ruhpolding, Germany. (Photo: USBA/NordicFocus)
US Biathlon’s Susan Dunklee led the Americans in what she considered one of her best performances of the year, in which she placed 26th, 1:44 behind Horn.
Dunklee started 30th and skied right around 30th for most of the race, cleaning prone and missing one in standing, and posted the 30th-fastest course time overall.
In an email, she explained her skiing felt “snappy,” which left her surprised with the splits she was hearing: why weren’t they better?
“There are always factors out of your control as an athlete,” Dunklee wrote. “Today we saw some tricky waxing conditions with wet snow and we didn’t nail it quite as well as we usually do.”
Skiing aside, she explained she had her best shooting day of the season, “which is a huge confidence booster going forward,” she wrote. “Plus I was happy, relaxed and focused this morning; I was just plain psyched to be racing, more so than I have been lately.”
On Sunday, Dunklee as the lone American in the women’s mass start will start in bib 23.
“I’m ready to try again in the mass start,” she wrote.
Her teammates, Annelies Cook and Hannah Dreissigacker, placed 52nd and 77th, respectively on Friday. Cook cleaned prone and missed one standing to finish 2:30.1 behind the winner, and Dreissigacker fell behind with two prone penalties and another miss in standing to end up 3:41.2 back.
Horn Surprises for First World Cup Win
While much of the attention in Friday’s sprint went to Domracheva, who started 14th and cleaned both stages despite using one spare in prone, there was also a lot riding on Norway’s Tiril Eckhoff, the 31st starter who came within 4.2 seconds of Domracheva’s time heading into the final lap.
Norway’s Fanny Welle-Strand Horn celebrates her first IBU World Cup win and podium on Friday after the 7.5 sprint in Ruhpolding, Germany. (Photo: IBU/Ernst Wukits)
She couldn’t quite catch her, finishing 5.9 seconds behind Domracheva, but there was another Norwegian gunning for the win — Horn, who, at 26, had never before reached the World Cup podium.
Horn started 35th, two minutes after Eckhoff, and took the lead with a clean prone. She hit all her standing targets as well to stay in control, then raced the seventh-fastest last lap to edge Domracheva’s time by 3.4 seconds in 21:07.4.
“I have been in this game for a long time, five years in the World Cup,” she told the IBU afterward. “Today, everything worked out for me — skiing, waxing and shooting — I am really happy and I am really happy that I made 10 good shots.”
Norway took two of the top three with Eckhoff in third, after Domracheva in second.
“We had amazing skis today,” Eckhoff told the IBU. “We have a really strong team and it is really fun that I am on the podium with Fanny on top.”
While Domracheva lost a few seconds loading the spare, she was glad she was able to avoid a penalty loop.
“I am happy that I shot clean. Sometimes when things like that happens, an athlete misses the shot,” she said.
She also liked the modified course: “The new course is good; there were not so many girls falling anymore,” Domracheva said.
Ukraine’s Valj Semerenko placed fourth, 21 seconds after Horn, Finland’s Mari Laukkanen — an early leader after a clean prone stage — missed one standing to place fifth (+22.7), Germany’s Franziska Hildebrand cleaned for sixth (+28.6), and overall World Cup leader Kaisa Mäkäräinen missed one on each stage but skied the second-fastest course time to place seventh (+32).
Veronika Vitkova of the Czech Republic had the fastest course time, but missed three (one prone and two standing) to finish eighth (+41.2). Wierer was ninth for Italy (+43.3), and Czech Jitka Landova placed 10th (+50.9), 1.4 seconds ahead of Heinicke.
On Sunday, Mäkäräinen, who still leads the World Cup, will start the mass start in bib 1 alongside Domracheva in bib 2 and Semerenko in bib 3.
The Czech Republic women’s 4 x 6 k team celebrates its second-straight relay win on Thursday at the IBU World Cup in Ruhpolding, Germany. (Photo: IBU/Ernst Wukits)
All it took the Canadian women to have one of the greatest starts of their relay careers was a pep talk from a two-time Norwegian Olympic gold medalist, Halvard Hanevold, who notched 40 IBU World Cup podiums in his career.
According to Megan Heinicke, the team’s first skier in Wednesday’s 4 x 6-kilometer relay at the IBU World Cup in Ruhpolding, Germany, the Canadians had a team meeting with Hanevold on Tuesday night. She said it was “fantastic” and helped them going into the relay with “a really supportive team attitude,” she wrote in an email.
Whatever it was, it worked — and especially well for Heinicke — who shot out of the mass start with the leaders and put herself in fourth heading into the first shooting stage within two seconds of the Czech Republic, Finland and Norway, respectively.
Germany’s Franziska Preuss (r) and Eva Puskarcikova of the Czech Republic (l) lead Canada’s Megan Heinicke (c) and Belarus’s Nadezhda Skardino (behind Preuss and Heincke) during the first leg of the IBU World Cup women’s 4 x 6 k relay on Thursday in Ruhpolding, Germany.
There, Heinicke shot fast and flawlessly to find herself in second coming out of the range, 1.3 seconds behind Eva Puskarcikova of the Czech Republic and just 0.1 seconds ahead of Germany’s Franziska Preuss in third.
“I was thinking ‘holy cow I’m up here again!’ ” Heinicke recalled. “I was excited and motivated. I also tried to think tactically and stay in our little group of 3 and not let myself do too much work.”
The Czech Republic, with Puskarcikova, Gabriela Soukalova, Jitka Landova, and Veronika Vitkova, was coming off a relay victory a week earlier in Oberhof, Germany. The German women had placed 10th in that race, but with a new lineup of Franziska Preuss, Franziska Hildebrand, Vanessa Hinz, and Laura Dahlmeier, respectively, they knew they could be in contention.
“We changed the team [with Hildebrand and Dahlmeier in place of Luise Kummer and Karolin Horchler],” Hildebrand told the IBU after the race. “That is all, but we were confident that we could be on the podium…”
So were the Canadians, but they were among the teams flying lowest on the radar after being lapped in the Oberhof relay.
The Canadian women’s relay team after placing 11th earlier this season in Hochfilzen, Austria. (From left to right) Rosanna Crawford, Audrey Vaillancourt, Sarah Beaudry, and Megan Heinicke. (Photo: Rosanna Crawford)
Yet Heinicke, and the rest of her teammates — Julia Ransom, Audrey Vaillancourt and Zina Kocher — knew they had the potential. Hanevold reminded them of that. With Rosanna Crawford out with a cold, Heinicke explained they tried new relay combination, which was an important step before IBU World Championships in March.
Coming into the second shooting within a second of Preuss and Puskarcikova, Heinicke used one spare to leave the range in second, 17.6 seconds behind Puskarcikova, who cleaned.
“It was hard to shoot clean with the snow falling, but it was easier than in Oberhof,” Puskarcikova told the IBU. “I am not exactly sure how I shot 10 for the second week in a row.”
A rainstorm began before zero, 1 1/2 hours before the race on Thursday, and didn’t let up, coating competitors and spectators in a wet, slushy mixture between rain and snow. That made both skiing and shooting tough, but Heinicke didn’t notice.
“I was so focused on the race in the moment that the conditions didn’t effect me too much,” she wrote. “I think the pressure and excitement of being near the front of the race helps me have a sharper focus in a weird ‘heightened senses’ kind of way.”
Heinicke focused on her technique and held her position through the exchange, tagging Ransom in second, 25.2 seconds behind the Czechs and 2.5 seconds ahead of Poland in third.
“Sprinting is really not my strength and I was really giving my all so I was just mentally coaching myself along!” Heinicke wrote.
Gabriela Soukalova (l) tagging Czech teammate Jitka Landova in first in the women’s 4 x 6 k relay at the Ruhpolding IBU World Cup on Thursday in Germany. (Photo: IBU/Ernst Wukits)
Meanwhile, Ransom, in her first World Cup season at age 21, tried to control her excitement.
“Megan has tagged off to me in excellent positions twice now!” Ransom wrote in an email. “All I could think was that opportunity was there ready to be seized.”
She maintained second through the first shooting, which she cleaned, and up until her standing stage, where she entered the range 59 seconds behind Soukalova in first and 10 seconds behind Hildebrand in second.
“I would be lying if I said the conditions were easy, but I secretly love it when it’s miserable out there,” Ransom wrote. “Canadians are tough! And if you can be tougher than the others, a little bit of rain, sleet, wind, or cold will feel like nothing.”
In that second stage, she missed three but avoided penalty loops with three spares.
“I think my standing shooting was affected by my excitement. I know I can hit targets, but when I am not 100% ‘there’, that’s when things can get squirrelly!” she wrote. “I buckled down for the spares and got out as quick as I could. When there were three spares for three targets, I remember thinking, ‘I’m going to give my parents a heart attack.’ They watch the live stream back in Canada.”
Meanwhile, Soukalova and Hildebrand used two spares, and Belarus’s second leg, Iryna Kryuko, cleaned her second-straight stage to move into third behind the Czech Republic and Germany, respectively.
By now, Soukalova had built up a minute lead over Hildebrand, and Kryuko was 1:13 back, followed by Ukraine’s Natalya Burdyga in fourth (+1:18) and Norway’s Fanny Welle-Strand Horn in fifth (+1:22). Ransom left the range just another second behind in sixth, and tagged Vaillancourt in the same position, 1:53.1 behind the Czechs.
“Being the youngest on the team, I sometimes feel an internal pressure to prove myself and I believe I did today,” Ransom wrote.
Vaillancourt explained in an email that she was excited to start in a pack.
“I thought it was possible for us to finish in the top 6 if Zina and I both had a great race,” Vaillancourt wrote.
