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.
Look familiar? We saw this all-Norwegian podium twice, except with Therese Johaug (r) as the winner and Marit Bjørgen (c) in second in the 5 k freestyle on Day 2 of the Lillehammer World Cup mini tour. On Day 3, Bjørgen won it outright over Johaug, and Heidi Weng (l) was once again third. (Photo: Fischer/NordicFocus)
And he wasn’t the only one repeatedly in the headlines of the IBU and FIS World Cup and U.S. SuperTour coverage this past weekend. We got used to Norwegian winners like Marit Bjørgen and Martin Johnsrud Sundby, and Alaska Pacific University’s Rosie Brennan — who’s won three out of four SuperTour races this season.
A pumped Martin Johnsrud Sundby (Norway) after winning the men’s 15 k classic pursuit for the overall Lillehammer mini-tour title on Sunday in Norway. (Photo: Fischer/NordicFocus)
Then there were consistent top performers in the Lillehammer World Cup mini tour: Alex Harvey of the Canadian World Cup Team placed fifth in last Friday’s skate sprint and ended up 10th overall in the three-stage series, and Sadie Bjornsen led the U.S. Ski Team in 18th overall.
Also in Lillehammer, Bryan Fletcher of the U.S. Nordic Combined team rose from 36th to eighth on Sunday for a season best. His teammate, Adam Loomis notched a career-best 35th.
At the five-race IBU World Cup in Östersund, Canada’s Megan Heinicke rose to a career-best 12th in the women’s 15 k individual last Thursday.
“I have never started the season so relaxed and feeling so little pressure,” Heinicke explained after the race, in which she shot 19-for-20. “I wasn’t even sure if I should start this season and I think the low expectations (from myself and others) really helped me lose that nervous ‘I have to hit’ feeling.”
After placing ninth and 12th, respectively, in Saturday’s sprints, Canadians Nathan Smith and Rosanna Crawford qualified for the Östersund pursuit, where Smith was on track for a possible top-four finish before missing his first three shots of the day in the final standing stage.
FasterSkier was on site for the second SuperTour the season in Bozeman, Mont., as racers weathered unseasonably warm temperatures on Saturday and Sunday — well above 40-degrees Fahrenheit.
Rosie Brennan (APU) double poling to the women’s SuperTour classic-sprint victory last Saturday at Bohart Ranch near Bozeman, Mont.
But with freezing temperatures overnight, the 5 k distance course became fast and icy Sunday morning, and organizers postponed the classic mass starts an hour to let the snow thaw. Still, Brennan dreaded what awaited her in the women’s 10 k.
She called the conditions her least favorite, in fact, “her worst nightmare,” she said. But the Anchorage, Alaska, resident used the race as an opportunity to conquer some fears. Brennan ultimately edged APU teammate Chelsea Holmes by five seconds for the win.
“She just crushes me in double pole,” Holmes said, “Which is good — I see her go by and I go as hard as I can to keep up with her, and maybe one day I will be able to.”
The next-closest finisher, 17-year-old Katharine Ogden finished 1:20 back in third. She called the conditions “an extra challenge,” but was glad to have kick that lasted throughout. “Our skis were really fast,” she said.
In the men’s race, Matt Gelso of the Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation (SVSEF) Gold Team racked up his third SuperTour podium of the season so far, finishing third behind winner Mads Strøm (University of Colorado) and SVSEF teammate Miles Havlick, respectively.
At Canada’s opening domestic biathlon races (and Youth-Junior World Championships Team, as well as IBU Cup Team trials) in Canmore, Alberta, Sarah Beaudry won back-to-back sprints to punch her ticket to the IBU World Cup this coming weekend in Hochfilzen, Austria.
Rosanna Crawford racing in Canmore, Alberta, in October 2014. Crawford was the top Canadian woman in Ostersund, Sweden, today. (Photo: Noel Rogers/Bow Valley Photography)
It was a rough day, literally and metaphorically, for the biathletes competing Saturday in Östersund, Sweden. Artificial snow, saved snow and shoveled snow made for a treacherous course, though winds were calm.
Two Canadians broke through the bumpy conditions to have strong races in the IBU World Cup men’s 10-kilometer and women’s 7.5 k sprint — Nathan Smith and Rosanna Crawford finished ninth and 12th, respectively. The rest of the Canadian team did not fare as well, with no other skiers finishing in the top-60 to advance to Sunday’s pursuits.
Smith shot clean to earn his ninth-place finish, while the next Canadian man to finish was Marc André Bédard in 61st (+2:39.1) who missed one target in standing, and Brendan Green (+2:42.1), who missed one in prone and two in standing. This is only Smith’s fourth career top 10, and Canada’s first top 10 of the season.
“Obviously, I’m really happy with the result,” Smith told FasterSkier. “A top 10? I don’t have that many of those, yet.”
For the Canadian women, Crawford was happy with her race, finishing in 12th place (+1:10.3), in spite of missing a target in both prone and standing. But the women’s side was similarly disappointing, with Zina Kocher as the next Canadian woman in 66th place (+2:34.9, +4), and uncharacteristically bad shooting plaguing both Megan Heinicke, who finished 82nd (+3:23.6, +2) and Audrey Vaillancourt, who finished 88th (+3:31.7, +3).
An email to head coach Mattias Ahrens went unanswered as of this writing.
Scott Perras did not start due to a cold: “It’s really too bad,” he wrote in an email. “I am normally pretty healthy throughout the race season. This is my first DNS at any level of racing and I don’t much care for it.”
Smith’s strong result can be credited due to what he called “one of [his] best shooting races ever,” having the 10th-fastest shooting time of the day (+2.9) with no misses.
“After the individual I was pretty disappointed with my standing shooting,” he said. “So I took a day off of shooting and then yesterday I really focused on having really high quality in training, and the same with today during the race. I just tried to be very disciplined, I guess I could say. And it really paid off.”
“It’s not the best that I’ve been on skis in the last year and a half,” he added, “but it’s good still. Just not my best.”
For her part, Crawford was somewhat disappointed in her shooting, and in fact appeared to be having a pretty ho-hum race after the 2nd lap, being in 27th place. But on that final lap, she turned it up, delivering the 7th-fastest course time and moving herself into 12th place.
“This is kind of funny,” Crawford laughed. “I’ve always been kind of the opposite – a really strong starter and then have struggled with finishing loops, but Zina Kocher and I got to train together a lot this year and that’s always been her strength, so being able to work with her all summer long I think has been very beneficial to me to getting that finishing speed.”
Though course conditions were poor, neither Smith nor Crawford complained. Smith benefited from being an early starter, before course conditions deteriorated too much. He highlighted some of the downhill corners as being particularly treacherous.
“They shoveled [the corners], so I didn’t really know what to expect,” he said. “They were okay because you just sort of bounce over the bumps. But then, as each lap went on, the ruts got deeper. I’m sure that, for the last starters, it was pretty scary on those corners.”
Crawford thought that the poor course conditions matched her strengths.
“I’ve always been pretty strong on downhills, so I think that’s a huge advantage for me on a course like this,” she said. In fact, relative to other skiers, course conditions probably helped her out. “It didn’t hurt me, for sure.”
As for her shooting, Crawford made no excuses:
“It was pretty calm on the range, so it was definitely all me. A little bit more focus can go a long way.”
Though Crawford had told FasterSkier that she was hoping for top-10, she was far from disappointed with her finish.
“I’m not expecting to be in the top-10 every single race,” she said. “If I’m consistently in the top-25/top-15 area that’ll make me happy,” adding that she’d still like to get more top-10 finishes this year than she did last year.
“And for sure to be on the podium at least once this year,” she added.
After such a grab bag of results feelings on the the time are pretty mixed.
“Obviously some of us have had great races,” Smith said. “But I’m sure Brendan and Marco, and the other girls, are pretty disappointed about not making the pursuit.”
Smith and Crawford are looking forward to tomorrow’s pursuit with differing baselines for what to expect. Smith is looking forward to what he regards as his best format, while Crawford is apprehensive about what she regards as a weakness.
“It’s a shooting race,” Smith said. “I think shooting speed is more important, which is probably my biggest strength. I can take advantage of that as long as I hit most of the targets.”
Crawford echoed that assessment, but a bit more apprehensively.
“Pursuits were a bit of a weakness for me last year, shooting wise,” she wrote in response to follow-up questions. She hopes to simply hold her position and stay in the top 15, but that she’ll be happy if she is able to follow her range plan and “stay focused on myself and not get caught up in what’s going on around me.”
Canada’s Megan Heinicke after cleaning her final stage in Thursday’s 15 k individual in Östersund, Sweden. She went on to place a career-best 12th.
Note: This article has been updated to include comments from Megan Heinicke, obtained via email.
Last weekend, Megan Heinicke raced a couple IBU Cup tuneup races in Beitostølen, Norway, both of which were 7.5-kilometer sprints. She placed 16th in the first with two misses, and 48th the next day with five total penalties.
Day 1 was indicative of what the 26-year-old national-team veteran was capable of, Biathlon Canada High Performance Director Chris Lindsay said on the phone Thursday night from Canmore, Alberta.
Day 2 was not.
Still, it got what coaches and athletes like to call the “cobwebs” out.
Megan Heinicke (Biathlon Canada) makes her way around the stadium during the 2014 Olympic 7.5 k sprint in Sochi, Russia, in which she placed 59th.
“[The IBU Cup last weekend] gave me a chance to test the waters and get the feel for racing again,” Heinicke said in a Biathlon Canada press release after Thursday’s first individual World Cup race of the season.
In the women’s 15 k individual start in Östersund, Sweden, Heinicke broke out with a career-best 12th, with a single penalty putting her 3:31.1 behind winner Darya Domracheva of Belarus. Even Domracheva had two penalties, and just three women out of 93 finished the day with perfect 20-for-20 shooting.
Heinicke’s previous World-Cup best was 15th in sprint last season in Kontiolahti, Finland. She started 62nd on Thursday, and Lindsay said that while the snow didn’t look like it broke down too much by the time she raced, challenging conditions often play to her favor anyway — at least on the range.
“She has the ability to be an extremely strong shooter and with difficult conditions,” he said, noting she paid attention to the wind flags and her coaches’ cues en route to her personal best. She also had the benefit of getting helpful splits off top contenders who started before her.
Heinicke cleaned her first prone then missed one on the first standing, but knocked down every target in the last two stages to catapult herself into 11th at the finish. There, she sat down shortly after crossing the line, breathing heavily and smiling. Heinicke fell one spot to 12th when Russia’s Ekaterina Glazyrina finished eighth ahead of her, but held that position for the rest of the race.
“The key to success was being relaxed, not feeling any external pressure and truly being focused on a few key factors shooting,” Heinicke said. “I took my time in the shooting range, and just had one of those days where I was able to block out everything except for my keyword when I was standing on the mat. I’m heading into this season more relaxed and just thankful I’m able to pull together good performances.”
While Heinicke spent most of her offseason training in Germany, Lindsay explained the national team received regular reports from her, including time-trial results.
“This is not surprising she’s been able to do quite well in the early season,” he said. “What we’re very happy about this year is she seems to have been able to maintain her health … When she’s healthy, she can put these things down.”
“I have had a really tough summer and fall this year and I went into the race motivated, but with low expectations and feeling no external pressure to perform,” Heinicke wrote in an email. “My day was pretty relaxed too — I even had a mini nap before I left for the race site which is unusual for me.”
She explained she felt great at the start of the race and focused on her shooting tasks at hand. Above all else, her goals were task-oriented rather than dependent on results.
“I have never started the season so relaxed and feeling so little pressure,” Heinicke wrote. “I wasn’t even sure if I should start this season and I think the low expectations (from myself and others) really helped me lose that nervous ‘I have to hit’ feeling. I was careful on the range: my shooting was very controlled and not rushed in any way.”
“I have never started the season so relaxed and feeling so little pressure. I wasn’t even sure if I should start this season and I think the low expectations (from myself and others) really helped me lose that nervous ‘I have to hit’ feeling.” — Megan Heinicke, after achieving career-best 12th in Östersund 15 k on Thursday
She felt sharper in the IBU Cup races the weekend before, but was pleased to be able to pick up her pace on her last loop.
“I felt a bit dull during the whole race but I think the better lap times at the end are a result of a good base,” she wrote. “I often feel good at the end of longer races. I was certainly motivated on my last loop!! I was a bit disappointed with my ski feeling compared to last weekend, but it was tough conditions so it is a bit hard to judge. Overall, my first loop was a bit too slow but I feel ok about the rest.
“Of course I am happy with the result,” she added. “Starting the season with a PB — what more could I ask for! It does get my season started in a positive way and I will certainly go into my next races a bit more confident than I would have without this result.”
Rosanna Crawford (Biathlon Canada) racing to her second-straight victory of Canada’s World Cup/IBU Cup trials three weeks ago in Canmore, Alberta. (Photo: Justin Brisbane)
Canada’s early starter who also ended up in the top 20, Rosanna Crawford finished 16th (+3:52) with three penalties. Despite the misses, it was her career-best 15 k result by one place over her 17th two seasons ago in Nove Mesto, Czech Republic.
“I’ve never been a big fan of Individuals, but it’s a great race for good shooters to be in the top,” Crawford wrote in an email. “I wasn’t nearly as nervous as I was for the mixed relay. Sunday’s race was a good indicator of where my ski speed is, even though we were just 3 days off the plane, and that shooting is also there.”
She opened for the mixed relay and put Canada in fifth after the first leg.
“My zero wasn’t great today and that got some extra nerves coming before the start,” she explained of Thursday. “But things came together in the range.”
Crawford, 26, missed one in her first prone and proceeded clean her first standing and second prone. Her last time in the range, she missed two.
“I tried not to get too ahead of myself for the last shooting bout, reminding myself that I’ve hit my last 5 targets many times in a race,” she wrote. “Unfortunately my legs were pretty tired and I missed my first two shots. But was able to pull it together and hit the last 3.”
She tried to pace herself throughout the five-loop 15 k in soft-and-slushy conditions paired with what Crawford called, “sketchy downhills.” Knowing she needed to save some kick for the finish, she ended up with the eighth- and ninth-fastest course times on her last two loops. Her course time ranked 12th overall.
After leaving the range for her fifth loop in 22nd, she improved to 16th by the finish. Crawford couldn’t recall if she had ever left the range for the last time in a worse position than she finished in.
“Of course I was shaking my head a bit at my shooting, but I knew that a lot of spots can be gained on last loops. Especially in a 15km when some women might have gone out too hard,” she wrote.
With a goal of 90-percent shooting and a top 25, she was halfway there. “Top 16 is above my expectation,” she wrote.
Not Biathlon Canada’s.
“Rosanna’s ski speed and her ability to put down targets has always been strong, but it is looking like she’s legitimately a top-16 athlete in our goals this year,” Lindsay said. “I think everyone should expect we will see more of her at this level.”
Eighty-five percent shooting was nothing to scoff at either, he said, even though it was easy to speculate where she might have ended up with one fewer 1-minute penalty.
“The reality is, individual racing is challenging,” he said. “We’re really looking forward to seeing her in some of the shorter races. We saw with the mixed relay, she has the ability to mix it up at the front of the pack and not be intimidated by the other girls. She enjoys leading, she enjoys being up there, and she handles the pressure well.”
“The reality is, individual racing is challenging.” — Biathlon Canada High Performance Director Chris Lindsay
“Hopefully these past two races are a good indicator of whats to come this year,” Crawford wrote. “I’ve worked really hard this summer and [coach] Roddy [Ward] has told me he wants a lot of TV time 🙂 !”
