Tag: Schalke

Crawford, Green Seventh at Bucket-List-Type Event: Biathlon auf Schalke
Russia’s Ekaterina Yurlova-Percht and Alexey Volkov (center, first place), Czech Republic’s Eva Puskarčíková and Ondřej Moravec (left, second place) and Austria’s Lisa-Theresa Hauser and Julian Eberhard (right, second place) on the podium of the 2017 JOKA Biathlon auf Schalke invitational race. (Photo: biathlon-aufschalke.de)

Picture some 45,000 rambunctious fans, loud music blaring, a course comprised of 10,000 cubic feet of machine-made snow, a shooting range surrounded by bulletproof glass, 1,300 fir trees as decorations, and 10 biathlon teams representing their nations, all packed into a huge stadium with a retractable roof that’s home to soccer team Schalke 04 in Gelsenkirchen, Germany. That’s the setting for the annual “Biathlon auf Schalke” two-person mixed relay show race, also known as the World Team Challenge.

Many international biathletes enjoy the event’s party atmosphere and use it as a fun way to keep their race shape sharp during the holiday break. The outdoor portion of the course meanders through a so-called “winter village” Christmas market, with the smell of food stands for the fans. Trees inside the domed arena form little forests to delineate the track and shooting range. There is entertainment like a “shoot-out” to determine the starting order, an unofficial “Snowball Fight World Championship”, fireworks, and multiple live pop-concert performances.

The 2017 edition took place this Thursday, Dec. 28, and this year marked the second time a Canadian relay was at the start, with Biathlon Canada represented by Rosanna Crawford and Brendan Green. Last year, Megan Tandy and Macx Davies teamed up for Canada in the mixed relay event.

Far away from the Alps in a flat region of the country previously known for its coal mining, “Biathlon auf Schalke”, while not an International Biathlon Union (IBU) sanctioned race, in its 16th season has become an annual fixture during the holiday break, bringing biathlon from the mountains to fans in the city. Each year, it has drawn a huge audiences, both in person and via television in Germany, as well as in a number of other countries where the event is also broadcast live.

“A few years ago Rosanna and I had talked about how fun it would be to race Schalke together, but it never quite fit in well with our schedule,” Green wrote in an email to FasterSkier. “This year the team stayed in Europe over Christmas and we were able to make it work.”

The World Team Challenge relay race is executed in a special format, with the main event split into two “halftimes” (as the organizers call it, borrowing a term from soccer) of a mass start race followed by a pursuit, held the same night after just a very short break.

In both races, one woman and one man form a team and exchange repeatedly, each skiing a short 1.3-kilometer loop and then having to clean a prone or standing shooting stage while not being allowed to use spare bullets — or else ski a shorter-than-normal 75-meter penalty lap — before tagging off to their teammate again. This mode of competition is comparable to the new single mixed relay format in biathlon or the team sprint in cross-country, though the pace might be even more frantic.

Rosanna Crawford at the start of the 2017 Biathlon auf Schalke invitational race. The Canadian relay team with her partner Brendan Green went on to finish seventh. (Screenshot: ARD broadcast)

“The course was tough, harder than it looked I think,” Crawford wrote. “This race is different to a single mixed relay, where you race for about 12min and then get 12min rest, this was race for about 4min and get 4min rest. Then there was only 15min in-between the two races, so it was quite difficult!”

“The pace you entered the range with skiing full gas on a shorter loop, with the added adrenaline from the crowd, I think for me was the most challenging aspect,” Green reflected in an email on Friday. “I just looked at my heart rate file and it peaked at 188 which is high for me. It never gets that high during a normal race format.”

With the women starting the “first half” pursuit race to a loud cannon boom, the event immediately began with a bit of a mishap for some teams, though Crawford got through it mostly unharmed.