With Landova, the Czechs began to extend their lead on Germany. Entering their first prone, Landova was up to 1:15 ahead of Hinz. Ukraine’s Olga Abramova was 1:41 back, just 0.6 seconds ahead of Norway’s Elise Ringen and 2.4 seconds ahead of Nadzeya Pisareva of Belarus. Vaillancourt followed in sixth, 2:13 behind Landova.
In her first stage, Landova missed two shots and had to use a third spare to avoid her team’s first penalty loop of the day. She delivered and left the range still well ahead of Hinz, who cleaned to cut the deficit to 29.7 seconds.
Abramova cleaned as well to hold onto third, 52 seconds behind Landova. Pisareva and Ringen used one spare each and left in fourth and fifth, 1:02 and 1:05 back. Vaillancourt used one spare as well to stay in sixth, another 33 seconds behind.
One the next lap, Poland’s Weronika Nowakowska-Ziemniak passed Vaillancourt early on, and Canada slipped one spot to seventh.
Vaillancourt cleaned her standing stage and left the range still in seventh, but lost one more place by the final exchange.
“I was mostly losing time on the uphills,” she recalled. “I have been very sick in the past two weeks and hardly have been able to train, so I knew this was going to be a tough one on the skis. I am glad the ice is broken though.”
Landova held steady up front, missing her second-standing shot and using a spare, but leaving the range 29 seconds ahead of Hinz, who also used one spare to stay in second. Belarus jumped to third, 1:12 behind, with clean shooting from Pisareva, and Norway was another 6 seconds back in fourth despite Ringen using two more spares.
Abramova used three spares to fall to fifth for Ukraine, and Russia improved to sixth with 10-for-10 shooting from Ekaterina Shumilova.
By the last exchange, the Czech Republic had a 30-second cushion to Germany in second, and was a whopping 1:14 ahead of Belarus in third. Norway and Ukraine skied together in fourth and fifth, more than a minute and a half back, Poland moved into sixth (+2:10), and Russia tagged off in seventh (+2:12.5).
U.S. second-leg skier Hannah Dreissigacker after her prone shooting stage, where she used three spares and went on to keep her team in 10th in the women’s relay in Ruhpolding, Germany. (Photo: USBA/NordicFocus)
Canada was 2:37.1 back in eighth with one 6-kilometer leg to go, and the U.S. women, in their first relay of the season, started the last leg in 16th (+5:28.4).
Ninth heading into prone, Kocher used three spares and had to ski Canada’s first penalty loop to drop to 12th, 4:18 behind Vitkova, who used one spare to keep the Czechs in control.
Germany’s Dalhmeier and Domracheva of Belarus both cleaned after her, but were well out of sight by the time they left the range in second and third, one minute and 1:24 later, respectively.
“Shooting was basically catastrophic considering it wasn’t like last week in Oberhof,” Kocher wrote of Thursday. “Prone, I evaluated the wind flags wrong. Wind really picked up when I got into prone. I made a correction before I started shooting. But it was not enough for the change in direction. I corrected more once I was on spares and hit 3 shots with the 3 spares but then it was too late, I already had 4 misses.”
She skied up to 11th with the fourth-fastest course time on her second lap, but missed four again for another penalty loop, which put Canada 5:36 behind and still in 11th. Kocher posted the second-fastest last loop of the anchor legs to finish 5:33.8 behind the winner — Vitkova of the Czech Republic.
Vitkova had used a single spare on each stage to stay more than a minute ahead in first. Belarus moved to second with Domracheva skiing the fastest anchor leg and using a single spare throughout her two stages.
While Vitkova had enough time to take her poles off and grab a Czech flag from a spectator before casually skiing across the line, Domracheva entered the stadium uncontested as well and looked back before celebrating second, 1:13.3 behind the Czechs, who won in 1:23:57.7.
Veronika Vitkova anchoring the Czech Republic to its second-straight women’s relay win on Thursday the IBU World Cup in Ruhpolding, Germany. (Photo: IBU/Ernst Wukits)
“It was easier for me today because the other girls gave me such a big lead,” Vitkova told the IBU.
Germany hung on to the podium in third, 1:39.3 back from the winners, and a minute ahead of Norway (anchored by Tiril Eckhoff, who cleaned her first stage and used three spares on the second) in fourth.
Ukraine placed fifth (+2:49.7) with a clean final stage and one early spare from Valj Semerenko. France was sixth (+3:55.3) with 17 total spares, Poland placed seventh (+4:14.4) with two penalties and 10 spares, Russia was eighth (+4:36.5) with two penalties and 13 spares, Italy ninth (+4:44.6) with two penalties and 13 spares as well, and Austria took 10th (+4:51.2) with two penalties and eight spares.
Canada crossed the line 42.6 seconds later with two penalties and 11 total spares.
“Can’t say I feel great about my performance today. I skied strong but that doesn’t make up for the 2 laps,” Kocher wrote. “It’s great to see that there are younger athletes coming up showing such strong performances. It’s always motivating for the entire team.”
While Heinicke explained the race could have been better, she added that it also could have been worse. “We gave it our all,” she wrote.
“Our relay shows so much potential and I know that our day to shine will come,” Ransom wrote.
“It think we showed that if everyone has a good day, we can definitely be one of the top nations!” Vaillancourt added.
U.S. Women in 16th Before Being Lapped
The Americans stayed in the race until the final leg, when Maddy Phaneuf in her World Cup debut completed two stages and was lapped before coming into the finish. She had one penalty and three spares in prone, and used one spare in standing to bring the team’s grand total to three penalties and 19 spares.
The team’s opening skier, Susan Dunklee used two spares in each of her shooting stages to go from 15th to 12th, and finally up to 10th (+1:03.5) with the fourth-fastest, first-leg course time.
And she started in the back.
“I had the last row of the starting lanes all to myself,” Dunklee explained in an email. “I followed Mari [Laukkanen] from Finland (also seeded near the back) because she is a strong skier who knows how to maneuver in a crowd. That whole first loop was about being patient in the pack, moving when spaces opened up, but not wasting energy. The weather worked to my advantage today because I am a strong V1 skier and the entire course felt like one long uphill because of the resistance.”
Dunklee explained that the heavy rain caught the racers off guard.
“I think everyone assumed the crappy weather was behind us after Oberhof,” she wrote. “The snow behaved like sandpaper and we had to V2 many of the downhills. I used every change of dry clothes that I brought and still struggled to stay warm. It was especially difficult to keep enough feeling in our hands to shoot.”
U.S. third leg Annelies Cook during the women’s relay on Thursday in Ruhpolding, Germany. (Photo: USBA/NordicFocus)
Dunklee came through the exchange in 10th, and Dreissigacker held the position throughout the second leg, despite using three spares in both her prone and standing stages. She tagged Annelies Cook in 10th, 2:31.7 behind the leaders.
Cook dropped to 16th after her first shooting, with two penalties and three spares. She used two spares on the second stage and tagged Phaneuf in 16th (+5:28.4).
According to Dunklee, the team always aims for a top result each time they toe the line, but they were also simply excited to have enough women to field a relay for the first time this year.
“Maddie has never been on the World Cup before, but what an epic way to start!” she wrote. “She got the full experience with thousands of crazy fans and unpredictable weather. She is very young with lots of racing ahead of her, and I think she did a great job today taking it all in and staying level headed.”
The Czech Republic posted the most consistent performances of the day and clinched the women’s relay win with anchor Veronika Vitkova (second from l) at Wednesday’s IBU World Cup in Obehof, Germany. From left to right: Eva Puskarcikova, Vitkova, Jitka Landova, and Gabriela Soukalova. (Photo: Fischer/NordicFocus)
The women’s International Biathlon Union (IBU) World Cup resumed in Oberhof, Germany, on Wednesday with the women’s 4 x 6-kilometer relay. Twenty centimeters of fresh snow made for difficult skiing on a foggy, warmer day than in training on Tuesday, and on top of that, Oberhof is known as a notoriously hard shooting venue. The large-climb profile of Oberhof and a long, flat section leading into the range contrasts that of several other World Cup stops.
The leading positions changed several times throughout the race, with early leaders Russia and Finland falling out of contention with two many penalty loops apiece.
The eventual winners, the Czech Republic, with Eva Puskarcikova, Gabriela Soukalova, Jitka Landova, and Veronika Vitkova, used seven spares to claim the victory, one less than runner-up France (with Marine Bolliet, Marie Dorin Habert, Justine Braisaz, and Anais Bescond), which used eight. The Czech team was consistent throughout the day with none of its athletes skiing significantly quicker or slower than the others, which put them on pace for the win in 1:16:56, 8.6 seconds ahead of France.
Veronika Vitkova clinches the nearly-nine-second win for the Czech Republic on Wednesday in the women’s 4 x 6 k relay at the IBU World Cup in Oberhof, Germany. (Photo: Fischer/NordicFocus)
Sixth after the first leg with Puskarcikova, who used just one spare, Soukalova skied the team to third with a single spare as well, Landova brought them one step closer in second with two spares, and Vitkova used three spares to seal the win.
“The final shooting was quite hard as I was nervous; but I really wanted to win,” Vitkova told the IBU.
“I was not sure about my shape for the first race after Christmas,” Soukalova said. “Early in the race, I had a lot of energy but on the last loop, I was so tired; I just wanted to see the finish line.”
During the third leg, it seemed Ukraine, the Olympic relay champions, had a strong hold on the first position with Olga Abramova maintaining their lead until the final exchange. The Czech Republic followed came through the exchange in second, 8.3 seconds back, followed by France, 11.9 behind Ukraine.
Vitkova led into the first prone stage and cleaned with six shots, but France’s anchor Anais Bescond cleaned quickly as well to chase her out of the stadium. Ukraine’s Iryna Varvynets used one spare to leave the range in third, followed by Norway’s Tiril Eckhoff, who also used one spare and headed out on her second lap in fourth, 34 seconds after Vitkova.