Also for Canada, Zina Kocher finished 76th (+9:36.0) with seven penalties (2+3+1+1), and Audrey Vaillancourt was 81st (+10:14.7) after what Lindsay described as an uncharacteristic five misses (1+1+3+0).
“I know Zina was not happy with her race; she has very high standards for herself, and we know when everything clicks for her, she’s one of the fastest skiers in the field,” he said. “We just needed to focus getting that shooting down and that’ll come.”
He noted that Vaillancourt’s ski speed has improved throughout the training season. “The first [15] k of the year is a difficult race … I don’t see this as a pattern at all,” he said. “I think we’re going to see in pursuit racing, some very strong results out of there because she has the ability to push herself and put down the targets.”
Darya Domracheva celebrates her 20th World Cup victory on Thursday in the 15 k individual in Östersund, Sweden. (Photo: IBU/NordicFocus)
Something about the medals the top women received on Thursday in their first individual IBU World Cup of the season fascinated Darya Domracheva. Standing atop the podium after the 15-kilometer race in Östersund, Sweden, she spoke excitedly about it to Finnish runner-up Kaisa Mäkäräinen, who smiled and agreed — yeah, it was pretty neat.
Domracheva was borderline chatty during the flower ceremony, smily and upbeat after another World Cup victory — her 20th, according to an IBU press release.
The 28-year-old Belarusian biathlete, who won three Olympic golds in Sochi, is often unstoppable. Once she gets ahead in a race, she’s often hard to match. And on Thursday, with her long, flowing pony tail and snowflake earrings, Domracheva kind of seemed flawless — except for when she missed two targets and tripped over a rock on the last loop.
“I crashed on the last loop, which was scary but most importantly, a rock ruined my ski,” she told the IBU afterward. “I just hope that my servicemen can repair it.”
Finland’s Kaisa Mäkäräinen after placing second in the 15 k individual in Östersund, Sweden. (Photo: IBU/NordicFocus)
Rock or not, she was well on her way to the win and ended up topping Mäkäräinen by 27.9 seconds in 46:43.6. Mäkäräinen, in second throughout the five-loop race, started four minutes ahead of Domracheva in bib 13 (of 96), and finished with first. The whole time, however, she knew she’d have to ski like crazy and be perfect on the range to beat Domracheva.
Mäkäräinen had two penalties as well, one on each of the second and third bouts, and Domracheva shot clean through the first two stages before missing one her third and fourth time in the range.
“It was my mistake; I was leaving the shooting range a bit earlier than I should have!” she said. “Still it was a good shooting result for me.”
Conditions on Thursday were better than what the men experienced in the 20 k individual the day before. High, variable winds on Wednesday evening calmed to a gentle breeze for the women’s race. But with well-above-freezing temperatures, the snow was still chewed up and slow.
“It was really tough and deep snow around the tracks; you never had a chance to rest,” Mäkäräinen said. “In downhills, you had to be careful not to fall down. I got lucky because a Russian girl fell in front of me and somehow I managed to get around her without a fall.”
After Domracheva cleaned the first prone, Mäkäräinen trailed by 6.3 seconds in third. From that point on, the two remained relatively close, with Domracheva posting the fastest-overall course time by 15 seconds over Mäkäräinen in second. Domracheva skied the third-fastest last loop because of her crash, behind Mäkäräinen and Germany’s Franziska Hildebrand, an early leader in bib 8.
Valj Semerenko (Ukraine) after shooting clean to place third in the 15 k individual in Östersund, Sweden. (Photo: IBU/NordicFocus)
The initial top finisher, Hildebrand ended up sixth overall with two penalties, 2:25.7 behind Domracheva. Ukraine’s Valj Semerenko shot perfectly for third, finishing 10.2 seconds behind Mäkäräinen with the eighth-fastest course time. Semerenko was one of three women in the field to notch 20-for-20 shooting.
“I seemed to have lost my shooting touch in our last training camp but somehow I found it today!” Semerenko told the IBU after notching her sixth-career podium.
Semerenko bumped another Belarusian, Nadezhda Skardino, to fourth (+2:04.3) after Skardino — who had one penalty — took the lead at the finish from Hildebrand. (Mäkäräinen finished shortly after to claim the top position before Domracheva.)
Veronica Vitkova of the Czech Republic was the third fastest on course to overcome three penalties and place fifth (+2:09.1). After Hildebrand, Norway’s Tiril Eckhoff was seventh, Russia’s Ekaterina Glazyrina eighth, Sweden’s Elisabeth Högberg achieved her first-ever top 10 in ninth, and France’s Sophie Boilley was 10th.
Olga Podchufarova of Russia took 11th, about 19 seconds ahead of Canada’s Megan Heinicke, who recorded a career-best 12th with a single miss on the second stage (+3:31).
Heinicke started 62nd and initially finished 11th, only to be bumped one place by Glazyrina.
While Domracheva said she was taking it race by race and trying not to look too far ahead, Semerenko dedicated her third-place finish to her sister, Vita, who tried to recover from back surgery this summer and fall. Last week, Ukrainian Biathlon Federation President Vladimir Bryzhnak announced that she would miss the entire season because of a herniated intervertebral disc.
“This was a hard competition today. It is hard without my sister here now,” Valj Semerenko told the IBU. “I now have to work for two people. Out on the tracks, I felt her support; I was competing for both of us.”
Gabriela Soukalova of the Czech Republic in 62nd slipped out of contention with four penalties in the first prone and an additional miss on each of the second and last stages for six total. Germany’s Miriam Gössner placed 68th with seven penalties after suffering a concussion in a rollerski crash in the offseason.
Susan Dunklee (US Biathlon) racing to the second-best sprint result of her career, and this season, in the women’s 7.5 k sprint on Saturday in Kontiolahti, Finland. (Photo: USBA/Nordic Focus)
The women’s 7.5-kilometer biathlon World Cup sprint on Saturday in Kontiolahti, Finland, proved once again that the North American biathletes are able to blend themselves in with the better-known Europeans.
Unlike Thursday’s sprint race, today’s mattered more in that the results determined who would participate in Sunday’s pursuit — something that has been difficult in recent years for North Americans. In the words of U.S.’s Hannah Dreissigacker, “Mostly I’m just really happy to have finally broken my ‘pursuit curse’ and qualified for my first World Cup pursuit!!”
Her teammate, Susan Dunklee, who had a single standing miss to finish eighth, 35.7 seconds behind winner Kaisa Mäkäräinen of Finland, led the North American women on Saturday. In an email, Dunklee explained that before she headed out to warm up, she stopped by the stadium for some inspiration at the men’s flower ceremony.
“It was awesome to see Lowell on the podium,” she said of her teammate, who achieved his first World Cup podium in third in the preceding men’s sprint. “He has worked so hard for so long and it finally paid off.”
Dunklee went on to notch her second-best sprint result of the season, and her career.
Mäkäräinen went on to win her second-straight sprint in Kontiolahti in 20:53.6. Despite one prone penalty, the Finn beat Norwegian runner-up Tora Berger by 6.2 seconds. Gabriela Soukalova of the Czech Republic finished 6.7 seconds after Berger in third. Both Berger and Soukalova cleaned.
According to an IBU press release, Mäkäräinen, who hails from nearby Joensuu, is Kontiolahti’s hometown hero. Both she and the men’s sprint winner, Johannes Thingnes Bø of Norway, won both sprints there in the last three days.
With one penalty, Mäkäräinen was 17.3 seconds slower than she was in Thursday’s race on the same course.
Saturday’s conditions were not the easiest. According to Dunklee, the course’s soft-and-sugary snow required extra energy to “fully accelerate over the tops of hills and around the corners,” which she explained she did not have.
However, shooting went much better for Dunklee. In standing, she focused on “painting” (holding on the target) for a little longer before pulling the trigger. “With three U.S. women qualified for tomorrow’s pursuit, it will certainly be an exciting race, and we all believe we can move up,” she said, referring to Dreissigacker, who placed 41st (0+2) 1:51.4 back from Mäkäräinen, and Sara Studebaker in 58th (1+1), 2:30.3 behind.
“I’m really psyched for tomorrow’s race,” Dreissigacker wrote. “My goal is to go out there and relax and have fun and move up into the points.”
In bib 63 of nearly 90 finishers, Dreissigacker found it helpful that she was able to ski with people for most of Saturday’s sprint. Although she missed her first two standing shots, and panicked for a moment about needing to hit the rest of them — which she admits is not the right thing to think — she did manage to pull herself together and hit them, despite her legs “starting to shake.”
As for the Canadians, Rosanna Crawford led the team in 16th. She missed one standing and clocked in 54 seconds back from Mäkäräinen.
“It was another tough race today!” Crawford wrote.
She found the course “pretty tough” and made even harder because the organizers trucked in a bunch of snow from a “saved” pile.
She had a positive experience on the shooting range, which she described as “calm,” and was able to hit all of her prone targets, which she explained hadn’t happened in a while.
“I’m still searching for that top 10! Tomorrow will be a tight pursuit and good shooting will be key.”
Despite three misses (2+1), Canada’s Zina Kocher made the pursuit in 54th (+2:16), as did her teammate Megan Heinicke in 60th, who missed one shot on both stages to finish 2:32.7 behind the winner.
American Annelies Cook missed the top 60 in 76th (1+3).
Hannah Dreissigacker shoots to a best-ever World Cup 28th-place finish. (Photo: USBA/Nordic Focus)
There was a gentle breeze and it was unseasonably warm when the women started racing this morning in Kontiolahti, Finland. The well-salted course was firm but very wet, with standing puddles in the snow that racers had to ski around. That didn’t stop Canada from putting three women in the top-30, including two in the top-15, and the US from putting two women in the top 30. Canada’s Megan Heinicke and the United State’s Hannah Dreissigacker were 15th and 28th, respectively, both posting best-ever World Cup finishes.
Finnish hometown-girl Kaisa Makarainen took first place in spite of one penalty in standing, out-skiing her competition and finishing in a total time of 20:36.3 on the 7.5-kilometer course. Russia’s Olga Zaitseva was second (+6.1) and another Finn, Mari Laukkanen was third (+22.7). Both women shot clean. Tora Berger of Norway was fourth (0+1), Russia’s Olga Vilukhina was fifth (0+0) and the Czech Republic’s Veronika Vitkova was sixth (0+0).
The Canadian squad showed strong depth, placing three women in the top-30 with two in the top-15. Rosanna Crawford was the top North American woman, finishing 1:05.8 off the pace to take 13th, with one penalty in prone. Heinicke was 15th (1+0) and Zina Kocher was 23rd (1+1).
Heinicke was relieved to have all the parts of her training line up on the same day, having just beaten a lingering post-Olympic cold and having not had her best shooting in a number of recent races.
“It was so much fun to feel strong again!” she wrote in an email. “I always tell myself that if I race like I train – just get out there, enjoy it and do my job – and everything will be fine, and that is what I was able to do today. My general feeling is: Thank goodness I finally pulled it together!”
Kocher was pleased with her performance, but had a bit of bad luck.
“Unfortunately I had the worst luck with the wind and had to wait for the gust to die because it was too strong. I hit four out of five prone but it wasted a lot of time.”
Though they didn’t rival their Canadian counterparts in the standings, the US team had two breakout performances: Dreissigacker’s best-ever World Cup finish in spite of one penalty in prone, and Susan Dunklee, just behind Dreissigacker in 29th, using her post-Olympic fitness to post her fastest-ever splits. Unfortunately, she was foiled by “extra mistakes” in the shooting, causing her to earn a penalty in prone and three in standing.
“I have been working on being more assertive in the aiming process by trying to use the bolting motion to land on the next target,” she explained in an email. “Unfortunately today I didn’t give myself time to fully settle the barrel on the target before taking the shot. It is a small detail to fix, but one that caused a some extra mistakes.”
Dunklee posted the second fastest course time, behind only winner Makarainen.
American finishers were rounded out by Annelies Cook in 75th (1+4) and Sara Studebaker in 80th (3+3).
World Cup competition continues Saturday with another sprint.
Rosanna Crawford en route to 25th place in the Olympic sprint last month.
It might have been windy in Pokljuka, Slovenia, today, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t a great day to start on biathlon’s World Cup circuit.
In fact, it was a great day to have your first World Cup race – just ask Daria Virolaynen of Russia, who shot clean despite the wind to finish second in the 7.5 k sprint, her very first competition ever.
“The most important international competitions were for me at the University Games, and of course the Open European Championships,” Virolaynen, still in a daze, said of her previous racing. “I am happy about my success today and hope my good results to continue… Maybe I was just lucky today, obviously the stars helped me: I didn’t have any wind at all while standing shooting.”
She finished just nine seconds behind Katharina Innerhofer of Austria, who also shot clean to take not only her first victory – the 23-year-old’s previous best was 22nd place earlier this season – but the first win for an Austrian woman in at least two decades.
“That I would be on top of the podium, I guess nobody has expected this,” Innerhofer said in a press conference. “I am simply overjoyed!”
“Today was a day where anything could happen in terms of results because of the snow conditions and the wind,” Canada’s Zina Kocher said of the results that left many in the biathlon community perplexed, and many of the pre-race favorites very far from the top.
Kaisa Makarainen of Finland placed fourth, the closest thing to a favorite in the top five. For instance, Tora Berger of Norway finished sixth, Marie Dorin Habert of France 18th, Olympic sprint champ Anastasiya Kuzmina of Slovakia 27th, and triple gold medalist Darya Domracheva of Belarus 28th.
“It was pretty windy today and made for some strange results,” teammate Rosanna Crawford agreed. “I don’t know if I have ever seen the top 60 go to almost +3min at a regular World Cup, for men and women.”
Indeed, maybe it was a better day to be a newbie. Emma Lunder of Canada made her World Cup debut and like the podium finishers, used excellent shooting to secure a result far better than she was expecting. With a single penalty, Lunder placed 30th.
“I felt fantastic skiing,” Lunder wrote in an e-mail to FasterSkier. “They’d salted the course in a few places that were really slushy yesterday, so the conditions were definitely better. And being one of the last starters had it’s advantages I would say, because the sun went down and the course seemed to ice up in some places, getting faster as my race went on.”
A several-time World Junior Championships and Open European Championships competitor, Lunder started off the season with a hand injury that she had to recover. She competed in IBU Cup and German Cup races this winter, and learned two weeks ago that she would have a World Cup spot since team regular Megan Imrie was going back to Canada after the Olympics.
That led to enthusiasm and a lot of new experiences in Pokljuka for the last few days.
“The very first day when we arrived in our hotel I was bouncing around, and not able to believe my eyes, like oh there’s Martin Fourcade getting some salad, or oh there’s Ole Einar Bjørndalen hanging out in the lobby!” Lunder wrote.
Initially nervous in the first training on the range, Lunder managed her nerves on race day and was able to focus on her competition, leading to some of the best shooting in the field.
“I’ve been enjoying that atmosphere in Pokljuka so much,” Lunder wrote. “It’s definitely not a fan-crazy venue like Oberhof, but coming from IBU Cup the amount of spectators is huge to me… after I got my initial set of nerves out of the way, I’ve felt great. It also helps that the other Canadian girls have so much experience, and they’ve been super helpful, not only showing me the ropes, and how to get around the venue, but introducing me to other World Cup athletes and really making me feel like a part of the team.”