“The first lap was pretty tricky, [Germany’s Franziska] Hildebrand changed lanes right on the very steepest climb and that caused me to ski into her, which then caused a pile up behind me,” Crawford wrote. “It’s a tricky course with not a lot of snow and not a lot of room to pass people, pretty much whoever leaves the range first will be leading the loop.”

Italy’s Karin Oberhofer, a 2014 Olympic medalist who just returned to international competition following a maternity leave, bore the brunt of that pileup — breaking her binding — and had to complete the rest of the loop on one ski.

Due to a number of penalties by both Crawford and Green early on, the Canadian pair initially fell back to the ninth position, before improving a little bit again when Green finally recorded his first clean shooting stage.

“The shooting atmosphere is different,” he wrote. “You don’t have to deal with certain variables such as wind [due to the closed arena], but instead have to deal with a lot of noise, bright lights, and other stimulus. It took a bit of getting used to.”

In the first years of “Biathlon auf Schalke”, the course was a rather flat loop, but in redesigns during the last few iterations the organizers added longer climbs and a fairly steep downhill section leading into a sharp right turn on the part of the track that is winding through the “winter village” outside the arena. It is supposed to now more closely resemble what athletes would see on the World Cup level.

Using artificial snow mostly coming from a permanent ski hall in a nearby city, every loop is 1.3 k long (adding up to more than 10 k throughout the event for each athlete) with about 25 meters of vertical elevation on a climb nicknamed the “Ruhrpott Glacier”, before the athletes enter the pitch inside the arena again via a tunnel, and then having to shoot in front of the 45,000 fans, often with additional music and the noise level amplified in a heated atmosphere.

Biathlon Canada’s Brendan Green shooting a clean stage with five legs to go in the pursuit mixed relay race during the 2017 Biathlon auf Schalke invitational event. Together with his partner Rosanna Crawford, the Canadian relay finished seventh. (Screenshot: ARD broadcast)

“The course was quite challenging but it skied well and had surprisingly good flow,” Green wrote. “I anticipated that it was going to be quite physically demanding, but was still surprised at how punishing the racing was on the body.”

While one athlete was out on the track, crews of service technicians hurried to clean and prepare the skis of the athlete who was resting briefly. Unlike in most biathlon formats, where the shooting range is a no-coaching zone during a race, teams were also allowed to receive instructions after each leg and during the short 15-minute intermission between the mass start and pursuit.

“It was great to have Matthias [Ahrens] there, so he would run over to us after each shooting and show us our shots,” Crawford wrote. “Andrzej Lesnik was our wax tech and he did a great job with the skis.”

“We received feedback for our shooting from Matthias, and during the break in-between the races Rosanna and I spoke quickly about our own observations,” Green added. “In the end I think it came down to being a bit more attentive in the range and staying as focused as possible despite what was going on around us.”

The Canadians completed the first part of the event in eighth place, 1:24.1 minutes behind Russia in first.

Green came into the finish just a second behind Germany’s Benedikt Doll, who formed a team with Nadine Horchler (in place of Laura Dahlmeier, after Dahlmeier had to withdraw from the event just the day before due to illness. Organizers had previously hyped up Dahlmeier’s participation, after she had just been voted the German “female athlete of the year” as the first biathlete since Magdalena Neuner).

Pursuit Final

For the “second half” pursuit, the gaps to first place were halved respectively capped at a maximum of 45 seconds, so even the teams that had completed the mass start at the back of the field should still have a realistic shot at the top positions.

The coaching hints and adaptations on the range seemed to help, as both Canadians began the pursuit with a series of clean shooting stages, steadily moving up in the field. After her penultimate leg, Crawford tagged off in fourth position.

“Both Brendan and I felt better in the second race,” Crawford wrote. “It was too bad we had so many shooting mistakes in the mass start, would have been good to start closer to the leaders for the pursuit race. But after getting out the jitters we were able to shoot much better.”

In close head-to-head shooting duels for the positions on or just behind the podium, both Green and Crawford missed two targets in the next stages, falling back a bit again.