In the final standing, both Vitkova and Bescond used two spare rounds to leave the range together Eckhoff suffered a penalty lap, while Varvynets missed just one to chase the leaders from 37 seconds behind in third. However, she slowed on her last lap and was overtaken by three women — Darya Domracheva of Belarus, Eckhoff, and Italy’s Karin Oberhofer respectively — to finish sixth for Ukraine.
At the front of the race, Vitkova pulled away from Bescond with about 2 k remaining to the finish, and secured the win by nearly nine seconds. Domracheva brought Belarus from 10th to third, passing Varvynets in the final 500 meters.
The IBU World Cup women’s relay podium on Wednesday in Oberhof, Germany: with France in second (l), the Czech Republic in first (c), and Belarus in third. (Photo: Fischer/NordicFocus)
France welcomed back Marie Dorin Habert to her first World Cup race since giving birth to her first child this summer.
“I have only had two national races before this; I did not expect my form to be so good,” she said in a press conference following relay.
France’s second skier, Habert used a single spare to bring her team back within less than a second of the leading Ukrainian team, which had perfect shooting from its first two skiers, Anastasiya Merkushyna and Valj Semerenko.
Darya Domracheva had the biggest individual leg of the day, lifting Belarus to the podium after Nadzeya Pisareva’s penalty on the third leg put the team in 10th. Domracheva used two spares and skied the fastest course time on the last leg to close 38 seconds and place third overall, 1:06.8 behind the winners.
Norway saved their strongest woman for last. With her team in fifth, Eckhoff took over with an aggressive start to her race. Coming into the standing shooting, Eckhoff was within range of the leaders, but fighting the wind, she used her three spares and still incurred a penalty loop. Eckhoff skied a strong final lap, passing Italy and Ukraine, but was unable to hold onto Domracheva. Norway took fourth, 1:12.7 behind the Czech Republic.
Italy led early in the first leg with Dorothea Wierer, who shot clean, but dropped to seventh with second-leg Lisa Vittozzi and remained in seventh, and finally fifth. After catching Varvynets coming into the stadium, Oberhofer could not hold off Eckhoff and dropped to fifth, 1 second behind Norway and 1:13.7 after the winners. Ukraine was another 5.3 seconds back in sixth.
Canada, the lone North American women’s relay, put themselves in the mix in early on with Megan Heinicke, who had perfect shooting and the ninth-fastest course time of the first leg. She tagged teammate Julia Ransom in fifth, 8.8 seconds behind the leaders.
Ransom skied with a quick tempo in the warm-and-slushy conditions, and held onto the leaders for her first lap. Ransom needed just one spare in standing to hit her 10 targets and complete her leg, tagging Emma Lunder in 10th.
“Megan rocked the first lap!” Ransom wrote in an email. “Shooting felt solid out there and the first ski lap was filled with adrenaline and excitement. Flying out [to Oberhof] only a few days ago, I still felt the effects of jet lag and died a little on the other two laps. However I am confident that the body will be back in form for the sprint.”
Nearly 1:50 behind the leaders, Lunder was troubled by a change in wind since her pre-race zero and skied two penalty laps after prone. She used three more spares in standing, for a total of six, and tagged Zina Kocher in 16th, nearly five minutes back.
In an email, Lunder explained these mistakes only motivated her to perform better in Friday’s sprint.
“I like the course, I feel strong, and with a bit of extra focus on the range in training tomorrow, I’m certain I can perform to my potential,” she wrote, adding that the slushy conditions and the difficult climbs suit her strengths.
The team’s veteran, Kocher, used six spares (three in each stage) before being lapped on the final loop and taken out of the race.
“I had to focus on doing my job and make the best of it,” she explained in an email.
Three of the Canadian women flew into Oberhof on Monday night, and Kocher explained that jet lag after the holidays could have been a factor in their performance.
“Today’s relay was just a blip in the scheme of things,” Ransom wrote. “It’s incredibly hard to get four people to be ‘on’ all at the same time and it just didn’t happen for us. But now that the cobwebs are out, I believe that all of us ladies will have some great performances coming up.”
Rosanna Crawford at the flower ceremony after achieving a career-best fourth in the Pokljuka IBU World Cup sprint last week. (Photo: Christian Manzoni/NordicFocus)
Some of the U.S. Ski Team members are starting to feel like themselves again, even after a couple crashes took Kikkan Randall and Sophie Caldwell out of contention in Sunday’s freestyle-sprint semifinals at the World Cup in Davos, Switzerland.
“It was a bummer to fall because the feelings were a lot stronger today,” Randall said after placing ninth. “I was just really happy that I felt more like myself today. You don’t realize how bad you were feeling until you start to feel good again.”
“I was just thinking, ‘Oh God, am I ever going to get back there this year, and how long is it going to take?’ ” Caldwell said after ending up 11th. “I’ve just taken big steps the last two weekends, and that helps a ton with my confidence.”
Liz Stephen placed 12th on Saturday in the 10 k freestyle in Davos, 4.9 seconds out of the top 10.
“Each weekend is a little bit of a step forward for me and that’s a fun way to go about it,” Stephen said. “I didn’t race as well as I possibly could have to get a top ten, so I’m happy with the way it ended up.”
Two Canadians made it into the heats on Sunday — Lenny Valjas and Jesse Cockney — and ended up 18th and 29th, respectively, which coach Tor-Arne Hetland found both promising and disappointing.
“When you’re starting in the heats, you want to be in the final,” he said.
“It feels awesome to finally get into the heats again,” Cockney stated after his first time in the World Cup top-30 since two seasons ago in Canmore, Alberta.
Then there was Rosanna Crawford, a Canadian biathlete who racked up four of her best IBU World Cup results over the last week. Following her fifth-place finish in the pursuit in Hochfilzen, Austria, two weekends ago, she placed fourth in the next race: the 7.5 k sprint in Pokljuka, Slovenia. The next day, on Saturday, Crawford was seventh in the pursuit, then capped the weekend with 12th in the mass start to put herself a best-ever eighth in the overall World Cup.
“I am really happy with where I am heading into the Christmas break, only one race that wasn’t in the top 16,” she wrote in an email.
Her Biathlon Canada teammate Nathan Smith, also made the top-30 overall World Cup cutoff for the mass start, and in his second-ever time racing that format, he placed ninth.
“Mass starts are a lot different than pursuits. It’s nice to get one under my belt now and I hope to do a few more this season, too,” Smith reflected. “I’m very happy … and it’s a perfect way to cap off a strong trimester. It gives me extra motivation to rest up and train over the Christmas break.”
On Saturday, Canada’s Megan Heinicke rose from 41st to 14th in the pursuit.
“I kept that little voice in my head that was telling me this was an awesome race pretty quiet because I know how fast everything can change,” Heinicke explained. “I didn’t really believe it until after the last standing.”
Hannah Dreissigacker en route to her best IBU World Cup result in 17th in last Thursday’s sprint in Pokljuka, Slovenia. Photo: USBA/NordicFocus.com.
US Biathlon’s Hannah Dreissigacker tallied a career-best 17th in the Pokljuka sprint, just ahead of teammate Susan Dunklee in 19th.
“Biathlon is so weird,” Dreissigacker said. “When things go badly, it’s so hard, and it’s hard to imagine that they would ever be good. And then a week later, somehow everything just goes much better. It’s such a roller coaster like that.”
At the IBU Cup in Obertilliach, Austria, Canada’s Scott Gow found his way onto the podium in the 10 k sprint last Friday, Audrey Vaillancourt was seventh in the women’s sprint that day, and Julia Ransom recorded a career-best seventh in the sprint last Wednesday. That same day, Gow’s younger brother Christian was “ecstatic” after placing eighth in the men’s sprint. To start the series off, Emma Lunder placed 10th in the 15 k individual last Tuesday, followed by Ransom in 11th.
“The whole Canadian team is only going to build on this momentum,” Ransom predicted in an email that day.
At the Nordic Combined World Cup in Ramsau, Austria, the U.S. placed fifth in the 4 x 5 k team event, and Billy Demong as the sole American to qualify for Sunday’s individual competition finished 32nd.
The NorAm made its second stop in Sovereign Lake, British Columbia, where 20-year-old Dahria Beatty of the Alberta World Cup Academy (AWCA) and Canadian U23 team won the women’s 15 k freestyle interval start and American Kris Freeman won the men’s 30 k by more than 1 1/2 minutes over Brian Gregg.
The day before, on Friday, Olivia Bouffard-Nesbitt (Rocky Mountain Racers) edged Alysson Marshall in the women’s classic sprint, and Patrick Stewart-Jones (AWCA) dominated the men’s sprint.
“I’m racing among a group of super strong and talented girls who I respect a lot, so I try to learn from them during the races, but I also try not to be intimated,” Bouffard-Nesbitt wrote in an email. “I didn’t leave anything out there today, I just went for it!”
Rosanna Crawford (Biathlon Canada) smiling for the camera before the start of the IBU World Cup 10 k pursuit on Saturday in Pokljuka, Slovenia. She started fourth and finished seventh.
(Note: This article has been updated to include comments from Canada’s Megan Heinicke, who had a career-best pursuit result on Saturday in 14th.)
Ever since last Sunday, Rosanna Crawford’s been trying to keep her success in perspective.
“I try not to bring previous results with me into my next races,” she told FasterSkier on Thursday. That was after she topped her career-best fifth, which she achieved in the IBU World Cup pursuit Dec. 14 in Hochfilzen, Austria, with a fourth-place finish in the World Cup sprint in Pokljuka, Slovenia.
Rosanna Crawford one place away from the podium on Thursday in the women’s IBU World Cup 7.5 k sprint in Pokljuka, Slovenia. (Photo: Rosanna Crawford/Facebook)
Where would she go from there? The 26-year-old Canadian tried not to think about it. Overconfidence could be her enemy, but nerves? Those were unavoidable.