Four Women in the Pursuit
While Lunder’s result was particularly exciting since she is so new to the circuit, all four Canadian women had strong days. Rosanna Crawford led the way in 17th place, rebounding from an Olympics where her final individual competition produced a 67th-place result in the 15 k (“I won’t bore you with details, but #disaster #embarrassed” Crawford tweeted at the time).
“I was pretty disappointed after the Olympics,” Crawford told FasterSkier. “Having shot way below my average in two of the races, I didn’t meet any of the goals I had set for the games and that was something I had to process after leaving Sochi… Going into today’s race I was pretty bummed about being sick and really had set low expectations for skiing today. But things went a lot better than expected and skiing felt right where it should!”
Teammate Zina Kocher also came back from a frustrating Olympics, missing four shots but skiing the fourth-fastest course time to place 23rd.
“I was super relaxed today, really had no idea how the day might unfold,” Kocher wrote. “It was incredibly gusty in the range, and I had no idea how my skiing was going to feel, my legs still felt a bit heavy and tired!”
Despite the fact that it was her best result of the season, Kocher was left a bit wistful that she couldn’t hit a few more shots.
“I suppose it feels good, though with 3rd fastest ski time, one day I would like to put both skiing and shooting together!” he wrote. “That’s biathlon.”
Megan Heinicke missed three shots and placed 43rd, meaning that the entire Canadian women’s team will be competing in the pursuit on Saturday.
Recovery from Sochi
The athletes appreciated that Pokljuka provides a completely different atmosphere than they had at the Olympics.
“I tried to look at the Games as just another race, but that’s kinda hard when you had GIANT rings looming over the Biathlon range,” Crawford wrote.
After the Olympics, the team splintered to go on personal vacations and mentally and physically recover. Crawford, for instance, headed to Dobiacco, Italy, with boyfriend Brendan Green, who finished 21st in the men’s sprint today.
“We had some great skiing, sunshine and pizza!” Crawford said. “It was so nice to just be the two of us and really decompress after the Olympics.”
Lunder, who did not compete at the Olympics, nevertheless joined boyfriend Nathan Smith on his own post-Games recovery training camp in Obertilliach, Austria.
Kocher, meanwhile, went to St. Anton, Austria, and distanced herself from biathlon for a week.
“I trained ‘cross country skiing’ only twice – two classic sessions, and the rest of the time I was alpine skiing and ski touring,” Kocher wrote. “Skiing piste, off piste and even powder, eating good food and enjoying a glass of wine, and spending time with my ‘2nd’ family were my prime focus.”
Neither expected to feel good in today’s race, and Kocher was surprised that she had a strong ski time, saying, “I really did not think I was going to last 7.5km!”
Team Spirit
But placing all four women in the pursuit raised spirits and seemed to boost the team.
“What a day for our team in general,” Kocher wrote. “Emma Lunder’s World Cup debut finishing 30th, and all 4 in the top 43, is really a great day for our women’s team.”
Crawford appreciated getting to mentor some younger competitors, which made the regular World Cup grind seem a little more fresh and exciting.
“It’s great to share your experiences with them and see how excited they are to be here,” she wrote of Lunder and Macx Davies. “It really helps bring some life to the team! Emma really impressed us all with great shooting and fast skiing, to place in the top 30 in your first race is fantastic! It’s really good to see for Biathlon in Canada how much stronger our younger athletes are than say when I was their age.”
And for Lunder, being part of a strong team meant even more than just having a good result herself.
“I’ve completely exceeded any expectations I had going into these races… I mean I was going to be pumped just to make the pursuit!” she wrote. “So to have a starting position right in the middle of the pack is awesome. And it’s great to have all four of our women in the top 43, I’m so stoked to be a part of it!”
Zina Kocher collapsed at the finish line of the women’s 4 x 6 k relay after giving on of the best ski performances of any athlete all day. Unfortunately, she was not able to match that on the range.
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KRASNAYA POLYANA, Russia – Zina Kocher brought Canada both the most exciting and most frustrating moments of yesterday’s women’s biathlon relay.
To be sure, the whole team contributed to getting her to that moment. Rosanna Crawford, Megan Imrie, and Megan Heinicke had skied strong legs to bring Canada from fifth to sixth and then up to fourth. Canadian head coach Matthias Ahrens described his feeling as “overexcited” watching the early stages of the relay.
When Heinicke tagged off to Kocher, Canada’s habitual anchor, she was just 40 seconds from the lead, and 15 seconds from second-place Russia and third-place Norway. Late in the game, Canada was in a place it had never been in Olympic relay racing before. At a World Cup in Annency, France, earlier this season, they had finished fourth. But their previous best Olympic relay was 15th.
What Kocher did next was nothing short of inspirational: she skied so aggressively that she caught both Tora Berger of Norway – no small feat – and Olga Vilukhina of Russia, and led them onto the range. Canada was in second place.
“I was really excited,” Kocher said. “I was really trying to focus on what I did in [Annency] and the thing was that I knew I was in fourth, and that my skis were really fast. And that I was suddenly with the top. I lay down in second place, and all of a sudden I was fighting for a podium.”
That’s where things started to go off the rails for Kocher. In prone, she used two spares rounds while Berger and Vilukhina cleaned. She lost time, but still had almost 30 seconds on fifth place. It seemed very possible that Canada would tie their World Cup result, which was a best-ever.
But in standing things continued to unravel. Kocher missed shots again, but also lost count of how many spare bullets she had used. Athletes are only allowed three in each stage, but she also had one left over from the prone stage, which she would have been penalized for using. Kocher had to stop and count her bullets.
“I was so close and but I think I really spent myself in that first lap trying to catch up and I paid for it in the standing,” she said. “I was really struggling to actually stand (laughs). I was a little bit out of it when I went to my spare bullets, I lost count of how many I had left and almost gave us a penalty by putting in an extra one until I started counting.”
She avoided the penalty, but kept missing shots. Kocher spent a painful 50 seconds on the shooting range – up from the 25 to 30 in a clean shooting bout – and then had to ski two penalty loops. She went from being 25 seconds away from a bronze medal to being almost two minutes behind.
Despite the heartbreaking mistakes, Kocher went back out on the trails and skied another hard loop, to turn in the fourth-fastest last-loop time.
“Thank God she did take the extra time to go through, because if she’d shot the extra round, that would have been it,” Biathlon Canada High Performance Director Chris Lindsay said. “And she came out of it in ninth, immediately was able to pass the Swiss, and put us back in the top eight.”
The mood of the Canadians oscillated between pride and disappointment even long after the race was over. The same four women had placed 16th in the relay in Vancouver, and late-stage mistakes and all, they were thrilled to see how far they had come.
“It was a tough ending but Zina skied her heart out that last loop,” Heinicke said. “This is the same four girls [as Vancouver in 2010] so that’s a really cool way to see how much progress we’ve all made as individuals and as a team in four years. We’re halfway closer to the top then we were then. With the two penalty loops it also shows us what our potential would be if we were all to have that day on the same day.”
And there were other moments of brilliance. Crawford, for example, skied aggressively out of the start and was actually leading the relay for the first few hundred meters. Seeing Canada at the front of an Olympic relay was a goosebumps moment for many.
“It’s certainly wonderful to watch,” Lindsay sighed.
And Heinicke had perhaps the most brilliant performance of the day, shooting fast and perfectly cleanly in both stages while skiing the fifth-fastest course time of her leg.
“I think that I can be a good shooter, and I have been a good shooter in the past,” she said. “I feel like I put myself under more pressure than I even realized for these individual races and coming into the relay, we were in a good position so it’s not that there was nothing to fight for, but I still sort of felt like the pressure’s off. You know you have those three spare bullets there and you’re just like, OK, this is that confidence booster. I think that helped me kind of put on the blinders and do my job.”
Despite losing spots at the end, Ahrens was still incredibly proud of his squad.
“I must say, I applaud all of them, because it’s long [weeks], and this is a very tough course here,” he said. “They have had some tough conditions at times. And to pull it together at the end, I really applaud them.”
But in a race where there were even more strange results, with strong teams like Germany, France, Poland, and Belarus removing themselves from contention early, there was an even more tangible sense of what might have been.
“The reality is that we were given a few bonuses today with the unfortunate incident off the top for the Germans, and I really hope that girl from France is okay,” Lindsay said, referring to Marie Laure Brunet’s collapse on the course following a vasovagal reaction, requiring her to be carried out in a stretcher. “But [in competition] you have to be able to capitalize and unfortunately we weren’t able to capitalize. This is a relay we could have medaled in. Flat out. And it’s a good result at the end of the day, but it’s not the result we were capable of.”
“Unfortunately it ended with two penalties, which of course you can’t have in a relay,” Ahrens said.
“We were looking for a podium,” Lindsay added. “Like I said, it was within our grasp, but we weren’t able to grab it.”
“It’s a hard one to swallow,” Kocher lamented.
“Top eight is still a great result for us,” Crawford concluded. “The thoughts of ‘what could have been’ will linger for a while, but we have come a long way from 2010!”
— Alex Matthews, Seth Adams, and Nat Herz contributed reporting.
Rosanna Crawford (Biathlon Canada) racing to a career-best 25th in the first race of her second Olympics, Sunday’s 7.5 k sprint in Sochi, Russia.
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SOCHI, Russia — There’s something about enormous white retaining walls that speaks to Rosanna Crawford, and whatever it is, it’s working for her in Sochi.
In her second Olympics, the 25-year-old Canadian biathlete led three of her teammates in the top 60 of the 7.5-kilometer sprint on Sunday — the first women’s race of the 2014 Winter Games.
Crawford cleaned her prone and missed one standing to finish 25th overall, shaving 47 places off her previous-best Olympic result at the 2010 Vancouver Games.
But this wasn’t Canada, and Crawford was in the zone, clocking the third-fastest range time in standing and sixth-fastest course time to finish 1:04 behind Slovakia’s Anastasiya Kuzmina, who won in 21:06.8.
“My shooting … in the last two World Cups was pretty poor, and my confidence had gotten rattled,” Crawford explained. “But during training here things were going really well and I love the range, and I had just made sure to pick a specific spot on the course where I switched to shooter, just taking it one shot at a time and just staying focused on me.”
With a downhill approach to the range, complete with “giant retaining walls” unique to Sochi’s brand-new venue, she said it was nice to glide down into the range for a change. “You’re not working at all,” she said. “It’s pretty awesome.”
Once in the stadium, she said the shouts of the Russian crowd stood out. “It was crazy. When I came to shoot standing, it must have been the Russian podium was finishing and it was so loud that I really had to try and pull my focus onto my and not on the crowd shouting Rush-y-a.”
In addition to her shooting, Crawford felt good on the three-loop course as well.
“This course is hard so it was definitely a little bit about pacing rather than focusing on moving fast,” she said. “I just focused on good technique, and I think that gets me up the hills rather than if I’m scrambling.”
Canada’s Megan Imrie racing to an Olympic career best of 31st in Sunday’s 7.5 k sprint in Sochi, Russia.
Along with Crawford, Canada’s three other starters also placed high enough to qualify for Tuesday’s pursuit, with Megan Imrie finishing 31st (+1:12.7), Zina Kocher following 6 seconds back in 32nd, and Megan Heinicke making the cut in 59th (+2:27.7).
All four had been to at least one Olympics before (in 2010), and for all but Kocher and Heinicke, Sunday marked their best individual performances at any Games. Kocher placed 27th in a 15 k individual race in the 2006 Torino Olympics, and Heinicke raced three individual events in Vancouver with a top result of 36th in the pursuit.
Imrie, who turns 28 on Friday, improved upon her previous Olympic best by 31 places in 31st. Sunday’s result marked her first time qualifying for the Olympic pursuit.
“It went almost perfect,” she said after cleaning prone and having a single standing penalty. “I’m super happy. I mean, you never really know with an Olympic race how you’re going to feel, and you just have to play the cards you’re given. I felt pretty darn good out there and made the shooting count.”
Kocher missed one shot in both stages for two penalties, and while it wasn’t her best result, she said it was an improvement upon other races this season.
“I’ve been having some problems in sprint races this year and so this is one of my best, if not my best, and it’s my best sprint in Olympic Games,” Kocher said. “So it could have been better, but I’m satisfied.”
A three-time Olympian, Kocher, 31, said she’s more relaxed overall this time around — but it still doesn’t come easy.
Canada’s Zina Kocher racing to 32nd in Sunday’s Olympic 7.5 k sprint, the first women’s biathlon race of the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, Russia.
“I’ve been pretty stressed with nerves this year, and today I just tried to stay in control and relax,” she said. “I came in four years ago with high expectations and wanting to be like I was in 2007, and I wasn’t. I was tired at the Games and I was very stressed. At these Games, I feel like I took control of my training, I changed a lot of things from four years ago and I came into here a lot more confident that I did everything that I could to do the best I can for these two weeks.”
Heinicke, 25, was initially disappointed with her result on Sunday, missing one prone and two standing to finish 2:27.7 behind Kuzmina.
“It was great conditions on the shooting range; there is no reason to have three misses and so I’m pretty disappointed, particularly about the standing two misses,” she said. “It was just too many penalty loops to be up there in the top 30 like I would like to be and like I have the potential to be. … If we were having this conversation 10 minutes from now, I’d be a lot more like ‘Yes, pursuit, I’m in there, I’m gonna fight.’ I’m really stoked that I squeaked in there.”
With four women in the 10 k pursuit, Sunday was a solid one for Canada, which qualified just one woman four years ago for the pursuit in Vancouver.
Megan Heinicke making her way around the stadium in Sunday’s Olympic 7.5 k sprint in Sochi, Russia. She placed 59th of 84 finishers.
“Looking back at 2010, Megan [Heinicke] was the only one who did qualify for the pursuit and now to have all four of us there is really exciting and I think it bodes really well for the relay,” Crawford said. “We had such a good time in France placing fourth there. And we know that the potential is very high for us, come the relay.”
Imrie said the team reflected on the Olympics four years ago in the waxroom before the start.
“Megan Heinicke was saying, ‘Man, four years goes by fast!’ ” Imrie said. “I felt totally overwhelmed at the last Games, in a good way, but it really did a number on my legs. I was just totally exhausted throughout the whole thing. Now there’s four years in the bank trying to manage my training, it feels much better.”
The women’s 10 k pursuit starts Tuesday at 7 p.m. Moscow time (10 a.m. EST). The men will kick things off Monday night in the 12.5 k pursuit at 7 p.m.
— Chelsea Little and Seth Adams contributed reporting
Rosanna Crawford (bib 26) chasing Anais Bescond of France and Tiril Eckhoff of Norway in the pursuit.
RUHPOLDING, Germany – Some things on the World Cup this weekend definitely haven’t gone as planned for the Canadian team.
Let’s start with the conditions. There’s more snow than in Oberhof last week (which the World Cup team skipped anyway, giving the starts to its B squad instead), but the snow here is scarce, icy, and intermittently salted. That wasn’t what Megan Heinicke, for one, was hoping to come back to.
“I was somewhat disappointed with my skiing in both the relay and today’s race,” she wrote in an e-mail after the 15 k individual. “A part of it is that icy conditions like today are a weakness for me and have always been a challenge.”
She was feeling “energized and fit”, but wasn’t able to translate that directly into skiing on the course.
Then, there were struggles on the range. Nathan Smith and Jean Philippe Le Guellec both had four penalties in the 20 k individual on Saturday, too many for a top result (they finished 40th and 52nd).
Rosanna Crawford and Megan Heinicke had good individual races on Friday, but then had four penalties in the pursuits this morning. That meant that they weren’t able to capitalize on their 26th– and 30th-place starting positions, and were relegated to 37th and 48th.