At the end of the pursuit, Green was beaten by inches — or 0.4 seconds — in a finish sprint with Germany’s Erik Lesser (forming the second German team with Hildebrand) and Belgium’s Michael Rösch (starting as a replacement for Slovenia’s Jakov Fak in a mixed-nation team with Ukraine’s Yuliia Dzhima) to finish the race in seventh place, the second-best result for a North American team.

“The last loop was tough,” Green remembered. “I was able to close a small gap to Lesser and Roesch on the last lap which ended in a sprint finish. I kept waiting for an opportunity and thought something might have been possible once we entered back inside the arena towards the finish, but in the end there just wasn’t enough space and we had to settle for 7th.”

“For the finish loop Brendan did a great job closing the gap to Lesser and Roesch, but there is just no room to pass!” Crawford, who had observed the scene from the sideline after completing her last leg, wrote in her email. “6th or 5th would have been amazing, but we are happy to finish 7th!”

Russian Team in Control in Both Stages

Knowing that accuracy on the range was more important than ski speed on a fairly short and narrow course, the Russian team entered two very secure shooters into the event with 2015 individual-discipline world champion Ekaterina Yurlova-Percht and Alexey Volkov, a member of the men’s gold medal-winning relays at the 2014 Olympic Games and 2017 biathlon world championships. The duo incurred the fewest penalties of all teams, only missing four of 80 targets on their road to winning both the mass start race and the following pursuit.

“With Alexey Volkov as my partner I expect everything, and I knew that Alexey is really really fast on the shooting range, and it can bring us the really good result,” Yurlova-Percht said at a post-race press conference.

At the “halftime” the Russian duo in first seemed within reach of a few other teams that were only about ten seconds back, yet in the pursuit they steadily increased their lead. After he had hit his final shot to clean the last stage to secure the victory, the otherwise subdued Volkov celebrated by raising his fist and looking to the stands in a gesture reminiscent of France’s perennial World Cup leader Martin Fourcade. He then rounded the final loop at a relaxed pace before skiing into the arms of the equally excited Yurlova waiting for him at the finish line.

“Our team was working highly focused on the shooting range today, that surely was our big advantage,” their coach Ricco Groß — himself a past winner of the World Team Challenge for Germany in an earlier iteration — told broadcaster ARD in a TV interview right after the race had concluded, according to a translation. “They solved that really well, and accordingly also won in pretty convincing fashion. … The athletes really did a great job today, that should also push our whole team, giving us some momentum and self confidence for the tasks ahead in January and February. … The atmosphere in the stadium here is gigantic, it is just crazy and incredibly fun here.”

“I want to say thanks a lot to all spectators who visited this competition today,” Yurlova added in the press conference. “This was an amazing atmosphere, and perfect feelings of support. I am really happy that all spectators were supporting not just their teams, but they were supporting everybody. And also when me and Alexey were shooting everybody was supporting us the same like the German teams.”

Both athletes had previously raced at Schalke, with Yurlova winning in 2012 with partner Anton Shipulin and placing fourth in 2015 with partner Evgeniy Garanichev as her best results, and Volvok placing third a year ago with Olga Podchufarova.

“I already thought before the start that we could win,” Volkov said, via a translator. “I have to say the course was very good, not at all flat, and if you take some risk going into the downhill anything can happen. … Today before the start I was trying to find an empty seat in the stands before the start, and I couldn’t see any. This is not just about motivation, this is a celebration [of biathlon]; you just have to be there.”

Looking over to the German team sitting next to him as the local representatives, Volkov added. “I am sure Erik [Lesser] shot faster than me today, but you know how statistics are, sometimes it’s better to shoot two seconds slower and hit everything.”

With nearly as solid shooting performances as the Russian team, the Czech Republic represented by Eva Puskarčíková and Ondřej Moravec stood in second after the mass start, behind Yurlova and Volkov (+9.2 seconds), then held that position in the following pursuit (+24.0).