She started to feel them just before breakfast on Saturday, the morning of the women’s 10-kilometer pursuit in Pokljuka. Crawford was slated to start fourth, 37 seconds behind Gabriela Soukalova of the Czech Republic, who won Thursday’s sprint to lead the pursuit.
So she went for a jog.
“Then it slowly started to sink in,” Crawford recalled in an email.
At the start, she lined up with the likes of Soukalova, Italy’s Dorothea Wierer in bib 2, and Ukraine’s Valj Semerenko in bib 3. When the cameraman stood in front of her, she smiled and called out “Hey Brendan!” to her teammate and boyfriend, Brendan Green.
Then she took a breath. This was it — her chance for a podium, or at least a top finish. But she’d have to gain at least 12 seconds on Semerenko and hold off 56 other women behind her.
Soukalova went out first, 18 seconds ahead of Wierer. She held her own until the first shooting, where she missed three to drop to 18th and nearly a minute behind Wierer, who cleaned her first prone to take the lead.
Crawford lost her position on an early climb out of the stadium, when Darya Domracheva of Belarus in bib 6 passed her near the 0.7 k mark.
“Darya came flying by on the first loop and I stayed with her for a bit but then decided it was too fast for me,” she wrote.
In the range for the first shooting, Crawford missed two and slipped to 21st, 1:07.9 behind Wierer after two penalty loops.
Her goal had been to maintain her focus from her first shots during zero all the way through the race.
“Unfortunately the pressure still got to me for the first shooting and I missed one left, one right and the hits were all centre, so it was all me,” Crawford wrote. “But this was good information to get before my next prone, that I just needed to be bit more settled and focused for each shot.”
From there, she clawed her way back into the mix with perfect shooting through the next three stages. She lifted herself to seventh after the final standing, then posted the sixth-fastest course time on the last lap to finish seventh overall.
Domracheva held steady as well with clean shooting through the first three stages. After the first shooting, she left the range 10.8 seconds behind Wierer in first, and 5.5 seconds behind Semerenko. She passed them both before the second stage to enter the range first and stayed there through the finish.
Despite missing her last shot and having to ski a penalty loop on the last standing, she fended off Finland’s Kaisa Mäkäräinen, who started 15th and charged hard in the final laps, by 10 seconds for her second win of the season in 29:55.9. Semerenko outsprinted Wierer by 0.4 seconds for third, 36.8 seconds behind Domracheva.
An exhausted Darya Domracheva (Belarus) celebrates her second win of the IBU World Cup season on Saturday in the Pokljuka pursuit. (Photo: Fischer/NordicFocus)
“Today I felt I was very concentrated on the shooting range and in control of the race,” Domracheva told the IBU after the race. “Maybe I left too fast from the last shooting stage … but you see as always, I never give up.”
However, she did look back to make sure she didn’t let off the gas too early. As Domracheva crossed the finish line, Mäkäräinen — who had a single miss on her second prone — came soaring down the final descent into the stadium.
Domracheva went down onto her knees and doubled over with exhaustion. Mäkäräinen threw up her arms a couple times to the crowd, as if to say, “I tried.”
Forty-six seconds behind the Belarusian after the third stage, Mäkäräinen in third passed Semerenko early as they left the stadium together on the fourth of five laps. From there, she began her quest for first.
“I was a bit unsure before the start today because my shooting was so bad in the sprint,” Mäkäräinen told the IBU after placing 15th with four penalties in Thursday’s qualifying race. “Today I told myself that it was just a bad day at the office and my shooting would get back to normal.”
While Domracheva was finishing her penalty loop, Mäkäräinen got settled for her final shooting. She cleaned and had 23.6 seconds to make up over the last 2 k. At the end of the day, she posted the fastest course time, 26 seconds faster than Domracheva, who ranked second.
Semerenko was a little slower on skis, with the 17th-ranked course time, but hit 19-of-20 targets as well (with one miss on the third stage) to hang around second and third for most the race.
Wierer had two penalties on the second shooting to drop to sixth, then came back with clean shooting in her standing stages to finish fourth (+37.2).
Germany’s Laura Dahlmeier skied up from ninth to fifth with a single miss on the first stage, and finished 1:12.1 after Domracheva without anyone close to her. Another Belarusian, Nadezhda Skardino took sixth (+1:15.7) with clean shooting.
Finland’s Kaisa Mäkäräinen secures second after pushing hard to close the gap to winner Darya (Photo: IBU/Rene Miko)
She was one of two women to clean all day; the other was Canada’s Megan Heinicke — who improved from 41st to 14th.
“Perfect shooting is never easy and on any given day there are usually only a handful of ‘clean’ shooters in this sport,” Heinicke wrote in an email “I am just glad I was able to do it today — this was my first time ever shooting 20/20 in a world cup race.”
Crawford took seventh (+1:20.7), holding off Italy’s Karin Oberhofer, who left the range behind her in eighth, by 5.5 seconds at the finish.
“After hitting the last standing target I knew it was fighting time! Dalhmeier and Skardino were just in front of me and Oberhofer was just behind,” she explained. “I knew that if I could get to the top of the hill in front of the Italian that she probably wouldn’t catch me. Top 6 was so close, but with how skiing felt today I am really happy with top 10! This has been the best start to the season ever for me and I can’t wait to see what the rest of the season holds.”
Despite achieving her third-best World Cup result, Crawford didn’t feel in top-top shape on Saturday, still fighting a sore throat which she came down with earlier in the week.
“But just like last week, feeling bad one race doesn’t mean that tomorrow I won’t feel good, hopefully!” she wrote, referencing Sunday’s 12.5 k mass start.
As the lone Canadian starter in bib 8, she’ll aim to mimic her teammate’s perfect shooting.
“It’s really motivating and inspiring to see Megan Tandy hit 20/20 today and move up so many spots! I’ll try to channel my inner Megan tomorrow :)!” Crawford wrote. “I’m sitting in 8th place for overall World Cup points. All I can control tomorrow is skiing well and hitting the targets, if that happens, then anything is possible!”
For Heinicke, the pursuit marked her second-best World Cup result after finishing 12th in the individual race in Östersund, Sweden, at the start of this season. Her previous best in a pursuit was 29th.
“This was my first time ever shooting 20/20 in a world cup race.” — Megan Heinicke (Biathlon Canada), after starting 41st and skiing up to her second-best World Cup result in 14th on Saturday
With the clean shooting and the 11th-fastest time on the range, Heinicke worked her way up from 28th after the first stage to 14th by the end of the final shooting. She finished in that position, 2:09.5 behind Domracheva.
Before the start, she thought she’d be pleased with a top 30.
“My main ski goal going into this race was to ski a bit more tactically and aggressively in the group with the other girls — even with start bib 41 I started in a good pack of girls,” Heinicke wrote. “My main goal on the range was to follow my race plan for standing. I have shot quite well prone so far this season but have struggled a few times with my standing shooting so that was critical.
“I was getting information about my position on course and I was really happy to have moved into the top 30 after my 2 clean prone shootings,” she added. “Because I knew that standing shooting would be the hardest part of the race for me I didn’t really celebrate too soon … even after my first standing I kept that little voice in my head that was telling me this was an awesome race pretty quiet because I know how fast everything can change. I didn’t really believe it until after the last standing.”
“Even after my first standing I kept that little voice in my head that was telling me this was an awesome race pretty quiet … I didn’t really believe it until after the last standing.” — Heinicke
Susan Dunklee (US Biathlon) racing to 28th in the women’s IBU World Cup 10 k pursuit on Saturday in Pokljuka, Slovenia. (Photo: USBA/NordicFocus)
Two Americans qualified for the pursuit — Hannah Dreissigacker and Susan Dunklee — and they started within three seconds of each other in 18th and 19th, respectively, a minute back from Soukalova.
With a clean first prone, Dunklee was up to 12th, 48 seconds behind the leader. She went on to miss one in each of the next two stages, then three on the final standing to drop to 32nd with one lap to go. She passed four people on that lap and finished 28th (+3:17.1).
“I have been struggling with a head cold and a sore throat and today I was in survival mode,” Dunklee explained in an email. “Often it is smarter to not race through sickness, but this is the last week of the trimester and we get a long break after tomorrow.”
She wanted to finish the trimester off in the top 25 overall, which comes with full support from the IBU in the form of room and board. It would also help her lock down more mass-start opportunities.
“I have started the season on the wrong side of that top-25 bubble in the past and it’s an uphill battle to earn mass start rights later,” Dunklee wrote. “Today’s performance wasn’t pretty and I lost a lot of places because of that disastrous last stage, but tomorrow is a new day and I get to race the mass start.”
Currently ranked 22nd overall, she’ll start in bib 22 on Sunday in row 8 of 10. Mäkäräinen stands as the overall World Cup leader, followed by Domracheva and Semerenko, respectively.
Dreissigacker fell out of the top 30 on the first stage with two misses, then missed two more on her second prone. In an email, she attributed her initial penalties to rushing a bit, and thought she might have lost her focus for a “split second” on the second stage.
Hannah Dreissigacker (US Biathlon) en route to a career-best 17th place in the IBU World Cup sprint on Thursday in Pokljuka, Slovenia. (Photo: USBA/NordicFocus)
She cleaned her first standing, but missed two more on her last stage to leave the range in last place. She passed Sweden’s Emma Nilsson on the final lap to finish 56th with six penalties, but was hit with another two-minute penalty for miscounting her penalty loops.
“My biggest regret about the race is that I somehow forgot a penalty loop after my second prone stage,” Dreissigacker explained. “This is a huge, DUMB mistake and I am really kicking myself about it.I guess my brain just shut off for a minute, and I only did one lap instead of two … I was having a bad day anyways, and I can analyze that a lot, but in the end the only thing that was unacceptable about today was the missed penalty loop.”