But all is not lost: nearly every athlete came away with something to be happy about, including a top-20 finish by Smith (more on that later). It started with the relays: on Wednesday, the women placed 12th, and on Thursday the men had a strong eighth-place showing. Both teams had only just arrived from Canada, and were still dealing with jetlag, leaving them happier with the performances than they might have been otherwise.
Women
More positive things came on Friday, after the women’s individual race, starting with Rosanna Crawford.
“I think it was a pretty good ski time, and 17 is the best I’ve ever shot in an individual,” she said at the finish. “So I have to be happy with that. It’s too bad about my first prone, but, it happens.”
Megan Imrie skiing with Olga Zaitseva of Russia in the pursuit.
Crawford was also simply happy to be racing and hitting the points at all. She thought back to last season, when she finished 65th in the sprint here.
“This is a lot different than last year,” she said. “I remember at these races last year I was feeling reallllly awful. So I’m happy that I didn’t dig myself too deep in December. I think I just wasn’t used to that many races last year. It was 11 races, whereas this year it was 10 for me. I think I am just overall fitter.”
Heinicke was also feeling good about where she’s at, after a few seasons where she’s been plagued by illness in the middle of the racing season.
“I have struggled a lot with health over the past few years and this was the first Christmas break since 2008 that I didn’t get sick!” Heinicke wrote of her winter break. “So I was pretty happy about that.”
Heinicke lives in Altenberg, Germany, with her family. Since the Canadian team skipped Oberhof and the rest of her teammates were back home in Canada, she took the opportunity to compete in the IBU Cup races in Ridnaun, Italy. It was an ideal warm-up for this weekend’s World Cups, although not for the reasons she had expected.
“The IBU Cups were important for 2 reasons – one was that they were used as some intensity at the end of a training block and the other was race shooting,” she wrote. “I struggled to bring together standing shooting before Christmas and I did a lot of high quality shooting training over the break. I wanted to use the IBU Cups as a chance to boost my confidence a bit!”
In the pair of sprints, Heinicke placed seventh with two penalties in the first, and 20th with three penalties in the second. Racing on biathlon’s second-tier circuit, she said the goal is to get on the podium, which she thought she could have done with better shooting.
“The shooting was obviously did not go as planned, but in retrospect I am glad I raced there because I think I learned from the mistakes I made and have shot much better here in Ruhpolding,” she wrote.
Scott Perras attacking a hill in the pursuit alongside Andi Birnbacher of Germany.
Both women were happy that Olympic qualification is over, for various reasons. Crawford knew for a long time that she was already qualified, but was waiting for her boyfriend, Brendan Green, to complete his own criteria. He eventually won a series of trials races just before Christmas to secure his spot.
“The break was really nice,” Crawford said. “The first week was super stressful with Brendan’s trials, I think I would have been less stressed if I had been racing myself! It’s a weird feeling. I have a lot more sympathy for my parents now.”
Heinicke completed her criteria in December, which has taken a huge weight off her shoulders.
“I actually expected myself to feel more relaxed with the Olympic qualification settled and done, but I have realized that a lot of the pressure I feel comes from myself, my own high standards and my own frustration when I do not meet my standards,” Heinicke wrote. “It is definitely good to be in a ‘safe’ position right now where I can choose to take more risk without feeling like I should always play on the safe side.”
Megan Imrie placed 58th in the individual and used three penalties to ski her way up to 39th in the pursuit, sneaking into the World Cup points.
Audrey Vaillancourt, racing in place of Zina Kocher who is competing at skiing Olympic trials, placed 62nd in the individual with two penalties, narrowly missing the pursuit.
Men
After their successful relay, the Canadian team had a bit of a downer as they had to send Brendan Green back to the IBU Cup. With only three starting spots on the World Cup this season, they aren’t able to carry a full team.
“Even though they are all qualified for the Olympics, they can’t rest too much,” head coach Matthias Ahrens said. “They have to fight for these three spots a little bit.”
Scott Perras had the best performance in the 20 k individual, using two penalties to place 36th. His teammates Smith and Le Guellec were saddled with those frustrating four penalties each.
It was particularly dangerous since for the first time since 2003, the individual was being used as the basis for a pursuit. Usually, pursuits are based off of sprint races. With four minutes of penalty time, it would not have been surprising to miss the pursuit, especially since the field usually shoots very well in Ruhpolding with its downhill range approach and minimal wind.
Nathan Smith in the pursuit.
“The shooting is usually really good for the field,” Smith said after the individual. “So this is a mediocre race [for me], I’d say.”
Still, he was feeling like his performance was coming together after the team’s travel over to Europe.
“The relay was the first real race thing I’d done in a few weeks,” he said after the individual. “Other than that I’d just been doing intensity by myself, so it was good to get in shape for today. I’m not surprised that I felt better today.”
And he wasn’t concerned about his shooting, either.
“My shooting has been feeling solid, I think,” he said. “There’s nothing wrong with my shooting, it’s just that two bouts didn’t go perfect.”
That turned out to be a very accurate assessment. In the pursuit this afternoon, both he and Le Guellec shone on the range, surpassing Perras even though he started far in front of them. Le Guellec shot clean to move from 52nd all the way up to 32nd, and into the points; Smith had a single penalty and passed Alexei Volkov, yesterday’s second-place finisher, in the final kilometer to seal 16th place, tying the second-best finish of his career.
“It was a really good race,” he said at the finish of the pursuit. “One of my best for the year. I think skiing was pretty similar to yesterday, but my shooting was a lot better, so that’s what made the difference.”
With three penalties, Perras stayed solid and moved into 35th, leaving all three Canadians in the points on the day.
It wasn’t easy, either – the iciness that Heinicke had complained about on Friday broke down into granular, sometimes deep snow by the time the men raced today.
“Some spots were kind of deep – well, not deep, but just slow I guess, on the flatter parts,” Smith explained. “And the uphills were icy. But some of the women said it was icy for them too. On the last lap I had to pass the Russian on the last uphill, and he was on the softer part, which was a bit better. I had to go on the icy part, which was tricky.”
So, with one weekend remaining until the World Cup takes a break until the Olympics, the Canadians are feeling positive for the last three starts.
“We approach it like any other race, you warm up, you put the rifle on your back, you try to hit the targets,” Crawford said of pre-Olympic racing. “But maybe we have a little bit of load during these races. That could be a little bit different.”
The women’s podium at Sunday’s World Cup skate sprint in Davos, Switzerland: (from l to r) Kikkan Randall (USST) in second, Marit Bjørgen (NOR) in first, and Denise Herrmann (GER) in third. (Photo: Fischer/Nordic Focus)
From the cross-country World Cup in Davos, Switzerland, to U.S. Nordic Combined’s best team-sprint result in Ramsau, Austria, to five straight days of biathlon races in Annecy, France: here’s everything you didn’t get to read about over the weekend in simple thumbs-up-thumbs-down fashion. And if you missed the recaps, check out our digest.
Likes:
Skiing fast:
“Skiing super fast [feels] awesome. This is definitely the strongest I’ve skied in a little while and definitely very appreciative of it. It’s a great feeling to be able to move up through the ranks like that and just builds to your confidence.” – Bryan Fletcher (U.S. Nordic Combined), on placing fourth with Todd Lodwick in Saturday’s World Cup 2 x 7.5 k team sprint in Ramsau, Austria
“The energy was good, and our skis were so fast. We were working hard on pushing over the top of the hills because if you just add one more skate, you’re flying down the hill.” – Jessie Diggins, 12th in Sunday’s World Cup skate sprint in Davos, Switzerland
“I tried to go out really hard right from the start and just hold on. It worked out well for me and I ended up feeling better today than in any of my previous races this season. I ended with the 3rd fastest ski time, so I am very happy with the direction my skiing is headed.” – Tim Burke (US Biathlon), 16th in Sunday’s IBU World Cup 12.5 k pursuit in Annecy, France
Qualifying for the 2014 Sochi Olympics:
In an email, Megan Heinicke explained that, in placing fourth with Canada’s relay at the IBU World Cup last Thursday, she completed her Olympic qualification (with teammates Megan Imrie, Rosanna Crawford and Zina Kocher):
“I am incredibly relieved to have that finalized and just so happy to have Sochi in my plans. This girls on this relay team will be our Olympic team and I think this result gives us a lot of confidence and motivation, which is awesome!” – Heinicke (Biathlon Canada)
Fourth place:
“I knew it was likely to be painful so I was mentally prepared for a hard fight and as motivated as ever to give it my all. The result altogether was amazing…I couldn’t stop smiling. We saw that we had this kind of potential in our relay last weekend and we all knew that a relay without penalty loops would be enough to fight for a top 6 finish. I am so proud of all of us! I think the coolest thing for our relay is that this wasn’t a miracle race – it was just 4 good to normal races which means that this is a result we can realistically repeat and even improve on.” – Heinicke
“I could have played my cards a little bit different to give us another chance to be up there on the podium, but nevertheless fourth place is awesome and we had the fastest time out there.” – Todd Lodwick (U.S. Nordic Combined), on Saturday’s team sprint
Team sprints:
“Nordic combined was actually the one who invented the team sprint. It actually began in 1993, and then it kind of went away from the program in the ’90s until it came back in 2011. I think they brought it back as a World Cup event after cross-country took it on and did it as an event and showed it’s a good spectator event.” – U.S. Nordic Combined Head Coach Dave Jarrett
“It’s a strength, and [it was] a medal event in the World Championships last year. It was the first time it was a medal event, but it won’t be a medal event in the Olympics. We tend to rally around each other when it comes to team events and certainly Todd and Bryan were clearly in a good place and they did a good job.” – Jarrett
Women’s 15 k races:
The women’s 15 k individual race on Saturday in Davos, Switzerland, was only the second one on the World Cup in the last 10 years, with the other in Davos two years ago. What gives? Bring on the distance!
Note: Bjørgen won that race, too, but Norway swept the 2011 edition’s top four. On Saturday, they took three of the top four, with Sweden’s Charlotte Kalla placing third.
Davos
“Davos is really nice and the cheering was great. There were lots of fans out there with big bells which is fun.” – Ida Sargent (US Ski Team), 41st in Sunday’s Davos World Cup sprint
Personal bests
“[Sunday] was the second best qualifying result I have ever had in a WC sprint, classic or skate, in terms of both FIS points and total time back from the leaders but it was just super tight today. There are just a lot of fast women out there.” – Sargent
Note: The top 30 women were separated by 3.6 seconds in Sunday’s 1.5 k freestyle sprint qualifier. The men’s top 30 on the same course was separated by nearly six seconds.
Teammates tearing it up:
“It was awesome to watch the heats in the sun and see all of those girls ski so well. Kikkan is obviously so strong and Jess and Soph skied awesome quarterfinals. It was fun to see.” – Sargent, on Sunday’s World Cup skate sprint
“I was really hoping we’d actually see a couple of Americans in the final, and it was close. So it was really cool to see those girls just coming on and coming on, and it’s really fun to have a team component. I think everyone should be pretty psyched.” – Kikkan Randall (US Ski Team), second in sprint
Last Thursday, the U.S. women tied a team-best eighth in the IBU World Cup relay:
“Getting 8th again shows that our result last week wasn’t a fluke – 8th can be our new norm, and in the next relay we can do even better! I think that we had a really really good year of training this year, and the fact that we mostly had poor results in the first few races doesn’t mean anything. We’re just starting to hit our stride, and I think that we will all continue on an upward trajectory into the second trimester of the season.” – Hannah Dreissigacker (US Biathlon)
Feeling young:
“I still feel like I am in my youth in the way I’m skiing and competing. I have so much fun doing it. It’s a blast. I love the sport and [Saturday’s team sprint] was just a culmination of really, really good teamwork. ” – Lodwick, 37
Fast skis:
“The wax techs did an awesome job … providing us with really, really fast skis. They did a heck of a job and allowed us to ski our own race.” – Lodwick
Perfect conditions:
“The range conditions were excellent. There was almost no wind. It was totally calm with stable light. I would say it was perfect.” – Heinicke, 50th in Saturday’s 7.5 k sprint
Annecy’s course:
“The course here is really fun and it suits me well. Shooting has also been quite easy here.” – Annelies Cook (US Biathlon), after anchoring U.S. women’s relay to team-best eighth
Dislikes:
Missing a relay:
With just three guys on the IBU World Cup, the Canadians had to sit out the men’s relay on Friday in Annecy, France:
“Unfortunately we didn’t start enough WC’s last year and subsequently didn’t rank high enough in Nation Cup points to have 4 start spots this WC season. There are selection trials next week in Canmore, Dec 20-21 and they will be used to selected the final Men’s Olympic spot and the next IBU Cup tour which will see those athletes compete in Oberhof and then continue onto the IBU Cup. Anyone who is not qualified is at home getting ready for those races.” – Scott Perras (Biathlon Canada)
“Having not raced the relay is kind of bitter sweet. Sure it’s great to get a whole week to rest up (mentally) but I think things would have gone better had I raced [Friday]… I guess it is also a plus to have rested a week physically, but maybe not so great to maintain that race shape and speed.” – JP Le Guellec (Biathlon Canada), 49th in Saturday’s IBU World Cup 10 k sprint
Davos sprint course
“I don’t really like this course just because I’m not a huge fan of two lap courses. I’ve never figured out how to pace them and I don’t think I have ever qualified in a two lap skate sprint.” – Sargent
Annecy’s course:
“Flat courses with bumps like here or Antholz [Italy] give me grief with my back. I think it’s all the one skate followed by tucking and opening again for more one skate that takes its toll. So I could feel my back being pretty tight in standing, which definitely is an issue.” – Le Guellec, on Saturday’s sprint
The unavoidable
“… Little things like hitting a patch of ice on the final corner and almost going down and then skiing a horrible transition into the hill on one the laps really adds up.” — Sargent
DQs:
“I’ve taken a very hard look at my suits and measured myself neck to ankles in 5 cm increments as well as spent a good deal of time sewing and trying to understand how it all comes together. As far as the bib fiasco part II well? Sh*t happens;)” – Billy Demong (U.S. Nordic Combined), ninth in Sunday’s individual competition, a week after being disqualified for forgetting his bib in Lillehammer, Norway
Biathletes Andrea Henkel (l) of Germany, Veronika Vitkova (second from r) of the Czech Republic, and Ukraine’s Valj Semerenko (r) in a World Cup pursuit last season in Oberhof, Germany. Semerenko placed third in the pursuit behind Russia’s Olga Zaitseva (not shown) in first and Vitkova in second. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)
About halfway through the IBU World Cup women’s 10-kilometer pursuit on Sunday, Valj Semerenko’s luck started to change.
A penalty on her first prone had put her in 11th with four loops to go at Le Grand Bornand in Annecy, France. The Ukrainian had started third behind Switzerland’s Selina Gasparin and Finland’s Kaisa Mäkäräinen, respectively; backwards wasn’t the direction Semerenko was hoping for.
Most of the eventual top 16 cleaned the first stage, except Gasparin, Semerenko and Germany’s Franziska Preuss. Meanwhile, Mäkäräinen, Gabriela Soukalova of the Czech Republic, and Russia’s Olga Vilukhina moved to the front of the pack, all cleaning their second prone.
The first standing, however, threw a stick in their tracks. Mäkäräinen entered the range first and came out with three penalties, and Vilukhina missed one. Soukalova cleaned again for a 10-second lead over Semerenko and another Ukrainian, Olena Pidhrushna, who cleaned the first three stages.