Austria with Lisa-Theresa Hauser and Julian Eberhard (replacing Simon Eder on short notice) finished the World Team Challenge in third place (+43.5).

After the mass start they had been in fourth position (+10.3) just behind the Czechs and the French team of Anaïs Bescond and Emilien Jacquelin in third (+9.7). In the pursuit race Eberhard secured the position on the podium in the final shooting stage when he hit all targets standing on the range in a duel against Germany’s Lesser and France’s Jacquelin, who incurred more penalties. France finished fourth (+58.4), also slightly hampered by a fall and broken pole for Bescond during the race.

Crawford and Green were the sixth North American team to be invited to the “Biathlon auf Schalke” race and the second Canadian one. In 2008 and 2009, Lanny Barnes and Jay Hakkinen represented the US (placing ninth and sixth for the best finish by a North American team to date), in 2010 Tracy Barnes-Coliander and Tim Burke (10^th), in 2012 Susan Dunklee again with Tim Burke (10^th), and in 2016 Megan Tandy with Macx Davies for Canada (10th).

“Brendan and I really loved competing in Schalke!” Crawford summarized their experience. “It was like nothing we’d ever done before! There have been big crowds at World Cups and World Champs, like Nove Mesto and Oslo … but this was so different with having 45 000 people all packed into a soccer stadium! … I am really glad Brendan and I got to compete in this race once in our careers!”

While the International Biathlon Union (IBU) has adopted the mixed and single mixed relay formats in the last years as new disciplines to make the sport more attractive, “Biathlon auf Schalke” is an invitation-only race not promoted or hosted by the IBU, so there were no World Cup points to win in the event. However about €156,000 ($185,000 U.S. dollars) in prize money was awarded.

The regular IBU World Cup will resume on Thursday, Jan 4, in Oberhof, Germany, with a women’s sprint race.

Results:
1. Yurlova-Percht / Volkov (RUS)
2. Puskarcikova / Moravec (CZE) + 24.0
3. Hauser / Eberhard (AUT) + 43.5
4. Bescond / Jacquelin (FRA) + 58.4
5. Dzhima / Roesch (UKR/BEL) + 1:13.3
6. Hildebrand / Lesser (GER) + 1:13.5
7. Crawford / Green (CAN) + 1:13.7
8. Horchler / Doll (GER) + 1:34.1
9. Oberhofer / Windisch (ITA) + 2:00.4
10. Tachizaki / Tachizaki (JPN) + 2:08.4
December 30, 2017
Germany Wins at Home in Soccer Arena; Canada Debuts at Schalke
Canada’s Macx Davies celebrates as he is cheered on by 42,000 fans during the final lap of the 2016 Biathlon auf Schalke invitational race. The Canadian relay team, with his partner Megan Tandy, finished 10th. (Photo: Biathlon-aufschalke.de)

A biathlon relay with athletes skiing around and through a huge soccer arena in a city with no snow seems like a crazy idea.

But in the 1990s, the German cross-country skier and biathlete Herbert Fritzenwenger, who had retired from active sports after competing in the 1988 Calgary Olympic Games, believed there had to be some way to make biathlon even more attractive for viewers. He wanted to mix sports and entertainment bringing the sport out of the forest and closer to the people, the way city sprints are now doing it for cross-country. He also believed a discipline where women and men compete together would be more interesting to watch.

Thus the World Team Challenge was born, a two-person mixed relay invitational, with each team representing a country. In 2002, Frizenwenger took the next step to bring that race to an even higher level of awareness. Together with the then-manager of first-league soccer team Schalke 04, he moved the event to the team’s newly constructed Veltins Arena in Gelsenkirchen, Germany. Only problem: The arena, which features a retractable roof, is located in a flat region of the country far away from any mountain range with predictable snowfall. But using manmade snow from a nearby ski hall to create a course just for this race every year the concept instantly worked, and has drawn some of the biggest crowds for any biathlon event in the world ever since.