After tallying a career-best 18th in the sprint, she was especially excited for the pursuit. But like, Crawford, she tried to be cautious.
“I knew that ‘biathlon giveth, and biathlon taketh away,’ ” Dreissigacker wrote. “I’m not sure who said that, but it’s the truth.I was hoping to ski better today, pacing off of the girls around me. Instead, I felt flat and just sort of empty during the skiing.”
Leaving Pokljuka and flying home to Craftsbury, Vt., on Monday, she’ll hold onto her “awesome memory of the sprint race, and look forward to more races like that after the Christmas break,” she wrote. “I think that our whole team will just be getting stronger as the season progresses, and there is still lots of time!”
Germany’s anchor, Franziska Preuss celebrates a 21-second victory in the women’s 4 x 6 k relay at the IBU World Cup on Saturday in Hochfilzen, Austria. (Photo: IBU/Ernst Wukits)
For three out of the four legs in the IBU World Cup women’s 4 x 6-kilometer relay on Saturday in Hochfilzen, Austria, it could’ve been anyone’s game, especially Russia’s, Germany’s, Poland’s and the Czech Republic’s.
All four were within 40 seconds of one another behind Russia in first at the final exchange — and while it might have seemed like Russia with a 19-second lead was untouchable — any biathlete will tell you nothing in biathlon is ever a sure-thing.
Ekaterina Shumilova tagged off in first, upholding the position teammate Olga Podchufarova put her in during the second leg. However, by the final prone, Russia’s lead started to unravel. Ekaterina Glazyrina used all three spare rounds, then had to ski the team’s first penalty loop of the day.
She dropped from first to fifth, 44 seconds out of the lead.
Meanwhile, Germany’s anchor Franziska Preuss cleaned her first stage to take control — not knowing what happened to Glazyrina.
“I had no idea that she was on the loop,” Preuss told the IBU after the race. “I did not know it until the finish line.”
Veronika Vitkova of the Czech Republic used one spare to move to second after prone and trailed Preuss by 24.1 seconds leaving the range. Belarus was suddenly back in contention when Darya Domracheva cleaned prone to jump from sixth at the exchange to third, 37 seconds after Preuss.
For the final standing, the pressure was on for Preuss. She had to use one spare, but so did Vitkova and Domracheva in second and third.
The German left the range with a 29-second lead over Vitkova and remained 37.4 seconds ahead of Domracheva in third. With a huge smile, Preuss entered the stadium uncontested and waved to the Austrian crowd as she finished. Domracheva outsprinted Vitkova for second, giving Belarus the silver, 21.1 seconds behind Germany, and the Czech Republic took third another 1.1 seconds back.
The German women’s relay atop the podium on Saturday at the Hochfilzen World Cup: (from left to right) Luise Kummer, Franziska Hildebrand, Vanessa Hinz, and Franziska Preuss. (Photo: IBU/Ernst Wukits)
For Germany, the relay victory marked the first podium for two of its members: first-leg Luise Kummer and third-leg Vanessa Hinz, the latter of which lifted the team from fourth to second with two spares.
“It is very exciting being up there; it is such a great feeling!” Kummer said.
Second-leg Franziska Hildebrand, who brought Germany from 11th to fourth by the second exchange, said the team’s goal was to be on the podium.
“People should be happy, because we are a very young team and this shows how good we can be,” Hildebrand said.
The Czech Republic’s second skier who brought her team to third from seventh, Gabriela Soukalova was also pleased with the top-three finish.
“We realized at the beginning of the season that we can have a strong relay team I think this result will be a great motivation for our whole team,” she said. “For me, I have had some problems and I needed to have a great race.”
Germany finished the day with zero penalties and eight spares, Belarus had 10 spares and the Czech Republic had nine spares.
Italy (1+4) fell from an early lead set by first-leg Dorothea Wierer, to 13th when second-leg Nicole Gontier had a penalty loop on her second stage. Karin Oberhofer lifted the team from 11th at the final exchange to fourth overall (+39.9) with clean shooting.
Norway placed fifth with a penalty and 12 spares, five of which came from second-leg Synnøve Solemdal. Anchor Tiril Eckhoff skied the team up from 14th to fifth (+46.3).
Poland ended up sixth (0+8), Ukraine was seventh (1+11), Russia eighth (1+7), France ninth (1+10), and Slovenia 10th (0+7).
The Canadian women’s relay team after placing 11th on Saturday: (from left to right) Rosanna Crawford, Audrey Vaillancourt, Sarah Beaudry, and Megan Heinicke. (Photo: Rosanna Crawford)
The Canadians finished 11th overall (0+7), 2:11.1 behind Germany. They were 16th at the end of Megan Heinicke’s first leg, after she cleaned prone and missed three standing.
“I wasn’t feeling particularly snappy but I have been recovering from a cold since last Saturday so I am hoping for a bit more explosiveness next week,” Heinicke explained in an email.
While she was “happy and motivated” by her prone stage, which put her in seventh, Heinicke added that she was surprised by her standing.
“I didn’t feel like I had pushed very hard during the 2nd loop so I was pretty surprised when my left leg was shaky during standing,” she explained. “I have often struggled with standing in the last 2 seasons but rarely because of shaky legs! There was definitely that element of slight panic at needing to use all 3 spares and a fierce determination to hit then. I admit, I was relieved to bypass the penalty loop. My goal on the last loop was simply to giver and try to catch 1 or 2 of the girls ahead of me.”
She moved up one spot from 17th to 16th, tagging teammate Rosanna Crawford 52 seconds back from Italy in first.
“I knew that with some good quick shooting on the range that you can move up a lot in a relay,” Crawford explained, adding that she didn’t think about shooting right away. “You don’t want to start thinking about shooting as soon as you start a race or that’ll put too much pressure on yourself. So I focused on my skiing and switched to shooting when I was getting closer to the range. My skis were really good today, which always makes for a fun race, because you just feel like you’re flying!”
With clean shooting on both stages, she left the range in 12th after prone and sixth after standing. She recorded the fastest shooting for her leg.
“I just took it one shot at a time never getting ahead of myself,” Crawford wrote. “Things can go wrong quickly in a biathlon races if you start thinking about the 5th shot when you’re only on the 1st!”
She handed off to 20-year-old Sarah Beaudry, who was in her first World Cup relay and second-ever World Cup race, in sixth. In an email, Beaudry explained that she simply wanted to hit her targets and ski fast.
After cleaning prone, she was up to fourth.
“Moving up to fourth wasn’t really part of any plan, it was more just a result of my good prone shooting,” Beaudry wrote. “For my prone I just came in really relaxed and my focus was to watch wind. Sometimes I am a little forgetful about wind so I think having that focus helped me stay calm.”
Fortunately for the women’s and men’s races on Saturday, there wasn’t much wind to speak of.
Beaudry tried to stay calm as she approached her standing stage, but after hitting her first two targets, she got “a little too excited” and ended up missing the last three, she explained.
“Then I was just trying hard to avoid the penalty loop with my spares,” she added. She avoided it, tagging Audrey Vaillancourt in 12th, 1:09.4 back.
“Today I was going to give everything I had no matter what place I was tagged in, and this is exactly what I did,” Vaillancourt wrote.
With a single prone miss, Vaillancourt maintained her position in 12th. One lap later, she cleaned standing to improve to 11th.
“I kept focused on trying to get closer to the other team, but I also knew there were some very strong women out there in the last leg,” she wrote.
Slovenia’s Urska Poje was 15 seconds ahead of her in 10th heading into the final lap. Vaillancourt ended up finishing 18 seconds behind in 11th.
“Overall I am very happy with my race, both on the skiing and shooting side. I have had a cold all week which affected my training and preparation a lot, but today I felt a lot better so I think I’m back on track,” Vaillancourt wrote.
Crawford referred to her team’s 11th place, with zero penalties and seven spares, as a “decent result.”
“We had two legs with some scary standing, but no penalty loops is great!” she wrote. “A few less spares and we could have been top 10. We were trying a different order today and it seemed like it worked out pretty well. Megan did a great job at the start of the race.”
Later Saturday afternoon, the Canadian men tied a team-best sixth in the 4 x 7.5 k relay.
“So excited for men’s team,” Crawford wrote. “They’ve had a bit of a bumpy start and not performing like they were hoping for. A top 6 is a great way to build some confidence into the rest of the season.”
With three women on the World Cup circuit, the U.S. did not field a women’s relay.
American Susan Dunklee on her way to 29th in Friday’s 7.5 k sprint at the IBU World Cup in Hochfilzen, Austria. Dunklee missed one prone and one standing. (Photo: USBA/NordicFocus)
No skiing? No sweat, according to US Biathlon’s Susan Dunklee.
Earlier this week, after leaving the first IBU World Cup venue in Östersund, Sweden, Dunklee and her team found the skiing in conditions in Hochfilzen, Austria, well — non-existent. Organizers were working on transporting snow great distances to hold the race.
“Considering how uncertain we were last week about whether these races would happen, the organizers have done a fantastic job,” Dunklee wrote on Friday. “They brought in all the necessary snow for a nice clean 2.5 km loop.”
But before that, the U.S. skiers prepped with some trail running.
“We did some running when we first arrived since the ski loop wasn’t ready yet and it was beautiful up in the mountains,” Dunklee explained in an email. “The great thing about not having natural snow is that the hiking trails are all still open so we got to explore more than usual.”
Dunklee’s an avid hiker, so that worked for her. Come Friday, when a 2.5-kilometer loop was ready to go for the women’s and men’s 7.5- and 10-k sprints, so was she.