Ukraine was quickly moving up in the standings, along with Russia’s Irina Starykh and Vilukhina, another 10 seconds behind heading into the final standing.
With the pressure on, Semerenko entered the range third behind Soukalova and Starykh, respectively. The Czech World Cup leader missed one, Starykh cleaned once more and Semerenko did the same to put 20 seconds into Soukalova and Norway’s Tiril Eckhoff, who came back from a penalty in the third stage.
With a kilometer remaining and the top two women accelerating toward the finish, Semerenko attacked on the final climb to drop Starykh and win her first World Cup in 28:05.4. Starykh was 4.2 seconds behind, and Eckhoff overtook Soukalova for third and her first World Cup podium, another 11.3 seconds back. Soukalova finished fourth (+21.9) about seven seconds ahead of Germany’s Laura Dahlmeier, who cleaned for fifth. Gasparin finished sixth (+37.1).
“I did not expect such success here in France,” the 27-year-old Semerenko, who turns 28 on Jan. 28, told IBU. “It is a nice New Year present to myself. I am happy to win, especially after such a battle with a great competitor like Irina on the last lap … It is just starting to sink in.”
After 20-for-20 shooting, Starykh dismissed suggestions that she was Russia’s top woman. “I do not think I am the top woman. This is the result of my summer training. I am only concerned about results,” she told IBU.
Despite her first World Cup podium, Eckhoff was similarly straightforward. “It was just my day,” she said. “I shot well and did my work.”
Crawford Cracks Top 20
Biathlon Canada’s Rosanna Crawford at last week’s IBU World Cup in Hochfilzen, Austria..
Out of four Canadian women in the pursuit, Rosanna Crawford had the best position from the beginning, starting 26th and a minute behind Gasparin. Her first prone didn’t go so well and she racked it up to the range’s quick entry from a downhill, which was especially tough in lanes 25 through 30.
“My first prone don’t think I switched over soon enough. The shots were everywhere,” Crawford wrote in an email. “From there I made sure to start my range entry sooner.”
The 25 year old then cleaned her second prone and missed one more on her first standing. She rose from 37th on the second loop to 29th on the third (with the ninth-fastest loop time), and finally 20th before her final loop. With Norway’s Fanny Well-Strand Horn about eight seconds ahead of her on the last loop, Crawford worked hard to catch her and credited her fast skis for helping her do so.
She finished 19th for her best pursuit result, 1:47.5 behind Semerenko and 1.1 seconds ahead of Horn.
“Anything is always possible in a pursuit,” Crawford explained. “It’s been a good 4 weeks in Europe but I am ready to go home and recover and see my family! The next trip will be a long one.”
The IBU World Cup resumes Jan. 3 in Oberhof, Germany.
Crawford’s teammate Megan Heinicke rose from 50th to 33rd with two penalties – one in the first and third stages – for her second-best pursuit result at the World Cup. Starting 1:41 behind, Heinicke figured a top 30 was possible given how tightly packed everyone was from the start.
Despite missing her first shot in the first prone, Heinicke, 25, clocked the third-fastest range time. The second time around, she was second fastest on both the range and the loop.
“The fast shooting times were part of my plan … I wanted to go into the shooting confident, focused, fast and aggressive,” Heinicke explained in an email. “While I did make a conscious decision to shoot aggressively on the whole I was more focused on the shooting process today which was a good thing.”
She ended up with the fastest overall shooting time, which surprised her.
“The ski times came about more naturally,” Heinicke wrote. “I was feeling a bit tired today and the loop times partially reflect my own feeling as well as the speed of the different groups I was skiing with.”
She finished 2:25.2 behind the winner and was pleased to end the day and trimester with 90-percent shooting.
“I feel a mixture of frustration and determination,” she said of the last five days in Annecy, which started with the Canadian women notching an unprecedented fourth in Thursday’s relay. “I have seen fast enough skiing, fast enough shooting and good enough shooting from myself to know that the top 30 and top 16 are realistic goals. Of course, to reach these goals I will need to do a better job of bringing everything together on the same day which makes me very determined to train smart and focused over Christmas.”
Heinicke’s headed home to her husband and son Predo Emil, who turned 3 in November and was at the races last week in Hochfilzen, Austria.
Rounding out the Canadian performances on Sunday, Megan Imrie placed 41st – one place behind where she started – with four standing penalties. Three came on the first standing and she missed one more on the last stage.
Zina Kocher had seven penalties to drop from 45th to 52nd (2+1+2+2) and American Susan Dunklee finished 53rd of 58 with 15-for-20 shooting (1+1+1+2).
Selina Gasparin racing at 2012 World Championships. Last week in Hochfilzen, Austria, she became Switzerland’s first biathlete to win a World Cup, and she repeated with another victory on Saturday in the 7.5 k sprint in Annecy, France.
Confidence is a funny thing. In skiing, you spend a summer – or a lifetime – of training to achieve a certain outcome and once you obtain it, sometimes it naturally repeats itself.
That was the case for Selina Gasparin on Saturday, who captured her second IBU World Cup victory eight days after notching her first in the 7.5-kilometer sprint in Hochfilzen, Austria.
Gasparin, 29, tallied yet another 7.5 k sprint win for Switzerland after becoming her nation’s first biathlete to win a World Cup last week. Back then, she didn’t think the win was possible with a penalty in standing.
But it was, as she edged Veronika Vitkova of the Czech Republic by 1.2 seconds. On Saturday at Le Grand Bornand in Annecy, France, Gasparin shot clean for the win – which almost shocked her more. Fifth after the first loop, the Swiss rose to second after knocking down every target before her second lap.
After starting four minutes behind Finland’s Kaisa Mäkäräinen, Gasparin bumped her out of the lead on the second loop. Mäkäräinen cleaned her prone, but missed one standing to fall to seventh before clawing back on the last lap.
Gabriela Soukalova of the Czech Republic cleaned her prone as well and took a 7.5-second lead on Gasparin, but also suffered a single standing penalty to drop 11 seconds behind the eventual winner with 2.5 k remaining.
Gasparin seized the victory in 20:51.4 minutes, 8.3 seconds ahead of Mäkäräinen in second, and Ukraine’s Valj Semerenko placed third (+11.5) with a standing penalty. Soukalova finished fourth, 13.2 seconds out of first, and the next three finishers all cleaned: Russia’s Olga Vilukhina in fifth and Germany’s Franziska Preuss and Franziska Hildebrand, who tied for sixth.
Olena Pidhrushna of Ukraine had a prone penalty and placed eighth, and Poland’s Krystyna Palka and Germany’s Laura Dahlmeier in ninth and 10th, respectively, were perfect on the range.
“I will be happy to wear number 1 tomorrow and then go home for Christmas,” Gasparin told IBU, according to a press release. “After that, I will go back to doing the same thing: focus on the race, shoot clean and take one race at a time. I do not look forward too much, because I know how fast it all can change in biathlon.”
All Four Canadians Pursuit-Bound
The Canadian women jumping for joy after capturing Canada’s best-ever finish in a relay. (Photo: Biathlon Canada/Matthias Ahrens)
Coming off their nation’s best-ever relay in fourth on Thursday, the Canadian women all qualified for Sunday’s pursuit with top-60 results on Saturday.
Rosanna Crawford led the crew in 26th, 1:01.1 behind Gasparin. Excited about the race and the course that suits her, Crawford wrote in an email that she woke up with a slightly different feeling than two days before.
“My legs were not feeling as fresh as they were on Thursday, and skiing was a lot harder than I thought it was going to be,” she wrote. “The 2.5km course has some deceiving long gradual climbs, that end with a short steep bridges!”
Leaving prone with a penalty and ranking 54th, Crawford rose to 27th after cleaning her second stage. She had initially overcorrected for wind on a generally calm day and learned from her mistake to shoot flawlessly – and fast – in standing.
“I think my one miss was just my silly brain showing up where it’s not wanted!” she explained. “The final lap was pretty tough, I didn’t cross the line totally gassed but I wasn’t able to make my legs move any faster out there on course.”
Quick-and-careful shooting turned out to be key as Crawford tallied the best North American result in Saturday’s 7.5 k.
“I am always happy to be in the top 30 and 90% is better than any of my sprint races so far this season, so I am happy about that!” she wrote. “I wish I could have been skiing like the relay, but tomorrow is another day! Another chance to go to battle!”
Teammate Megan Imrie placed 40th with one penalty in each stage to finish 1:26.4 behind the winner. On a day when her legs felt “torched,” Imrie tried to focus on gliding and took advantage of the range’s downhill entry.
“It feels easier for me to relax into my shooting position,” she explained of the approach. “The conditions were pretty calm on the range, but the snow wasn’t very fast. It’s a course of continuous gradual climbing, so it was a leg burner out there. You worked for your seconds.”
While she’s unsure how she’ll fare in the pursuit – a race that’s not traditionally her strongest – Imrie’s optimistic that the trend could change.
“This season I’ve been approaching each race with the mindset of bringing my very best to the line regardless of circumstances or conditions,” she wrote. “I’ve been feeling relaxed, happy, and my shooting is reflecting that.”
Another Canadian, Zina Kocher tied for 45th (+1:35) with Norway’s Marte Olsbu after three penalties: one prone and two standing. The fourth relay member, Megan Heinicke also missed one prone and two standing for 50th (+1:41.2).
After starting 96th of 97, Heinicke described the conditions as “perfect.” While the uphills and corners became slightly “sugary,” some of the long descents also got faster later in the race, so she didn’t feel as though she was at a disadvantage.
When she missed shots, Heinicke simply moved on. She had the third-fastest shooting time in the first stage and 16th-fastest in the second bout.
“Today was all about moving on efficiently to the next step which was getting out of that penalty loop and onto the course as fast as possible!” she wrote. “I feel like I went into this race with the right approach – fast and aggressive, but I am feeling frustrated and disappointed about the misses.”
In Sunday’s 10 k pursuit, she expects to analyze more during the race.
“I believe in my training and am just looking forward to another chance to try and bring it all together,” Heinicke wrote. “I am very determined and I want to go into the Christmas holidays satisfied with my own performance!”
Narrowly making the cut in 60th, Susan Dunklee was the lone American to qualify for the pursuit. Dunklee suffered one prone miss then skied three penalty laps after her standing stage to finish 2:13.4 behind the winner.
After ranking 66th on the first loop and 72nd on the second, she was surprised to hear she made the top 60. She started 10th and didn’t hear much for splits, but had a sense she might squeak through with four misses.
Dunklee explained she changed her pacing for Saturday’s course, holding back slightly on the uphills in order to accelerate through the transitions and downhills.
“I fought hard the last loop,” Dunklee wrote. “I wanted it too badly in standing and forgot to focus on the process of shooting well.”
Three other Americans placed outside the top 60: Annelies Cook was 62nd with two penalties (1+1), Sara Studebaker finished 76th with three misses (2+1), and Hannah Dreissigacker was 77th with two misses (1+1).
“All and all, a very disappointing day for the whole crew,” Dunklee wrote. The team tied their career-best relay result of eighth on Thursday. “I am happy to get one more chance before heading home for the holiday break [on Monday].”
The Canadian women jumping for joy after notching Biathlon Canada’s best-ever finish in a relay. (Photo: Biathlon Canada/Matthias Ahrens)
Note: The following has been updated to include quotes from Megan Heinicke.
About halfway through the IBU World Cup women’s 4 x 6-kilometre relay on Thursday in Annency, France, it was pretty evident Germany had the race in the bag.
Anything can certainly happen, but Andrea Henkel had opened a 10.5-second lead for the Germans by the end of the second leg, and after teammate Franziska Hildebrand’s third leg, they were up by 35 seconds on Norway. Laura Dahlmeier essentially had to go through the paces, shoot as clean as possible and ski strong to hold off Norway and Ukraine, both contending for the podium with somewhat of a surprise charging from behind – the Canadians.
It wasn’t a surprise for Canada. Chris Lindsay, high-performance director for Biathlon Canada, has known for some time what his quartet of Rosanna Crawford, Megan Imrie, Megan Heinicke, and Zina Kocher were capable of. And on Thursday it was Canada’s best-ever relay result – in a female, male or mixed event. The nation’s previous best was sixth in a mixed relay in 2011 in Hochfilzen, Austria.
The top teams in the 4 x 6 k women’s relay gather around the podium Thursday at the IBU World Cup in Annency, France. Germany won, Ukraine was second, Norway placed third, and Canada notched a historic fourth. France placed fifth, Russia was sixth, Italy finished seventh, and the U.S. tied last week’s eighth place. (Photo: Biathlon Canada/Matthias Ahrens)
The Canadian women placed fourth on Thursday behind Germany, Ukraine and Norway, respectively, with Germans Franziska Preuss, Henkel, Hildebrand, and Dahlmeier winning in 1:06:27.8, and using just three spare rounds in the process.
Ukraine’s Juliya Dzhyma, Vita Semerenko, Valj Semerenko, and Olena Pidhrushna, placed second 23.3 seconds back with four spare rounds, edging Norway in third by 0.5 seconds with Tinril Eckhoff, Fanny Welle-Strand Horn, Synnøve Solemdal, and Tora Berger, who used a total of 10 spare rounds.
The Canadians were 1:35.8 back in fourth after using nine spares.
“Certainly holding the shooting together with the great skiing was the difference,” Lindsay wrote in an email. “Having a big result that is completely owned by the women helps to build an even stronger foundation upon which podiums will follow.”
Heading out first with 22 other teams, Crawford cleaned her prone and used one spare on her standing to bring the team to fourth by the exchange.
“I’ve learned from the past couple relays that being aggressive off the start and getting with the lead group will save you a lot of energy and make sure you don’t get tripped up most of the time!” Crawford wrote in an email. “I’ve got a strong double pole so I can usually be right behind the person in front of me and then it’s just a matter of [maneuvering] my way to the front group.”
A fan of the range at Le Grand Bornand, Crawford explained she took advantage of the calm conditions and focused on one shot at a time. She left her first stage in second behind Switzerland’s Selina Gasparin, who cleaned both stages to tag off in first – but Gasparin wasn’t always in front (and her sisters Elisa and Aita, and teammate Patricia Josh ultimately dropped the lead on the second, fourth and third legs, respectively, so that Switzerland finished 13th).
Italy’s scramble skier, Dorothea Wierer cleaned her prone and used one spare on her standing to put the team in third behind Germany’s Preuss, who used one spare on each stage to tag off in second.
“Selina Gaspirin really didn’t want to lead, so we were able to catch up to her and then I passed her right before the range,” Crawford explained. “Standing was good, my hands were pretty cold so I had some trouble with my spares, dropping two, before I got one in and hit the target.”
For the last loop, Crawford stuck with Preuss and Norway’s Eckhoff just behind the leaders, tagging off in fourth, 11.6 seconds after Gasparin in first and 3.2 behind Preuss in second. Italy tagged in third, Belarus was fifth, and Eckhoff came through in sixth for Norway, 15 seconds behind Gasparin and 3.4 behind Canada.
With Susan Dunklee scrambling for the second-straight relay, the Americans started the second leg in eighth, 33.3 seconds behind Germany.
From there, Imrie brought the Canadians to third with a clean prone and one spare in standing. Henkel took the lead for Germany with 10-for-10 shooting, and Imrie tagged just Heinicke 17.3 seconds behind Germany and 6.8 seconds behind Norway.
Heinicke used three spare rounds – one in prone and two in standing – for the eighth-fastest third leg, but she managed to hold tight in fourth, a minute behind Germany, but just 10 seconds behind Ukraine.