Now in its 15th year, the “Biathlon auf Schalke” race has become a Christmas holiday break tradition on TV in Germany, also broadcast live in several other countries. Many biathletes love the event for its atmosphere in front of 42,000 raucous fans in the arena, and as an interesting way to keep the race shape sharp during the break.

This year’s edition took place on Wednesday evening, and it was the first time a Canadian relay was at the start, with Megan Tandy and Macx Davies teaming up to represent Canada in a show event that combines a mass start with a pursuit after a short “halftime” intermission.

In both races, the Canadian pair quickly incurred a number of penalty laps (unlike in other relays the athletes are not allowed to use spares in the fast-paced competition) and slipped to the back of the field of 10 teams, tagging off to the partner after each shooting stage to chase once more over the 1.3-kilometer course around the arena.

But Davies finished the event to huge cheers, with the audience elated by a victory of the home teams seemingly not wanting the show to be over yet, and screaming until he had crossed the line.

“The atmosphere was GREAT!!!” Davies wrote in an email to FasterSkier. “Very loud and very fun crowd. They even cheered most of our shootings! (When we were the only ones in the range.) It was amazing to ski through the tunnel the last time to such a big ROAR from the stadium.”

The arena was rocking particularly loudly as Germany’s fan-favorite Simon Schempp entered the finishing stretch for his first victory at Schalke with his partner Vanessa Hinz, crossing the line in a time of 33:11.4 minutes (with four penalties).

Originally, the German coaches hadn’t selected Hinz to compete at Schalke, but she replaced her sick teammate, Franziska Preuss, to team up with Schempp. Last year, Hinz and Schempp had placed third in the World Team Challenge, with Hinz also subbing in at the last moment. This year, it was their time on the top of the podium.

“Yeah, this is pretty crazy,” Schempp told German TV broadcaster ZDF after the race, in an interview that was heard throughout the arena. “That must be how soccer players feel every week. The atmosphere is gigantic. This is much more extreme than in a biathlon arena because there is a roof. I don’t know how many exactly, but I believe 40,000 people are here and it’s just crazy fun. [Cheers in the arena] You can hear it, craziness.”

The announcer asked Hinz how she stayed so calm in front of her home crowd on the shooting range.

“That’s what we do all year, but in front of such an audience your knees get weak,” she said. “It’s just brutal. We just want to say many thanks, because to experience something like this is unique.”

The audience in the arena was happy to hear that, erupting in huge cheers again. Germany last won the event in 2013 with Laura Dahlmeier and Florian Graf. Dahlmeier, the current women’s overall IBU World Cup leader, took a break this year, as did the defending World Team Challenge champions Marie Dorin Habert and Martin Fourcade of France.

The 2016 Biathlon auf Schalke podium on Wednesday night, with (from left to right) Germany’s Erik Lesser and Franziska Hildebrand (second place), Germany’s Simon Schempp and Vanessa Hinz (first place), and Russia’s Olga Podchufarova and Alexey Volkov (third place). (Photo: Biathlon-aufschalke.de)

Despite usually entering multiple teams at Schalke, Germany had not been able to claim first and second on the podium — until this year, which sent the arena into frenzy.

For Germany’s second team, Franziska Hildebrand teamed up with Erik Lesser for the second-straight year after the duo finished seventh in 2015. They came close to the overall victory this time, winning the mass start by 15 seconds ahead of Hinz and Schempp, and later staying in their vicinity throughout the pursuit. But Lesser missed his final standing shot when he still had a small chance to catch up to Schempp in first.

“Of course [the atmosphere] is pushing me,” Hildebrand had told ZDF at halftime, after the mass start. “It’s such an incredible audience. It’s so beautiful when you come into the arena as a German athlete and experience such a loud support. That is always a total buzz, a breathtaking moment.”