“I feel like I already have all the pieces I need to be earning top tens,” she explained. “I am starting the season with top-end ski speed, a huge improvement from last year. I’ve been consistently hitting higher percentages of targets in practice than ever before.”
On Friday, she missed one prone and one standing for 80-percent shooting: not perfect, but something she made up for with the 11th-fastest course time. Dunklee finished 29th overall, 1:29.3 behind Finnish winner Kaisa Mäkäräinen.
“So far I have had solid results but nothing big,” Dunklee wrote. “I am a little disappointed it hasn’t come together for me yet, but the season is young.”
“I feel like I already have all the pieces I need to be earning top tens. … So far I have had solid results but nothing big.” — Susan Dunklee (US Biathlon) after placing 29th in Friday’s 7.5 k sprint
Finland’s Kaisa Mäkäräinen after winning the IBU World Cup pursuit last Sunday in Östersund, Sweden. Five days later, she repeated with a sprint victory in Hochfilzen, Austria. (Photo: IBU/NordicFocus)
For Mäkäräinen, Friday’s victory was her second straight after she topped the Östersund pursuit last Sunday. The defending IBU World Cup champion started 23rd and missed one in prone, but cleaned standing and consistently posted the fastest loop times to take the win in 20:55.6. Italy’s Karin Oberhofer cleaned for second, 10.4 seconds back, and as the 15th starter, her time remained ahead of Mäkäräinen until the last lap. But it gave Mäkäräinen a time to beat.
“I felt good on the first loop and the second loop, but I do not know where I got that power on the last loop,” Mäkäräinen told the IBU, referring to her illness earlier in the week. “My legs were feeling really tired … The sickness this week did not affect me on the shooting range, but it did on the tracks. I was not able to do my normal training all week, just a lot of slow skiing.”
She was pleased with her shooting, even with a penalty.
“I am quite happy and a bit surprised to win. My level is quite high now, so that helped me,” she said.
Norway’s Tiril Eckhoff in bib 18 was primed to take the lead from Oberhofer heading into the last stage before missing one, her only penalty of the day. She fell off the pace to place third, almost 20 seconds after Oberhofer and 29.9 seconds behind Mäkäräinen.
For Oberhofer, 29, who was fourth in the sprint at the Sochi Olympics last winter, it was her first individual podium.
“I trained a lot, hoping that maybe I might get to the podium at least once,” Oberhofer told the IBU. “In the last loop, I just concentrated on the tracks, did my best and it turned out good.”
While Dunklee will start 1:29 back from Mäkäräinen in Sunday’s 10 k pursuit, she predicted she’d have opportunities to move up with seven women starting within seven seconds ahead of her.
The women’s podium after the Hochfilzen World Cup 7.5 k sprint on Friday, with Finland’s Kaisa Mäkäräinen (c) in first, Italy ‘s Karin Oberhofer (l) in second, and Norway’s Tiril Eckhoff in third. (Photo: IBU/Ernst Wukits)
Five seconds behind her, Canada’s Rosanna Crawford will head out 34th, 1:34 behind Mäkäräinen, based on Friday’s result.
“Today was a tough day on the skis for me,” Crawford wrote in an email. “Right from the start I just didn’t feel I had that snap I needed and it warmed up quite a bit right before start which made for suction on the skis. On my last loop I just didn’t have the same energy I had last week. But you can’t expect to be fast all the time.”
The top Canadian in 34th, Crawford cleaned prone and missed one standing. She was pleased to shoot 90 percent — especially considering it was “blustery” during zero, then calm, then windy again during the race, she explained.
“I made a pretty big correction, so I was happy that I hit them all [on the first stage],” she said. “I seem to be having a lot of one misses so far this year, but 90% is still good.”
After fresh snow arrived Thursday, Crawford described the course as packed and fast — until the sun hit it on Friday afternoon. “[Then] things really slowed down,” she wrote.
The lone Canadian woman to advance to the pursuit in the top 60 (Megan Heinicke was 61st, Sarah Beaudry placed 63rd in her World Cup debut, Audrey Vaillancourt was 66th, and Zina Kocher finished 82nd), Crawford was hoping for a top 30 in the pursuit.
“For Sunday, hopefully I will be feeling better on the skis and able to move up some positions. The goal is to stay in the points,” she wrote.
Before that, she’ll race in the women’s 4×6 k relay on Saturday morning with Heinicke, Beaudry and Vaillancourt.
“I think if we each have a good leg that a top 10 is possible,” Crawford wrote. “Right now Audrey and Megan are just getting over a cold, I’m not skiing like I would like to be and it’s Sarah Beaudry’s first World Cup, so the focus will be some good shooting on all parts.”
“You can’t expect to be fast all the time.” — Rosanna Crawford (Biathlon Canada) after placing 34th on Friday
While Heinicke missed three (1+2) to finish 2:39.2 behind the winner, Beaudry, 20, who earned her World Cup starts last weekend in Canmore, Alberta, had a single standing penalty.
“Sarah had a great day on the range today, and I am sure things slowed down a lot by the time she hit the course [after starting 94th],” Crawford explained. “It’s always really exciting to be with someone who it’s their first World Cup, they bring so much energy to the team! Sarah is a blast to have around!”
Vaillancourt also missed one (1+0) and Kocher finished with five penalties (3+2).
American Annelies Cook qualified for the pursuit in 50th (+2:04.9) with a single prone miss.
“After a rough start in Östersund, I had to reevaluate my training a bit,” she explained in an email. “Clearly, I am lacking the high-end speed and lactate tolerance that I need to have to keep up on the World Cup. It’s easy to look back and try to figure out what went wrong, but it can be hard to let it go and just focus on what you can control. So that is what I am trying to do now.”
“It’s easy to look back and try to figure out what went wrong, but it can be hard to let it go and just focus on what you can control.” — Annelies Cook (US Biathlon), 50th on Friday
Cook added that she’s been working on speed, and since placing 79th in last weekend’s sprint and missing out on the following pursuit, she did some intervals and pushed as hard as she could on Friday.
“I am glad I can race in the pursuit and get one more hard session under my belt,” she wrote. “I have to say, I was actually pretty sore today … I must be getting old! But I felt good once I started to race. But I can’t hold on to that speed for the entire race yet, which is frustrating. I was really happy to clean standing after missing prone because that is one of my demons. I told myself I had to relax and I was going to clean, luckily it worked.”
While the Americans are one woman short for the relay, Cook and Dunklee will race on Sunday.
“It’s another opportunity to push hard, to ski with other girls and to challenge myself in the shooting range. Plus, it’s fun!” Cook wrote.
The third U.S. woman, Hannah Dreissigacker placed 78th on Friday (+3:12.7) with three penalties — one prone and two standing. Last weekend, she was 81st in the Östersund sprint.
![The "International Biathlon Team" camp in Sirdal, Norway, with (front left to right) Fanny Well Strand Horn, Tiril Eckhoff, Elise Ringen, and Rosanna Crawford, and (back left to right) Brendan Green, Megan Heinicke, Sinnoeve Solemdal, Ekatarina Yurlova, Kaisa Mäkäräinen, Susan Dunklee, Marte Olsbu, and Nathan Smith. (Photo: Matthias Ahrens)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2015/07/unnamed-6.jpg")
![The International Biathlon Team enjoys some leisure time during a volleyball match at the sports school in Sirdal, Norway. (Photo: Matthias Ahrens)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2015/07/unnamed-7.jpg")
![The Sirdal training camp crew (from left to right): Biathlon Canada Head Coach Matthias Ahrens, Brendan Green, Nathan Smith, Katja Yurlova, Kaisa Makarainen, Susan Dunklee, Rosanna Crawford, and Norwegian personal shooting coach Joar Himle. (Photo: Matthias Ahrens)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2015/07/unnamed-5.jpg")
![Canada's Megan Heinicke (right) teamed up with Pietro Dutto of Italy to place third in the finale of the Frassinoro Biathlon Festival. (Photo: Davide Magnaghi)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2015/06/2432.jpg")
![Dorothea Wierer of Italy leads teammate Nicole Gontier, Eva Tofalvi or Romania, and Megan Heinicke of Canada in the finale of the Frassinoro Biathlon Festival. (Photo: Davide Magnaghi)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2015/06/3225.jpg")
![International crowd: World Cup athletes from Italy, Slovenia, Romania, Canada, Estonia, and Great Britain - with many a World Championships medal between them - came to Frassinoro. (Photo: Davide Magnaghi)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2015/06/2423.jpg")
![Athletes and volunteers at the festival. (Photo: Davide Magnaghi)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2015/06/2338.jpg")
![Heinicke competing in the finale. (Photo: Davide Magnaghi)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2015/06/2273.jpg")
![Nathan Smith (left) on the podium at 2015 Biathlon World Championships in Kontiolahti, Finland. (Photo: Biathlon Canada/NordicFocus.com)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2015/03/DSC_0589.jpg")
![Ukraine's Valj Semerenko (r) celebrates her first World Championships victory on Sunday in the women's 12.5 k mass start at 2015 IBU World Championships in Kontiolahti, Finland. She beat Germany's Franziska Preuss by 6.2 seconds. (Photo: Kontiolahden Urheilijat/Risto Kuittinen)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2015/03/winner_semerenko_15_03_2015-0001.jpg")
![Ukraine's Valj Semerenko led a five-woman chase pack into the range during Sunday's 12.5 k mass start at 2015 IBU World Championships while chasing Darya Domracheva of Belarus (not shown), with Gabriela Soukalova of the Czech Republic, Germany’s Franziska Hildebrand, Russia's Daria Virolaynen, and Germany’s Franziska Preuss, respectively.](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2015/03/Semerenko-leads-chase1.jpg")