“I was disappointed about the prone miss because it really shouldn’t have happened, but in the moment I was just focused on doing my job which was loading that spare bullet calmly and efficiently,” Heinicke explained.
In the second bout, she didn’t realize that her first spare didn’t hit and was partly out of position. “That was too bad, but I didn’t let it get in my head, didn’t hesitate and my second spare hit,” she wrote.
As for her last lap: “I was feeling exhausted skiing and was just thinking to fight as hard as possible and not to give anything away,” Heinicke wrote. “I was already thinking about Zina and thinking that I just needed to keep that Ukranian within striking distance for her.”
When Kocher received the final handoff, she tried to relax, focusing on her key words for shooting and most importantly, breathing.
“I knew it was up to me to complete the task of the day and I felt that pressure,” Kocher wrote in an email. “I’ve been struggling with that a lot before today but I’ve been working all week on my shooting and staying with the process, not on the result and not on anyone else around me.”
After using three spares in prone, Kocher found her team’s chance at a historic best slipping. France’s Marie-Laure Brunet cleaned both rounds, shooting especially fast on the standing and putting Kocher under pressure.
“I was over cautious,” Kocher wrote of her first time in the range.
Fighting for every shot the second time around, Kocher ended up using one spare round in standing and raced away on her final lap to catch Brunet from 20 seconds behind. Kocher passed her and finished 8 seconds ahead in fourth.
Dahlmeier shot clean to hold off both Ukraine’s Pidhrushna, who also cleaned, and Berger, who used two spares on her standing but closed hard on the last lap to finish third, just a half second behind Pidhrushna.
Knowing she’s a strong closer, Kocher explained she gave everything she had, but wasn’t sure it would be enough.
“I did not know if I had enough to hold off the Russian or catch the French,” she wrote. “I just put my head down and focused on gliding.”
While “a podium would have been incredible,” Kocher explained the team was thrilled to break through in fourth.
“We are absolutely ecstatic and proud of each other that we all pulled it together what we knew was always possible,” she wrote. “I don’t think this is the last of us. Now we have this confidence and belief in ourselves and each other for the future.”
Two years ago in Hochfilzen, Imrie, Kocher, Le Guellec, and Green combined for Canada’s previous best of sixth in a mixed relay, according to Lindsay.
“We’ve known for a long time that we are capable of a top 6 in a relay,” Crawford wrote.
“The numbers have shown that we can be up playing with the best – but staying in the game is a skill in itself,” Lindsay explained. “Developing comfort at being in the ‘game’ takes some time.
“Last weekend the women were mix for most of the race,” he added. “This week they were in it the entire race. There might be weaker races in the future but I have no doubt that we will continue to rack up time in the game and this will lead to medals.”
U.S. Repeats Feat
The U.S. women placed eighth in the Hochfilzen relay with Lanny Barnes subbing for one of their core national-team members, Annelies Cook. For all four skiers, it was a career best.
On Thursday, they repeated the result with Dunklee, Sara Studebaker, Hannah Dreissigacker, and Cook, respectively. They placed eighth with six spare rounds, finishing 2:44.1 behind Germany.
“Last week when we finished 8th, we were jumping up and down at the finish,” wrote Dunklee, who used just one spare on the second stage. “This week was also very exciting but more contained. We know we can dream bigger now. It was inspiring to see the Canadians do so well – if they can do that, we can do it.”
In her first year on US Biathlon’s A-team, Dreissigacker was the highlight, cleaning both her stages in the third leg to bring the team from 12th to 10th.
Dunklee got them off to a strong start, jetting out toward the front early to avoid getting stuck behind the pack on the course with several corners and short, steep hills.
“In the past being so high up may have scared me, but today I felt relaxed and could still transition to the range with a calm focus,” she explained. “My last loop wasn’t great, no gas left in the tank, but I will be smarter pacing for the sprint.”
Tagged in eighth, Studebaker started alone, nearly 10 seconds ahead of Ukraine in ninth but 22 seconds behind France in seventh. She used one spare in prone, then three in standing.
“It was tough to ski that first loop mostly alone, and it definitely helped in the second loop to have people to ski with,” Studebaker wrote. “I had a little trouble in standing, missing one from the clip and then taking all three extras to get it. It was certainly nerve-wracking!”
Dreissigacker could see Sweden’s Asa Lif about 10 seconds ahead of her when she was tagged in 12th . She caught her and picked off one more place, bringing the team to 10th with fast-and-flawless shooting.
“Fast shooting is a strength of mine, and when you don’t have to load spare bullets that also makes it a lot easier to pass people there!” Dreissigacker wrote. “I’m hoping that I can continue to shoot well in non-relay races too … and that it’s just that my last two races have gone well and they’ve happened to be relays. … I think that I do well when I’m relaxed and having fun, and relays are good for that. And I like to shoot well for my teammates!”
Just two seconds behind Finland in ninth, Cook wasn’t sure where her team stood when Dreissigacker tagged her. After a close-call in the exchange, Cook was relieved to make it out unscathed, and didn’t see their place until she entered the range for the first time.
She cleaned the prone and used one spare standing, putting her in prime position for the final lap.
“I thought that maybe I could catch [Italy’s Karin Oberhofer] and bring us into 7th, but she skied well in her last lap and I couldn’t get her,” Cook wrote. “I didn’t do anything special, I just tried to ski well and be relaxed when I got into the range – and luckily I hit my targets and the girls around me struggled.”
Sensing Slovakia’s Anastasiya Kuzmina coming up from behind on that last lap, Cook focused on holding onto eighth.
“Once I got to the last uphill, I knew I would be fine,” she wrote.
“Sunday was our best relay in a while and we always try to beat our bib number,” Cook added, referring to their eighth seed. “It was fun to see Susan leading everyone and it’s really cool that Hannah cleaned. Sara also kept us right in the game and fought super hard. Everyone gave it. I was really glad that I could be part of a good result – because I only got to cheer last week!”
“My lower legs have been feeling better,” she wrote of her bothersome shins, which kept her from last weekend’s competition. “But they usually don’t bother me until I go hard so I was definitely a bit nervous about how they would feel and they were the best they have been so far.”
“We’re really in a good place right now and I think after two top-8s we’re getting hungry for more!” Studebaker explained. “It’s definitely an exciting place to be in this Olympic season.”
Canada’s JP Le Guellec racing to 13th in Friday’s 10 k sprint at the IBU World Cup in Hochfilzen, Austria.
HOCHFILZEN, Austria – The snow was supposed to stop. Then again, Friday’s International Biathlon Union (IBU) World Cup 7.5- and 10-kilometer sprints were held in a place that eventual men’s winner, Lars Berger, called “snowfilzen.”
Five minutes before the start of the men’s 10 k, it started snowing – and the weather deteriorated throughout the race.
That was especially frustrating to Biathlon Canada’s JP Le Guellec, not because it threw him off his game, but because he thought the conditions would improve as the race went on. Anticipating that, he asked his coach Matthias Ahrens to give his teammates Brendan Green and Nathan Smith the benefit of starting later.
“I wanted to give priority to Nathan and Brendan because they have criteria to meet for the Olympics,” Le Guellec said after starting 22nd and placing 13th in Friday’s sprint. “We thought it was going to be snowing at the beginning of the race and then stop snowing at the end.”
Canada’s Brendan Green racing to 31st in Friday’s 10 k sprint at the IBU World Cup in Hochfilzen, Austria. Green was one second away from making the top 30 and qualifying for Canada’s 2014 Olympic team.
With Le Guellec, 28, already prequalified for the Olympics, his teammates need a top 30 to do the same. Green finished 31st, one second out of 30th, with two misses after starting 53rd. Smith, who started in bib 105, placed 48th with a single penalty.
“It’s a bit frustrating, but it is fun for me to have had the better conditions,” Le Guellec said after cleaning the prone and missing one on the standing. “The tactic missed though.”
Green described the weather as “a little bit nasty” in the middle of his race, adding that it did let up a bit. His nemesis was shooting, he said. After missing the last shot of his prone, Green repeated with a final miss in the standing.
“Missing the last shot in standing was not good,” he said. “There was a little bit of wind, but I think it was manageable. I just got a little bit too excited and shot it off a little too soon. … I was really hoping for a top 30 to finish off my Olympic criteria, so hopefully in the pursuit I can do that.”
Smith hit nine of 10 targets, missing just one in the second bout.
“I felt better than the last sprint, but not as good as the individual in Östersund,” he said after notching a World Cup career-best 16th in the 20 k individual in Sweden last week.
“The last lap, I had no chance. It was so much slower,” Smith said of Friday’s race. “There was nothing I could do.”
While earlier starters enjoyed better conditions, it wasn’t easy for anyone out there, and Le Guellec used his experience to manage the increasing wind.
“In prone, it was pushing a little more than in zero so I shaded a bit instead of correcting, and ended up cleaning,” he said. “I did the same thing [last week] in Östersund in the sprint and I missed two, but then after the race, my coach told me I didn’t shade enough.”
Lesson learned. At the first World Cup in Östersund, Le Guellec came out firing with a fourth-place finish in the 20 k individual on Nov. 28. Two days later, he placed 29th in the 10 k sprint with four penalties – two in each stage.
Heading into Friday’s standing, Le Guellec noticed the wind was coming from the opposite direction and heard German Andreas Birnbacher (who ended up 33rd) coming out of shooting “pretty frustrated with three misses,” Le Guellec said. “I had a clue and setting up, I really took my time. I ended up missing one anyway, but it was pretty decent considering the wind.”
Overall, he was pleased with his result, 55 seconds behind Berger (who won in 25:02) and feeling like might have been able to push harder earlier. With the 27th fastest first-lap time, he improved to 11th fastest the second time around.
“I don’t know if I went [out] too conservative, but the skis were definitely good,” Le Guellec said. “I hammered on the last lap and I had some guys to follow.”
Canadian Zina Kocher (l) chases down Ekaterina Glazyrina of Russia during Friday’s IBU World Cup 7.5 k sprint in Hochfilzen, Austria. Kocher ended up 25th and Glazyrina was 51st.
Another Canadian prequalified for the Olympics, Rosanna Crawford placed 17th with two penalties – both standing – in the women’s 7.5 k. She finished 47.1 seconds behind Selina Gasparin, who became the first Swiss biathlete to win a World Cup (finishing in 23:16.9).
“I got lucky,” Crawford said of starting 90th, a bib number she initially dreaded fearing the conditions would worsen.
“The course sped up a lot,” she explained. “If I’d started early, I don’t think I would have been that high.”
In last week’s Östersund sprint, Crawford missed three standing for 51st overall. After cleaning her prone again on Friday, she was disappointed with two standing misses, but recognized that “the potential is there.”
“The season always seems to start off pretty bummy for me for some reason,” Crawford said. “Today, 80 percent, I’m not very happy with it especially since it came in one bout, but it will come together. I think we have a big potential for a great relay. Three of us had great races today.”
Zina Kocher was the second Canadian woman in 25th with two misses – one in each stage. Megan Imrie placed 35th with two penalties as well (0+2), and Megan Heinicke finished 70th with four misses (1+3).
“Skiing was quite good, but shooting was a disaster,” said Heinicke, who posted the 38th-fastest course time overall. “I’m waiting to see if I’m in the pursuit. It will be pretty tight I think.”
Similar to the men’s race later in the day, the wind picked up significantly for the women from zeroing to prone.
“I clicked four left, which is a lot, but … I only missed one,” Heinicke said. “Standing, [the wind] wasn’t very strong, but it was sort of on and off. It was just tough and I was pretty disappointed because I had really good windy shooting in that [Östersund] pursuit that was canceled so I was thinking, ‘be confident,’ but it didn’t work out.”
Heinicke finished 56th in last week’s sprint with three misses (1+2). The following Östersund women’s 10 k and men’s 12.5 k pursuits were canceled because of high winds, a decision that was made midway through the women’s race. Both Heinicke and Imrie were skiing in the top 10 when it was called off.
“I was disappointed at first, but then when I saw the footage, I was like, ‘Okay, be realistic. I would never have been in that position in normal conditions,’ ” Heinicke said. “I was just happy that I had managed the wind well, and I felt good skiing that day. It was fun while it lasted.”
World Cup racing continues in Hochfilzen this weekend with the women’s 4 x 6 k and men’s 4 x 7.5 k relays on Saturday, and the women’s 10 k and men’s 12.5 k pursuits on Sunday.
Megan Imrie (far right) at the podium ceremony for the women’s 7.5 k sprint in Idre, Sweden. Imrie placed sixth in the IBU Cup openers. Photo courtesy of Imrie.
The Canadians had a feeling that their team was improving a lot over the course of the last training year. But by all accounts, even the coaching staff wasn’t quite fully prepared for the results of today’s IBU Cup sprints in Idre, Sweden.
The headline: Nathan Smith second in the men’s 10 k, just 3.9 seconds away from the win. He was one of three men and two women in the top ten. Two more in the top 20. In total, six athletes shooting clean.
One day into the 2013-2014 season, Canada is leading the IBU Cup nations standings, ahead of Norway, Russia, and Germany. Sure, it’s not the World Cup, but the second-tier circuit, which is organized in the same way, is nothing to scoff at – there were 140 men and 107 women toeing the start line today. If a country can’t do well where developing athletes typically compete, it doesn’t bode well for the future of the program.
Plus, there’s the fact that these will be the most competitive races of the year for the circuit, with many teams using them to select World Cup teams. The top twenty was packed with athletes with Olympic and World Championships credentials. Timofey Lapshin, the Russian who edged Smith, has two World Cup podiums; the winner of the women’s race, Weronika Nowakowska-Ziemniak of Poland, is a 2010 Olympian who had a seventh-place World Cup result last season.
“To your question of whether I was expecting this, from our in training season performance testing and latest trial races we had good indications the we were on the right track, but since we are quite isolated in North America it is quite difficult to put a perspective to this until you race internationally again,” Canadian head coach Matthias Ahrens wrote in an e-mail to FasterSkier. “I am super happy about both races, especially great performances in shooting as a team overall, but also the skiing is showing that we are on the right track.”
In many ways the top performances came from athletes who have something to prove as they head into the Olympic qualification season. Take Smith. The 28-year-old had made his first World Championships appearance in 2008, and also represented Canada in the 2011, 2012, and 2013 editions. But last year, after lackluster results in the first two weeks of World Cup racing, he was moved back down to the IBU Cup.
“Last year was extremely frustrating for me,” Smith wrote in an e-mail. “Although I still got to race a few World Cups, I ended up pretty much being the extra relay guy a lot of the time because our team only has three men’s starts. Relays are a nice bonus but ultimately biathlon is mostly an individual sport. Luckily I managed to make some national team criteria at my very last chance (World Championships relay) where I basically had my only great performance of the year.”
That leaves him at a major disadvantage for Olympic qualifying. The most surefire way to make Canada’s Olympic team is to have two top-16 or three top-30 World Cup results. Two men have already fulfilled those requirements (Jean Philippe Le Guellec and Scott Perras), while several others (Brendan Green and Scott Gow) are partway through. Athletes have until the Christmas break to get those results on the World Cup, after which point qualifying is kicked back to trials races in Canmore for any remaining spots. Team size will be four men and four women.
“Nathan has been on fire over the past few weeks, his skiing has been very strong,” Canadian coach Roddy Ward told FasterSkier. “Today he skied like he has been and also put together a clean race. He has been very motivated and focused in his training this year and it has paid off for him.”