On the first loop of the pursuit Lesser broke his pole after stepping on it, and did not receive a replacement until after the exchange to Hildebrand.

“For the shooting I don’t need a pole, and afterwards that half-a-second I lost I can deal with that, before someone runs over and probably breaks his foot,” he told ZDF after the race, causing a big laughter in the arena. “Such a great atmosphere. The spectators are really picking it up. And that’s why I am here.”

At times more than a minute ahead of the field, the German teams made the race relatively close again with two laps to go, when standing next to each other both Hinz and Hildebrand shot two penalties despite their otherwise almost-flawless shooting performances.

The third place on the podium went to Russia’s Olga Podchufarova and Alexey Volkov (who won gold with the men’s relay at the 2014 Olympics), narrowly edging out France’s Anaïs Bescond and Jean-Guillaume Béatrix (+42.6), Austria’s Julia Schwaiger and Simon Eder (+43.0) and Norway’s husband-and-wife team of Fanny Horn Birkeland and Lars Helge Birkeland (+43.3) on the final loop and finishing sprint.

Long Day on a Challenging Course

Originally, Tandy — who trains and lives in Germany for part of the year — had planned on racing with Biathlon Canada teammate Nathan Smith, but Smith returned to Canada after struggling in the initial World Cup races of the season with unclear symptoms, which he has since been trying to resolve.

“After Nathan went home I was talking with Megan and [coach] Matthias Ahrens about if it would be possible to race,” Davies explained. “Because I have been watching this race for a long time now and always thought it would be an awesome event to compete at, which it is! So I changed my plans so we could start an all-Canadian team and I am very happy to have raced the World Team Challenge!”

View of the indoor section of the ski track and the shooting range inside the domed Veltins Arena during the 2016 Biathlon auf Schalke invitational. (Photo: Biathlon-aufSchalke.de)

Even more so than a regular IBU World Cup, the race is held in a huge party atmosphere, with athletes skiing through a winter village park with food stands and sponsor exhibition tents lining the artificial snow track around the huge soccer arena, before entering the pitch inside the arena again via a darkened tunnel with light effects. And then having to shoot in front of the 42,000 fans, frequently with loud music blaring, and the noise level amplified indoors many times.

The World Team Challenge relay race is also executed in a special format, with one woman and one man forming a team and exchanging repeatedly, each skiing a loop of about 1.3 k and having to clean a shooting stage — or ski a shorter-than-usual 75-meter penalty lap — before tagging off to their teammate again. While one athlete was out on the track, crews of wax technicians hurried to clean and prepare the skis of the athlete who was receiving a short break. This mode of competition is fairly similar to the new single mixed relay in biathlon or the team sprint in cross-country.

It was a long race day for the athletes, with a “shootout” followed by the main event split into two “halftimes,” as the organizers called it, borrowing the terms from soccer. At first a nine-loop mass start (the women skied four loops, the men five including the final loop) on the 1.3 k course, followed by a pursuit race of that same length after just a short intermission. Thus the women had to ski about 10 k in total, while the men had to ski 13 k.

The gaps to the best team in the mass start were halved respectively, capped at a maximum of 45 seconds for the pursuit, so even the teams at the back of the field like Canada could still have a realistic shot at the podium.

Prone and standing stages interchanged with each partner shooting twice in prone and twice in standing per race, and because the loops were comparatively short and intense, like a sprint, shooting accuracy was at least as important as in regular World Cup races.

“I really like the format of this race, and think maybe it should replace the Single Mixed relay,” Davies explained in his email. “But maybe only race once, doing both was very challenging. But it is a fun event nonetheless!”

In the first few years of the Biathlon auf Schalke event, the course was a relatively flat loop, but after a redesign last year added longer climbs and a downhill section on the part of the track that meanders through the park outside the arena, it is supposed to more closely resemble what athletes would see “on the World Cup level,” as the organizers announced in a presentation before the race.