![While IBU Overall World Cup leader Darya Domracheva (Belarus) led the first half of Sunday's 12.5 k mass start, she missed two standing targets and placed fourth in her last chance to medal at 2015 IBU World Championships in Kontiolahti, Finland. (Photo: Kontiolahden Urheilijat/Kari Kuninkaanniemi)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2015/03/DaryaDomrachevaBLR15032015kk-1.jpg")
![Susan Dunklee (US Biathlon) en route to 20th in the women's 12.5 k mass start at 2015 IBU World Championships on Sunday in Kontiolahti, Finland. (Photo: USBA/NordicFocus)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2015/03/Dunklee15032015cm421.jpg")
![Megan Heinicke (Biathlon Canada) on her way to 24th in the women's 12.5 k mass start at 2015 IBU World Championships on Sunday in Kontiolahti, Finland. It was only the second mass start of the 26 year old's career.](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2015/03/Heinicke-2.jpg")
![The start of the women's 4 x 6 k relay at 2015 IBU World Championships on Thursday in Kontiolahti, Finland, with Germany's Franziska Hildebrand out front, Canada's Megan Heinicke toward the left of the pack, and American Susan Dunklee in the back right. (Photo: USBA/NordicFocus)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2015/03/TUM_8363.jpg")
![The German women's relay rushes the finish line to greet anchor Laura Dahlmeier, who secured their win by more than a minute over France in the 4 x 6 k relay at 2015 IBU World Championships in Kontiolahti, Finland. The German team included Franziska Hildebrand, Franziska Preuss and Vanessa Hinz. (Photo: Kontiolahden Urheilijat/Kari Kuninkaanniemi)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2015/03/TeamGermanyWinner13032015kk-1.jpg")
![Rosanna Crawford (Biathlon Canada) racing the second leg in the women's 4 x 6 k relay at 2015 IBU World Championships in Kontiolahti, Finland. Despite a penalty, she brought her team from 14th to 11th, and the Canadians finished 10th. (Photo: Biathlon Canada/NordicFocus)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2015/03/Crawford13032015cm303-1.jpg")
![Audrey Vaillancourt (Biathlon Canada) earlier this week at 2015 IBU World Championships in Kontiolahti, Finland. She helped her women's relay team finish 10th on Friday. (Photo: Biathlon Canada/NordicFocus)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2015/03/Vaillancourt11032015cm93.jpg")
![Rosanna Crawford (Biathlon Canada) trails Nadzeya Pisareva of Belarus during the second leg of the women's 4 x 6 k relay at 2015 IBU World Championships in Kontiolahti, Finland. The Canadians went on to place 10th. (Photo: Biathlon Canada/NordicFocus)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2015/03/Group13032015cm286.jpg")
![Susan Dunklee (US Biathlon) follows Germany's Franziska Hildebrand (r) into range for the first shooting in the women's 4 x 6 k relay at 2015 IBU World Championships in Kontiolahti, Finland. Germany went on to win, and the Americans placed 12th to match their season best.](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2015/03/Dunklee-trails-Germanys-Franziska-Hildebrand-into-range-for-first-shooting.jpg")
![Hannah Dreissigacker (US Biathlon) skied the second leg for the U.S. in the women's 4 x 6 k relay at 2015 IBU World Championships in Kontiolahti, Finland. After receiving the tag from teammate Susan Dunklee in third, she came through the second exchange in 10th. The Americans finished 12th. (Photo: USBA/NordicFocus)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2015/03/Dreissigacker13032015cm298.jpg")
![Russia's Ekaterina Yurlova reacts after sealing her first career victory and podium on the World Cup level at IBU World Championships on Wednesday in the women's 15 k individual in Kontiolahti, Finland. (Photo: Kontiolahden Urheilijat/Kari Kuninkaanniemi)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2015/03/Ekaterina-Yurlova-RUS11032015kk-1.jpg")
![The women's 15 k individual podium at 2015 IBU World Championships, with Russian winner Ekaterina Yurlova (c), silver medalist Gabriela Soukalova (l) of the Czech Republic, and Finland's bronze medalist Kaisa Mäkäräinen (r). (Photo: Kontiolahden Urheilijat/Kari Kuninkaanniemi)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2015/03/SoukalovaCZEYurlovaRUSMäkäräinenFIN11032015kk-6.jpg")
![Susan Dunklee (US Biathlon) racing to 12th in the women's 15 k individual on Wednesday at 2015 IBU World Championships in Kontiolahti, Finland. It was her best individual result of the championships so far. (Photo: USBA/NordicFocus)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2015/03/Dunklee11032015cm7.jpg")
![Megan Heinicke racing to 23rd in the 7.5 k sprint at 2015 IBU World Championships on March 7 in Kontiolahti, Finland. On Wednesday in the 15 k individual, Heinicke placed 21st for a career best at World Championships (and at the Olympic level).](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2015/03/Heinicke.jpg")
![US Biathlon's Annelie Cook (second from l) on the range with Slovakia's Jana Gerekova (l), among others during one of her two standing stages in the 15 k individual on Wednesday at IBU World Championships in Kontiolahti, Finland. (Photo: USBA/NordicFocus)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2015/03/Group11032015cm75.jpg")
![Clare Egan (US Biathlon) during one of two shooting stages in the women's 15 k individual at IBU World Championships on Wednesday in Kontiolahti, Finland. She placed 51st for her second-best result of World Championships and her career. (Photo: USBA/NordicFocus)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2015/03/Feature11032015cm88.jpg")
![France's Marie Dorin Habert celebrates her second win in two-straight races at 2015 IBU World Championships after taking gold in Sunday's 10 k pursuit in Kontiolahti, Finland. She finished 15.3 seconds ahead of Germany's silver medalist, Laura Dahlmeier. (Photo: Kontiolahden Urheilijat/Jarno Artika)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2015/03/BWCH-women-10km-pursuit-fra-Habert-photo-Jarno-Artika-11.jpg")
![Germany's Laura Dahlmeier racing to silver in the women's 10 k pursuit on Sunday at 2015 IBU World Championships in Kontiolahti, Finland. (Photo: Kontiolahden Urheilijat/Kari Kuninkaanniemi)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2015/03/LauraDahlmeierGER08032015kk-6.jpg")
![Poland's Weronika Nowakowska-Ziemniak en route to bronze in the women's 10 k pursuit at 2015 IBU World Championships in Kontiolahti, Finland. (Photo: Kontiolahden Urheilija/Jarno Artika)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2015/03/BWCH-women-10km-pursuit-POL-Nowakowska-Ziemniak-photo-Jarno-Artika-2.jpg")
![Marie Dorin Habert of France racing to gold in the women's 10 k pursuit at 2015 IBU World Championships on Sunday in Kontiolahti, Finland. It was her third medal in as many races at these World Championships and second-straight gold.](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2015/03/Habert.jpg")
![Rosanna Crawford (Biathlon Canada) on her way to 25th in the women's 10 k pursuit at 2015 IBU World Championships in Kontiolahti, Finland. She started 32nd.](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2015/03/Crawford1.jpg")
![Megan Heinicke (Biathlon Canada) en route to 28th in the women's 10 k pursuit at 2015 IBU World Championships in Kontiolahti, Finland. She started 23rd.](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2015/03/Heinicke1.jpg")
![Susan Dunklee (US Biathlon) started 42nd and skied up to finish 34th in the women's 10 k pursuit at 2015 IBU World Championships in Kontiolahti, Finland.](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2015/03/IMG_7276.jpg")
![The women's podium in Saturday's 7.5 k sprint at the 2015 IBU World Championships in Kontiolahti, Finland. (From l-r) Weronika Nowakowska-Ziemniak of Poland (2nd), Marie Dorin Habert of France (1st), and Valj Semereko of Ukraine (3rd). (Photo: Fischer/Nordic Focus)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2015/03/DSC_1293.jpg")
![Kaisa Mäkäräinen of Finland was a heavy favorite in the 7.5 k sprint but ultimately finished 35th.](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2015/03/Makarainen.jpg")
![Valj Semereko of Ukraine racing to bronze in Saturday's 7.5 k sprint at teh 2015 IBU World Championships in Kontiolahti, Finland. (Photo: Fischer/Nordic Focus)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2015/03/Semerenko07032015cm44.jpg")
![Megan Heinicke racing to 23rd in Saturday's 7.5 k sprint in Kontiolahti, Finland at the 2015 IBU World Championships. (Photo: Fischer/Nordic Focus)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2015/03/Heinicke07032015cm99.jpg")
![Susan Dunklee racing to 42nd in Saturday's 7.5 k sprint at the IBU World Championships in Kontiolahti, Finland. (Photo: USBA/NordicFocus)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2015/03/Dunklee07032015cm81.jpg")
![Veronika Vitkova anchoring the Czech Republic to a women's relay win in Ruhpolding, Germany, earlier this year; on Sunday she did it again in Oslo, Norway, to give her team three wins in four competitions so far this season. (Photo: IBU/Ernst Wukits)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2015/01/2015-01-14_48b9e201d40e84f.jpg_image_scaler_800x522.jpg")
![Soukalova competing in the relay in Oberhof, Germany, earlier this season. (Photo: Fischer/NordicFocus)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2015/01/unnamed-31.jpg")
![Sarah Beaudry anchoring the Canadian women's relay to eighth place in Oslo, Norway, on Sunday. (Photo: Biathlon Canada/NordicFocus.com)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2015/02/Beaudry15022015cm107.jpg")