Smith is looking good now, both in the Idre sprint and at previous trials races in Canmore to qualify for this trip. But that leaves him just three weeks to get his two or three results on the World Cup. And there’s a catch: Canada has only three quota spots for men. With Le Guellec and Perras taking two of them, only one more man will have the chance to try to achieve their Olympic qualification on the circuit this fall.
That seems to have been a powerful force driving the team to go faster and shoot straighter.
“The remaining Olympic spots that are up for grabs are definitely a big motivator,” Smith wrote. “Judging by our team’s shooting I think the pressure is being handled really well. For myself, I’m managing the pressure a lot better than a year ago.”
With his second-place finish, Smith nabbed the remaining men’s spot and will try to make the most of it in the next few weeks.
“In the spring I had time to reflect on what I had done the previous few years and decided that if I wanted a change in results I would also have to have a different approach to training,” he wrote. “I really tried to focus on quality and working on specific skills. Already halfway through the summer I knew that things were going in the right direction through testing, team time trials, and just general training… In the last few team races my skiing has been excellent so I had a lot of confidence in that going to Europe. But still, you never really know, so theres always some doubt.“
The next Canadian, Marc-Andre Bedard, tied for seventh; he is another former World Cup and World Championships competitor who did not see World Cup action last season. Just two seconds behind him in ninth was Green, who sat out last season with a back injury. Gow placed 13th with one penalty.
Yet even though the men are competing against each other – intensely – for World Cup and Olympic spots, they were supportive of one another’s results. Team spirit doesn’t seem to be a casualty of the cutthroat competition, in fact, maybe just the opposite.
“I’m also really happy for Nathan, he totally deserves those results and I’m excited to see him try to get his Olympic criterias on the World Cup!” Bedard wrote in an e-mail. “(If they let him of course!!!) (they better ;))”
Bedard also made another comment on the team’s cohesion in explaining why his results seem to be on the upswing this fall.
“I’m finally feeling supported by my coach and teammates and I was really excited to race against the world with my new dry land season with all the changes is done for the last six months,” he explained. “I’ve always needed a few weeks of racing before I was actually able to turn it on and I think today is a really good sign for what might happen this year. I’m hoping I’m progressing still and will be able to actually hurt myself in the next few weeks. Today felt pretty easy so with a good result on a really strong and deep field, it sounds good!”
Although the team will also compete in Idre tomorrow, coaches ultimately made the choice of World Cup athletes based off of today’s race, and Smith got the nod. Biathlon Canada High Performance Director Chris Lindsay acknowledged that the men hadn’t made it easy for them to pick just one, but the entire coaching staff pointed out that the increasing competition within the program is a benefit for all.
“It is clear our men’s team is extremely competitive, which had led to improvements through the training year,” Ward said. “We saw that in the results today.”
Competing a few hours later, the Canadian women’s team took the momentum and ran with it.
“The girls and I were really inspired by the guys performances before our race,” Megan Imrie wrote in an e-mail. “They’d all killed it! If they could do it, so could I.”
Imrie, coming back from her own lackluster season last year that saw her take a midwinter detour home to Manitoba to rest, recover, and decide how to approach biathlon from that point forward, hit the circuit again with a bang. She placed sixth with clean shooting, over a minute behind Nowakowska-Ziemniak but only 23 seconds behind second-place Fanny Welle-Strand Horn of Norway.
“I committed to working every possible place on the course and was extremely focused on the range,” Imrie said of her race. “I was a bundle of nerves going to the start. But I stuck to the basics. In the words of Simon Whitfield, just chop wood and carry water. I’m relieved I’m coming back okay from last year. I’ve worked hard and stayed healthy. Now I’m feeling privileged to enjoy racing again.”
Just behind her was 2010 Olympic teammate Megan Heinicke in seventh place. The pair, like Smith, earned the nods for the next period of World Cup racing and will travel to Ostersund, Sweden, with Smith and Rosanna Crawford. Imrie and Heinicke both need a single additional top-30 result on the World Cup to complete their Olympic qualification.
Crawford is pre-qualified for Sochi, but raced the Idre openers anyway. She finished 35th with three penalties.
“The girls were also impressive with Megan I, Megan H and Audrey [Vaillancourt, who placed 16th] cleaning,” Ward said. “Rosanna had been dealing with a number of injuries lately so I was just happy to see her ski form was solid. The next few weeks should be good very for her. Megan I has been incredible this training year with self monitoring her training and recovery – she has made some wise decisions that has kept her healthy and progressing.”
Several younger Canadians also competed, with Macx Davies placing 84th in the men’s race and Julia Ransom 58th in the women’s race. Claude Godbout, a senior, placed 50th ahead of Ransom.
“Even that it is only one race and the first race of the season, it should give everybody great confidence into the next races, be it on the World Cup or the IBU Cup,” a happy Ahrens concluded.
Scott Perras (right) competing at 2013 World Championships; he topped Canadian trials rankings in Canmore this week.
On Tuesday, Jean Philippe Le Guellec, Scott Perras, Zina Kocher, and Rosanna Crawford will get on a plane a fly to Sweden. This they knew: the four Canadian biathletes are already qualified for the upcoming Olympics in Sochi, and have the luxury of knowing that they’ll start their seasons on the World Cup next weekend.
But after trials races in Canmore on Thursday and Friday, 11 more athletes learned that they’d be leaving even sooner. Five women and six men will start their seasons on the second-tier IBU Cup, which, for two women and one man, will be a stepping stone to the World Cup a week later.
The group is a mix of national team athletes, development team athletes, and even juniors. And, says Biathlon Canada High Performance Director Chris Lindsay, they’re probably going to put down some good results. He was impressed by what he saw over the last two days, and in a great mood when FasterSkier talked with him on Friday afternoon.
“It was a great opportunity to see some great early-season racing for my guys,” Lindsay said. “They were able to pull out some results that were maybe not perfect, but were good indicators of the overall quality of the training that’s happening and the continuing improvement of the program overall. I’ve been watching all these athletes for the last month here on the early snow, because we’ve been on snow for a full month as of today.”
While the goal for this first period of racing is certainly to have strong results at the World Cup level – Lindsay would like to see multiple top-30 finishes – it’s also important for Olympic qualification. That’s possible through World Cup results, by either two top-16 results or three top-30 results. Brendan Green, Megan Imrie, and Megan Heinicke, all starting on the IBU Cup, each only need one more top-30 to achieve their Olympic qualification, while Scott Gow needs two top-30s.
But Green and Gow are going to have to fight it out just for the chance to compete on the World Cup, and best not only each other but Nathan Smith, Marc-Andre Bedard, Macx Davies, and Scott’s younger brother Christian Gow. Canada only has three quota spots for men’s World Cup racing.
“It certainly looks to us like we have four or five male athletes who are more than capable of having World Cup results in the top 30,” Lindsay explained. “We’re in an unfortunate situation where because we have limited start spots on the World Cup, so that we cannot just throw all of them there and have them fight it out.”
Because the IBU Cup and World Cup tours swing in geographically different directions this year, Lindsay says it’s unlikely that athletes will be switched between the two circuits once the World Cup begins. That means that it’s highly probable that the men’s Olympic team will not be filled by the time the Christmas break rolls around. In that case, any remaining athletes that have met IBU standards – basically, the same standards that must be achieved to race on he World Cup – will have a trials series at home.
The same goes for the women, should Imrie and Heinicke fail to complete their qualification on the World Cup. Audrey Vaillancourt, Claude Godbout, and Julia Ransom have the chance to steal a World Cup spot from Imrie or Heinicke based on results from the first IBU Cup races.
“The results of IBU Cup 1 are not the only factor in who gets the World Cup spots, but you’re not going to be able to just barf a race out there,” Lindsay said. “You’re going to have to be the first or second Canadian. And we want to see a good result against the field – if everyone comes in around the top 60, that’s not what we’re looking for. We’re expecting people to do extremely well at that IBU Cup.”
Because if you can’t do well at the IBU Cup, then how are you going to do well at the Olympics? And so despite the chance to have a strong opening to the World Cup season, those goals take a backseat for the team in favor of prepping their athletes as well as possible for the Olympics – and to get selected for them.
“We’ve been trying our best to make sure that the athletes are completely aware of the situation the team finds itself in, and that they need to be on the selfish side,” Lindsay said. “If they feel that their best opportunity to make the Games is on the World Cup, then we’ll support them. If they feel that their best opportunity to make the Games is to come home early [to prepare for the Christmas trials races] then we will support that as well. We don’t want to put someone in a situation where they felt that they had to be part of the team at a certain World Cup because the team needed them, but yet that wasn’t the right choice for them. We have a strong philosophy that if we have athletes who are able to achieve their individual performance goals, then the performance of the team will rise too.”
National team and senior athletes certainly acquitted themselves well in the trials races. In Thursday’s sprint, Kocher and Crawford were the second and third women, behind Slovakian and 2010 Olympic gold medalist Anastasiya Kuzmina. Perras was second behind Nathan Smith, a 2012 World Championships team member, and Green was third. It was a turnaround for Perras, who had a tough summer and missed the “A” team’s recent on-snow trip to Ramsau, Austria.
But other athletes asserted themselves, too. Lindsay pointed to Sarah Beaudry, a junior who finished second in the trials rankings behind Godbout; she is a reserve for the trip. Carsen Campbell, a young biathlete from Prince Edward Island, was second in Friday’s sprint, behind Perras. The performances by these and other juniors bode well for Canada’s chances at this years World Youth and Junior Championships in Presque Isle, Maine, which Linday called “almost a home championships.”
And on the veterans side, Robin Clegg, who represented Canada at three Olympics, came out of retirement to rank second in the trials behind Perras. Like Beaudry, he is on the reserve list for the European tour.
“Robin has been doing some semi-professional bike racing in the last two years, and he has come out of retirement to make a push – and I would say a pretty strong push – to qualify for the Olympics,” Lindsay said. “He is training with a local club, so he has no national team support, but I have had several conversations with him about it in the last few months… having him there is great, because it is more competition and it makes everyone faster. In the end, whoever qualifies for the Olympics – whether it’s a young junior who comes out of nowhere, or if it’s Robin – they will be faster the more people we have training and competing.”
Audrey Vaillancourt (Quebec) completed her set of three titles at 2013 Canadian Biathlon Championships on Tuesday with a photo-finish victory over Megan Heinicke (Biathlon BC) in the 12.5 k mass start in Whistler, B.C.
“We both deserved to win today,” Vaillancourt wrote in an email. “I’m just glad I managed to have a better stretch.”
Vaillancourt shot clean at Whistler Olympic Park to finish in 34:54.0. Heinicke was just 0.2 seconds behind and missed one shot (0+0+1+0).
“Today skiing didn’t feel as good as during the weekend,” Vaillancourt wrote, “So I focused more on shooting and it worked very well; I had a perfect day on the range.”
Vaillancourt enjoyed her first mass start of the season: “On the last lap we came out of the range together, so I knew this was going to be a really tough one,” she wrote. “We both tried to drop each other at different places on the course, but we were both dead tired and ended up together for the final sprint! It has been a photo finish for the win!”
Corrine Malcolm (U.S. Biathlon) took third place in 36:38 (1+0+1+0), 30 seconds ahead of Julia Ransom (Biathlon BC) in fourth.
“Today was actually the best I’ve ever shot in a race,” Malcolm wrote. “Unfortunately I lost a little bit of time when I accidentally started to ski onto the 2km cut off on our second loop. Luckily [Canadian biathlete] Rosanna [Crawford] saw me veer off and was able to yell to me to turn around. By the time I made it back to the right trail Julia was coming by and I was able to get in with her and ski nice and relaxed. Julia and I stayed together until the last shooting stage where I cleaned and she missed her final shot.”
Ransom’s time of 37:08 (2+0+1+1) was good enough for third Canadian, but shooting was perhaps not surprisingly the difference for the 20 year old who started her first Cross Country World Cup earlier this season in Canmore, Alberta.
In the men’s 15 k mass start, Nathan Smith (Alberta/Biathlon Canada) struck back after Sunday’s starting error by dominating the day. He won by 44 seconds in 37:53 despite missing three shots (1+0+0+2) during what he described as ideal shooting conditions.
“I missed that first shot prone and was a little concerned, but after that I felt comfortable and in control,” Smith told Biathlon Canada. “I know I didn’t win the pursuit race, but I feel like I’m in great shape and accomplished what I came here to do.”
Marc-André Bédard (Quebec) was second in 38:37 with four misses.
“Shooting was perfect 3 out of 4 times,” he wrote in an email. “[I] missed 4 at my first standing!”
Although disappointed by his shooting, that should not be a problem next week when Bédard competes at Canadian cross-country nationals. “I’m hoping to repeat or do better than my 4th at the 15 free last year!” he wrote.
Bill Bowler took third place to lead a large American contingent with his second podium. He finished 43 seconds behind Bédard, and also had four penalties (0+1+2+1).
“I felt good on the skis,” Bowler wrote. “Definitely better than in the races earlier this week.”
He agreed that the conditions weren’t a problem. “It was a perfect day for racing with fast tracks,” he wrote. “The weather in Whistler can be volatile so it was nice to have sun and solid conditions.”
Kurtis Wenzel (Alberta) grabbed the Canadian bronze with 39:31 (0+0+1+1), good for fourth overall.
Biathlon wraps up Wednesday with the relays. The Sea to Sky Nordic Festival continues with cross country nationals (March 23 to 29), nordic combined (March 28 to 30) and ski jumping (March 28 to 30).
Canadian biathlete Audrey Vaillancourt at the 2011 Biathlon World Juniors in Nove Mesto, Czech Republic. (Photo: Judy Geer)
Audrey Vaillancourt (Quebec) made it 2-for-2, winning the pursuit at 2013 Canadian Biathlon Championships at Whistler Olympic Park on Sunday. Vaillancourt started first after her Saturday sprint victory and finished first despite missing four shots (1+0+1+2) in 31:43.4 for the fastest ski time of the day.
Vaillancourt was happy with her results, writing, “there is much more competition at nationals now that I am in the senior category, so winning the two first races is beyond my expectations.”
The weather was a factor in the sprint, but much less so in the pursuit. “On Saturday we had really tough conditions with the rain and wind, but for me it turned out to be an advantage, since I cleaned my race while the others had lots of trouble on the range.”
“I felt really good on my skis all weekend,” Vaillancourt wrote. “After I came back from Europe at the beginning of March I had a couple days to rest well and get back to some good training at home, and I guess it paid off!”
Julia Ransom (Biathlon BC) moved up to second with the second fastest ski time of 32:27.3, shooting slightly better than Vaillancourt (0+0+2+1). But in the sprint, she struggled on the range, missing six shots and placing sixth.
“The wind had really picked up for the standing bout and I made the decision to wait for it to settle down,” Ransom wrote. “Waiting an extra few seconds is typically a safe move to make (if you hit targets). However I had waited WAY too long and missed four. Double mistake on my part.”
Ransom was not bothered by the weather: “The weather on both days hit every point on the spectrum, but that is why I love Whistler!”
Megan Heinicke (Biathlon BC) slipped from second to third after struggling on the range, missing seven shots. Claude Godbout (Quebec), Leysan Valiullina (Russia), and Corrine Malcom (U.S. Biathlon) rounded out the top six.
Kurtis Wenzel (Alberta) won the men’s pursuit, shooting clean and delivering the second fastest ski time of 32:11.4. Canadian A-team member Nathan Smith (Alberta) started first after winning Saturday’s sprint, setting the fastest time of 31:53.7 while missing three shots (0+0+1+2). A starting penalty cost Smith the victory, leaving him 6.8 seconds behind Wenzel.