![Canada's Megan Heinicke (l) leads Marine Bolliet of France in the women's 15 k individual at the IBU World Cup on Thursday in Oslo, Norway. Heinicke cleaned to place 12th, one of four top-15's this season. (Photo: IBU/Christian Manzoni)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2015/02/2015-02-12_b9cc055e97b1946.jpg_image_scaler_800x0.jpg")
![Rosanna Crawford skied the second-fastest course time of second-leg relay skiers in the Oslo World Cup relay on Sunday. (Photo: Biathlon Canada/NordicFocus.com)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2015/02/Crawford15022015cm124.jpg")
![Susan Dunklee (US Biathlon) racing to 11th in Thursday's 15 k individual at the IBU World Cup in Oslo, Norway. (Photo: USBA/NordicFocus)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2015/02/Dunklee12022015cm19_800x500.jpg")
![Kaisa Mäkäräinen of Finland celebrates her 14th IBU World Cup win in the women's 15 k individual on Thursday in Oslo, Norway. (Photo: IBU/Christian Manzoni)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2015/02/2015-02-12_734cd4e46ec1ad0.jpg_image_scaler_800x0.jpg")
![Darya Domracheva of Belarus racing though the fog to second despite one penalty in the women's 15 k individual at the IBU World Cup in Olso, Norway. (Photo: IBU/Christian Manzoni)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2015/02/2015-02-12_db48415784c8728.jpg_image_scaler_800x0.jpg")
![Hannah Dreissigacker (US Biathlon) racing to 33rd in the IBU World Cup 15 k individual on Thursday in Oslo, Norway. (Photo: USBA/NordicFocus)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2015/02/Dreissigacker12022015cm109.jpg")
![Germany celebrates their victory in Sunday's 4x6-kilometer relay. (Photo: IBU/Christian Manzoni)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2015/01/germany.jpg")
![Shooters struggle to fire in the howling wind. (Photo: IBU/Christian Manzoni)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2015/01/standing-wind.jpg")
![Germany's Luise Kummer. (Photo: IBU/Christian Manzoni)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2015/01/kummer.jpg")
![Susan Dunklee racing to a season-best eighth in Friday's 7.5 k sprint at the IBU World Cup in Antholz, Italy. (Photo: Fischer/NordicFocus)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2015/01/unnamed5.jpg")
![Susan Dunklee races to an eighth-place finish in the women's sprint at the IBU World Cup in Antholz, Italy. (Photo: USBA/NordicFocus)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2015/01/Dunklee23012015cm35.jpg")
![Darya Domracheva (Belarus) atop the IBU World Cup podium for the 21st time in her career after winning Friday's 7.5 k sprint in Antholz, Italy.](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2015/01/Domracheva.png")
![The women's sprint podium in Antholz, Italy, with winner Darya Domracheva (c), runner-up Kaisa Makarainen (l) and Laura Dahlmeier in third.](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2015/01/antholz-womens-sprint-podium.png")
![Canada's Rosanna Crawford clocked the tenth-fastest course time on Dec. 18 to finish fourth in the 7.5 k sprint in Pokljuka, Slovenia. Photo: Christian Manzoni/NordicFocus.com.](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2014/12/Crawford18122014cm19.jpg")
![Annelies Cook during the women's 7.5 k sprint in Antholz, Italy. She placed 67th. (Photo: USBA/NordicFocus)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2015/01/Cook23012015cm66.jpg")
![Veronika Vitkova of the Czech Republic, eventually the third-place finisher in Sunday's 12.5 k mass start in Ruhpolding, Germany, leads American Susan Dunklee in the third loop of the course. (Photo: USBA/NordicFocus.com)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2015/01/Group18012015cm27.jpg")
![Megan Heinicke (Biathlon Canada) racing to 59th in the 2014 Olympics sprint near Sochi, Russia.](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2014/02/IMG_9399.jpg")
![Susan Dunklee (US Biathlon) on her way to 26th on Friday in the women's 7.5 k sprint at the IBU World Cup in Ruhpolding, Germany. (Photo: USBA/NordicFocus)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2015/01/Dunklee16012015cm119.jpg")
![Norway's Fanny Welle-Strand Horn celebrates her first IBU World Cup win and podium on Friday after the 7.5 sprint in Ruhpolding, Germany. (Photo: IBU/Ernst Wukits)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2015/01/2015-01-16_a6d08b6d865bc6e.jpg_image_scaler_800x501.jpg")
![The Czech Republic women's 4 x 6 k team celebrates its second-straight relay win on Thursday at the IBU World Cup in Ruhpolding, Germany. (Photo: IBU/Ernst Wukits)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2015/01/2015-01-14_25b124cda354730.jpg_image_scaler_800x564.jpg")
![Germany's Franziska Preuss (r) and Eva Puskarcikova of the Czech Republic (l) lead Canada's Megan Heinicke (c) and Belarus's Nadezhda Skardino during the first leg of the IBU World Cup women's 4 x 6 k relay on Thursday in Ruhpolding, Germany.](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2015/01/first-leg.jpg")
![The Canadian women's relay team after placing 11th on Saturday: (from left to right) Rosanna Crawford, Audrey Vaillancourt, Sarah Beaudry, and Megan Heinicke. (Photo: Rosanna Crawford)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2014/12/image-8.jpeg")
![Gabriela Soukalova (l) tagging Czech teammate Jitka Landova in first in the women's 4 x 6 k relay at the Ruhpolding IBU World Cup on Thursday in Germany. (Photo: IBU/Ernst Wukits)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2015/01/2015-01-14_4db98eeb90a7106.jpg_image_scaler_800x533.jpg")
![U.S. second-leg skier Hannah Dreissigacker after her prone shooting stage, where she used three spares and went on to keep her team in 10th in the women's relay in Ruhpolding, Germany. (Photo: USBA/NordicFocus)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2015/01/Dreissigacker14012015cm32_800x500.jpg")
![U.S. third leg Annelies Cook during the women's relay on Thursday in Ruhpolding, Germany. (Photo: USBA/NordicFocus)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2015/01/Cook14012015cm41.jpg")
![The Czech Republic posted the most consistent performances of the day and clinched the women's relay win with anchor Veronika Vitkova (second from l) at Wednesday's IBU World Cup in Obehof, Germany. From left to right: Eva Puskarcikova, Vitkova, Jitka Landova, and Gabriela Soukalova. (Photo: Fischer/NordicFocus)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2015/01/unnamed1.jpg")
![Veronika Vitkova clinches the nearly-nine-second win for the Czech Republic on Wednesday in the women's 4 x 6 k relay at the IBU World Cup in Oberhof, Germany. (Photo: Fischer/NordicFocus)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2015/01/unnamed-41.jpg")
![The IBU World Cup women's relay podium on Wednesday in Oberhof, Germany: with France in second (l), the Czech Republic in first (c), and Belarus in third. (Photo: Fischer/NordicFocus)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2015/01/unnamed-11.jpg")
![Crawford at the flower ceremony. Photo: Christian Manzoni/NordicFocus.com.](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2014/12/18.12.2014Rosanna-Crawford.jpg")
![Hannah Dreissigacker en route to 17th place in the World Cup sprint in Pokljuka, Slovenia, today. Photo: USBA/NordicFocus.com.](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2014/12/Dreissigacker18122014cm133.jpg")
![Rosanna Crawford (Biathlon Canada) smiling for the camera before the start of the IBU World Cup 10 k pursuit on Saturday in Pokljuka, Slovenia. She started fourth and finished seventh.](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2014/12/Screen-Shot-2014-12-20-at-1.32.02-PM.png")
![Rosanna Crawford one place away from the podium on Thursday in the women's IBU World Cup 7.5 k sprint in Pokljuka, Slovenia. (Photo: Rosanna Crawford/Facebook)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2014/12/10408145_814414295285430_2809013903749517404_n.jpg")
![An exhausted Darya Domracheva (Belarus) celebrates her second win of the IBU World Cup season on Saturday in the Pokljuka pursuit. (Photo: Fischer/NordicFocus)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2014/12/unnamed6.jpg")
![Kaisa Mäkäräinen (Finland) secures second after pushing hard to close the gap to winner Darya (Photo: IBU/Rene Miko)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2014/12/2014-12-20_e871e670e0cdb08.JPG_image_scaler_790x1024.jpg")
![Susan Dunklee (US Biathlon) racing to 28th in the women's IBU World Cup 10 k pursuit on Saturday in Pokljuka, Slovenia. (Photo: USBA/NordicFocus)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2014/12/Dunklee20122014cm49.jpg")
![Germany's anchor, Franziska Preuss celebrates a 21-second victory in the women's 4 x 6 k relay at the IBU World Cup on Saturday in Hochfilzen, Austria. (Photo: IBU/Ernst Wukits)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2014/12/2014-12-13_7d74eadaa2b00d8.jpg_image_scaler_534x800.jpg")
![The German women's relay atop the podium on Saturday at the Hochfilzen World Cup: (from left to right) Luise Kummer, Franziska Hildebrand, Vanessa Hinz, and Franziska Preuss. (Photo: IBU/Ernst Wukits)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2014/12/2014-12-13_c204bf555f95d54.jpg_image_scaler_800x592.jpg")
![Susan Dunklee on her way to 29th in Friday's 7.5 k sprint at the IBU World Cup in Hochfilzen, Austria. Dunklee missed one prone and one standing. (Photo: USBA/NordicFocus)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2014/12/Dunklee12122014cm272.jpg")
![Finland's Kaisa Mäkäräinen after winning the IBU World Cup pursuit last Sunday in Östersund, Sweden. Five days later, she repeated with a sprint victory in Hochfilzen, Austria. (Photo: IBU/NordicFocus)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2014/12/2014-12-12_76054d43f7b2281.jpg_image_scaler_683x1024.jpg")
![The women's podium after the Hochfilzen World Cup 7.5 k sprint on Friday, with Finland's Kaisa Mäkäräinen (c) in first, Italy 's Karin Oberhofer (l) in second, and Norway's Tiril Eckhoff in third. (Photo: IBU/Ernst Wukits)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2014/12/2014-12-12_216280b0e7d609f.jpg_image_scaler_589x800.jpg")