“I don’t think I have ever started a pursuit in first so it was a little different today,” Smith told Biathlon Canada. “I skied conservative the whole race, but after I missed my second shot in standing, I realized I had a 30-second penalty for starting to early and I upped the pace for the final lap.”
Raleigh Goessling (USA) used good shooting and a fast ski time of 32:53.1 to move from seventh to take the bronze. Goessling wrote that his pursuit went very well: “I shot a career best 19/20 (1,0,0,0) and skied much better than I did in the sprint.”
Canadian B-teamer Marc André Bédard (Quebec) maintained his fourth place from the sprint, while Bill Bowler (USA) slipped to fifth after taking Saturday’s bronze.
Canada’s Megan Heinicke (front) used one spare round on her prone and three on her standing to put her team in 13th at the exchange in Friday’s 4 x 6 relay at IBU World Championships in Nove Mesto. The Canadians ultimately placed 12th.
The eight North American women in Friday night’s 4 x 6-kilometer relay at Biathlon World Championships had a pretty good sense of what they wanted to accomplish.
For the Americans: top six, although they’d welcome any improvement on last year’s 11th place. For the Canadians, team veteran Zina Kocher wrote in an email that they were shooting for top eight in Nové Město na Moravě, Czech Republic.
With 24 teams to contend with, each team set out on its own mission. Canada’s Rosanna Crawford had the better luck of the scramble legs, hanging in the top 20 for the first of three loops then rising to 12th by the exchange after using three spare rounds.
Annelies Cook worked throughout the first leg to get the Americans into the mix, using five spare rounds and tagging off to second-leg skier Sara Studebaker in 20th. Studebaker brought the team to 18th with one spare, and third-leg Susan Dunklee shot clean for her first time in a World Cup race to lift the U.S. to 11th.
From that point on, anything rookie Hannah Dreissigacker could achieve in her first World Championships was essentially bonus. All three of her teammates – Cook, Studebaker and Dunklee – were on last year’s 11th-place squad (with Lanny Barnes instead of Dreissigacker) and many felt they had a better day back then (with no penalties and nine spare rounds).
Dreissigacker, 26, held her own despite a penalty and three spare rounds on her prone and using another spare in the standing. Once again, she anchored the team to 11th, and they finished with one penalty and 10 spares, 3:04.5 minutes behind the Norwegian winners. (Note: The U.S. originally finished 12th, but Romania was disqualified for “deviating from the marked trail, or skiing a wrong trail, or skiing the course loops in a wrong sequence or in the wrong direction,” according to Real Biathlon.)
The Canadians came in 10.7 seconds after the Americans in 12th with 13 spare rounds and one penalty by Kocher on the seventh of eight stages. Kocher used three spare rounds on that prone and later cleaned her standing.
“It’s an ok result, but nothing amazing,” Kocher, 30, wrote in an email. “We have more potential than what we have been showing in the relays this year, but we really need to use less spares as an entire team.”
As for the penalties, they simply can’t happen, she explained. Kocher wrote she has been struggling with shooting in general this season, but was particularly frustrated with her prone. She regrouped by relaxing on the uphill during the next 2-kilometer loop and decided to switch up her typical right-to-left shooting order.
“I told myself each bull that I was aiming on before I shot ,” she recalled. “OK middle, now echo, delta, bravo, alpha.”
Kocher also remembered the nickname her team gave her.
“Today I found out that the staff named me Merida from the [Pixar] movie Brave,” she wrote. “So I also jokingly told myself ok Merida get it together and hit the center!”
Also disappointed with her prone, Dreissigacker focused on the positives.
“I feel like I let the team down a little bit by getting a penalty loop, but I’m pretty happy with standing, and I am thankful for having great teammates who don’t blame me at all!” she wrote. “I think that we were all hoping to do better, and we know that we can do better. … So to be 11th on a not-so-good day is a good. But we definitely all want more.”
After racing the third leg last year, Cook felt the pressure of scrambling. More confident in her prone shooting, she was taken aback with two initial misses and took some time reloading the two extra rounds.
“I have been struggling with standing shooting and so of course you hope that it will turn around and in that heartbreaking biathlon way,” she added. “I missed three, using extra rounds to clean. It’s the most important to clean in the end, but with such a close race, every second you spend on the range counts and that is frustrating.”
After that, Cook simply put her “head down and just suffered as much as I could possibly suffer to make up as much time as I could,” she wrote. “I think it is the hardest for me when I feel like I really want to bring my team into a good position and then responsible when it doesn’t go really well. So, I am bummed with myself but I gave it everything and I am so, so proud of the hard work and awesome races that the rest of the girls did.
“Susan killed it, Sara was super solid and Hannah did great for her first world Championships,” she added. “We are still ahead of where we were last year, it’s just that the potential is so tantalizing!”
Studebaker as the second leg described the difficultly of the 2 k course, one which doesn’t allow much rest. She went out on the first lap alone, which made it even harder, but did her best to focus.
“I came in pretty hard to prone, so had to take an extra second to calm down,” Studebaker wrote. There, she used one spare round and went on to clean the standing.
“Shooting well moved me closer to a big group of people, and when I tagged off to Susan we were in 18th place, but with a group of about five other teams,” she added. “I knew being close to other skiers would help Susan and that, with the way she’s been skiing this week, she would be able to move us up a bunch.”
U.S. biathlete Susan Dunklee holds up her tool of choice to repair her broken stock, a broom, with Anschütz rep Benjamin (l) and coach Armin Auchentaller. (Photo: Armin Auchentaller)
She was right, as Dunklee raced to the second-fastest course time on the third leg after eventual winner Synnøve Solemdal (NOR). Dunklee, who turned 27 on Wednesday, also cleaned and ranked second for range time.
And she did so with a broom end for a rifle stock. After crashing on the last lap of Wednesday’s 15 k individual (where Dunklee still managed to pull off 15th), Dunklee sought a quick repair for her broken stock – the part of the gun that wedges against the shooter’s shoulder. Anschütz, a German firearms company, helped her do so by replacing the end of the butt plate with a new piece of wood: the end of a broom handle.
“Before the race I was joking around that maybe the broom part would help me ‘clean’ more often and it actually did,” Dunklee wrote. “I had my first career clean World Cup race. These championships went very well for me. … 11th ties our result from World Champs last year and is a solid result. The good thing is our expectations are a lot higher now so were and still are hungry to do better.”
The first Canadian out of the start, Crawford wrote that the first lap was relaxed, but she was still pretty overwhelmed to enter the stadium with 20 teams and a crowd of 27,000 watching.
“My second loop was pretty awesome, I left about 15 seconds back from the leaders and was able to catch right back up to the group before standing shooting,” Crawford wrote.
With the third-fastest ski time on her leg, she was happy to see some improvement with her speed. Clean shooting is always the goal in a relay, she explained, adding that she used too many spares (two prone and one standing).
“I really wanted to tag off in the top 10 and no more than 30 seconds from the leader, so I was happy with how my leg of the relay went!” she wrote. “I think we are content with today’s performance, but like we have said after every relay we know we are capable of so much more. Top 10 has been our goal all season. So we have one more relay in Sochi to try and make that come true!”
Megan Heinicke brought the team to 13th after cleaning her prone and using three spares on the standing. The second leg, she was the sixth fastest on her first loop of and ranked fifth in the range for time spent in prone. Heinicke tagged to 21-year-old Audrey Vaillancourt, who used one spare on her prone and three on the standing to put the team in 14th.
“I got a bit nervous on the third spare, but finally did not have to do a penalty loop,” Vaillancourt wrote. “Those were my first World Champs, so it has really been a great experience for me. I learned a lot and was so glad to be a part of such a huge event! We also have a great team that sticks together, which makes it even better.”
While Kocher wasn’t pleased with her personal performance at World Championships so far, she felt Friday was an improvement.
“I finally felt good skiing today however today was my last race,” she wrote. “Plus I just really struggled with my shooting performance on race day. It was definitely not what I was aiming to achieve here. I got a bit sick before [World Championships] and this could have affected my ski speed as well.
“But in reality, although WCHS was the main goal this season, it’s really the Olympic year in the big picture, and this was a tester year,” she added. “At the end of the season we will have a chance to analyze and see what we need to focus on or change for 2014.”
![Look familiar? We saw this all-Norwegian podium twice, except with Therese Johaug (r) as the winner and Marit Bjørgen (c) in second in the 5 k freestyle on Day 2 of the Lillehammer World Cup mini tour. On Day 3, Bjørgen won it outright over Johaug, and Heidi Weng (l) was once again third. (Photo: Fischer/NordicFocus)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2014/12/unnamed2.jpg")
![A pumped Martin Johnsrud Sundby (Norway) after winning the men's 15 k classic pursuit for the overall Lillehammer mini-tour title on Sunday in Norway. (Photo: Fischer/NordicFocus)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2014/12/unnamed-33.jpg")
![Rosie Brennan (APU) glides to a first-place finish during the women's SuperTour classic sprint at Bohart Ranch near Bozeman, Mont.](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2014/12/IMG_0141.jpg")
![Rosanna Crawford racing to the win in Monday's distance race at Frozen Thunder in Canmore, Alberta. (Photo: Noel Rogers/Bow Valley Photography)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2014/10/3C2C7518.jpg")
![Canada's Megan Heinicke after cleaning her final stage in Thursday's 15 k individual in Östersund, Sweden. She went on to place a career-best 12th.](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2014/12/heinicke.jpg")
![Megan Heinicke making her way around the stadium in Sunday's Olympic 7.5 k sprint in Sochi, Russia.](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2014/02/IMG_9491.jpg")
![Rosanna Crawford (Biathlon Canada) racing to her second-straight victory of Canada's World Cup/IBU Cup trials in Canmore on Friday. She missed two standing, but finished 32 seconds ahead of anyone else for the win. Crawford prequalified for World Cup starts. (Photo: Mark-Andre Bedard shooting a perfect prone on Friday in the second sprint of Biathlon Canada's World Cup/IBU Cup trials. He went on to miss one standing to place third overall and make the World Cup team. (Photo: Justin Brisbane)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2014/11/10731169_786313764744347_1095245425665388694_n.jpg")
![Darya Domracheva celebrates her 20th World Cup victory on Thursday in the 15 k individual in Östersund, Sweden. (Photo: IBU/NordicFocus)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2014/12/2014-12-04_14d368e5e00ab33.jpg_image_scaler_800x0.jpg")
![Finland's Kaisa Mäkäräinen after placing second in the 15 k individual in Östersund, Sweden. (Photo: IBU/NordicFocus)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2014/12/2014-12-04_c85a30a9a0e6b41.jpg_image_scaler_800x0.jpg")
![Valj Semerenko (Ukraine) after shooting clean to place third in the 15 k individual in Östersund, Sweden. (Photo: IBU/NordicFocus)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2014/12/2014-12-04_f296fab1829a4fa.jpg_image_scaler_683x1024.jpg")
![Susan Dunklee (US Biathlon) racing to the second-best sprint result of her career, and this season, in the women's 7.5 k sprint on Saturday in Kontiolahti, Finland. (Photo: USBA/Nordic Focus)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2014/03/dunklee150314al033.jpg")
![Hannah Dreissigacker shoots to a best-ever World Cup 28th-place finish. (USBA/Nordic Focus)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2014/03/dreissigacker130314al066.jpg")
![Rosanna Crawford en route to 25th place in the Olympic sprint last month.](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2014/02/IMG_9331.jpg")
![Zina Kocher collapsed at the finish line of the women's 4 x 6 k relay after giving on of the best ski performances of any athlete all day. Unfortunately, she was not able to match that on the range.](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2014/02/IMG_3513.jpg")
![Canada's Megan Imrie racing to an Olympic career best of 31st in Sunday's 7.5 k sprint in Sochi, Russia.](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2014/02/imrie.jpg")
![Canada's Zina Kocher racing to 32nd in Sunday's Olympic 7.5 k sprint, the first women's biathlon race of the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, Russia.](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2014/02/IMG_8901.jpg")
![Rosanna Crawford (bib 26) chasing Anais Bescond of France and Tiril Eckhoff of Norway in the pursuit.](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2014/01/Crawford-Eckhoff-Bescond-pursuit.jpg")
![Megan Imrie skiing with Olga Zaitseva of Russia in the pursuit.](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2014/01/Imrie-Zaitseva-pursuit.jpg")
![Scott Perras attacking a hill in the pursuit alongside Andi Birnbacher of Germany.](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2014/01/Perras-pursuit.jpg")
![Nathan Smith in the pursuit.](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2014/01/Smith-pursuit.jpg")
![The women's podium at Sunday's World Cup skate sprint in Davos, Switzerland: (from l to r) Kikkan Randall (USST) in second, Marit Bjørgen (NOR) in first, and Denise Herrmann (GER) in third. (Photo: Fischer/Nordic Focus)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2013/12/podium151213al046.jpeg")
![Biathletes Andrea Henkel, Veronika Vitkova and Valj Semerenko (r) in a World Cup pursuit last season in Oberhof, Germany.](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2013/12/1024px-Biathlon_Oberhof_2013-086.jpg")
![Rosanna Crawford (CAN).](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2013/12/Rosanna-Crawford1.jpg")
![Selina Gasparin racing at 2012 World Championships. Last week in Hochfilzen, Austria, she became Switzerland's first biathlete to win a World Cup, and she repeated with another victory on Saturday in the 7.5 k sprint in Annency, France.](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2012/10/selina-gasparin-2012-WCH-sprint.jpg")
![The Canadian women jumping for joy after notching Biathlon Canada's best-ever finish in a relay. (Photo: Biathlon Canada/Matthias Ahrens)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2013/12/Matthias-Ahrens-2.jpg")
![The top teams in the 4 x 6 k women's relay gather around the podium Thursday at the IBU World Cup in Annency, France. Germany won, Ukraine was second, Norway placed third, and Canada notched a historic fourth. (Photo: Biathlon Canada/Matthias Ahrens)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2013/12/Matthias-Ahrens.jpg")
![Canada's JP Le Guellec racing to 13th in Friday's 10 k sprint at the IBU World Cup in Hochfilzen, Austria.](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2013/12/JP-Le-Guellec.jpg")
![Canada's Brendan Green racing to 31st in Friday's 10 k sprint at the IBU World Cup in Hochfilzen, Austria. Green was one second away from making the top 30 and qualifying for Canada's 2014 Olympic team.](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2013/12/Brendan-Green.jpg")
![Canadian Zina Kocher chases Ekaterina Glazyrina of Russia out of the starting gate in Friday's IBU World Cup 7.5 k sprint in Hochfilzen, Austria. Kocher ended up 25th and Glazyrina was 51st.](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2013/12/Zina-Kocher-and-Ekaterina-Glazyrina.jpg")
![Megan Imrie (far right) at the podium ceremony for the women's 7.5 k sprint in Idre, Sweden. Imrie placed sixth in the IBU Cup openers. Photo courtesy of Imrie.](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2013/11/photo-2.jpg")
![Scott Perras (right) competing at 2013 World Championships; he topped Canadian trials rankings in Canmore this week.](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2013/02/perras-bailey1.jpg")
![Canadian biathlete Audrey Vaillancourt at the 2011 Biathlon World Juniors in Nove Mesto, Czech Republic. (Photo: Judy Geer)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2011/01/Audrey-Vaillancourt.jpg")