Using artificial snow mostly coming from a ski hall in the nearby city of Neuss, every loop is now 1,300 meters long, featuring 30 meters of vertical climb nicknamed the “Ruhrpott Glacier”, which added up to about 300 meters for the men and 240 for the women for the whole race day.

“It’s really not just a show race,” Schempp told broadcaster ZDF. “The legs are really burning very much. Because you have those short individual loops, but that just makes it even worse because you just ski that kilometer even faster than at normal competition speed. And because of that it is really challenging, but still is a lot of fun.”

“The course is really good for what they have,” Davies wrote in his email. ”The stadium is exciting with all the corners and I think the track is decently difficult, though below World Cup level. I think they did a better job on the downhill corner this year, because it was easier to ski, the athletes don’t like to see crashes.”

The athletes had fewer problems with that downhill section leading into a sharp-right hairpin turn than during the prior year when that was introduced, but the Czech Republic’s defending World Cup winner Gabriela Koukalová fell this year, grimacing and rubbing her thigh as she got back up. She finished seventh with her partner, Michal Šlesingr, after placing second with Ondrej Moravec in 2015.

“We just saw [a replay of] Gabriela slipping out there,” Hildebrand told ZDF when questioned about her more conservative downhill snowplow technique. “I wanted to avoid that at all costs, so I chose the safety version.”

After some years where the organizers experimented with rifles using a laser-aiming system, the athletes now use their own rifles with real ammunition on the 10-position range again, with bulletproof glass walls and an empty section behind it to protect the audience.

The difficulty of the course was once again evident during the races. Despite the indoor shooting range with almost no wind influence, many athletes who are known as good shooters incurred more misses and thus had to skate more penalty loops than they normally would in a World Cup.

“The shooting range was good, no wind, which is nice, but you are skiing very hard into the range and must shoot fast and accurately to stay with the leaders,” Davies commented.

2016 World Team Challenge Results
1. Germany I (Vanessa Hinz/Simon Schemp) 33:11.4
2. Germany II (Franziska Hildebrand/Erik Lesser), +16.7
3. Russia (Olga Podchufarova/Alexey Volkov), +40.2
4. France (Anaïs Bescond/Jean-Guillaume Béatrix), +42.6
5. Austria (Julia Schwaiger/Simon Eder), +43.0
6. Norway (Fanny Horn Birkeland/Lars Helge Birkeland), +43.3
7. Czech Republic (Gabriela Koukalová/Michal Šlesingr), +57.6
8. Italy (Dorothea Wierer/Dominik Windisch), +1:06.1
9. Ukraine (Olena Pidhrushna/Serhiy Semenov), +1:20.0
10. Canada (Megan Tandy/Macx Davies), +2:32.0
Canada’s Megan Tandy at the start of the pursuit race during the 2016 Biathlon auf Schalke invitational event. (Photo: ZDF broadcast)

Tandy and Davies became the fifth North American team to be invited to the Biathlon auf Schalke event, and the first Canadian one. In 2008 and 2009, Lanny Barnes and Jay Hakkinen represented the U.S., placing ninth and sixth for the best finish by a North American team to-date. In 2010, Tracy Barnes-Coliander and Tim Burke finished 10th, and in 2012, Susan Dunklee teamed up with Burke for 10th.

“What a fun event last night,” Davies summed up his experience on his Facebook page. “I am very thankful to have been able to compete in the Biathlon World Team Challenge and I hope to be invited back to show you how good Canada can be! (Unfortunately we didn’t do very well this time…) Till next year.”

“I second everything Macx wrote ☺ ☺ ☺,” Tandy commented on his status.

Pre-Race Events with a Farewell to a Former World Champion

Before the two main races of the evening, Russia’s Volkov won a “shootout” event among all participating women and men, narrowly edging out Austria’s Eder, who is known for his fast shooting performances on the World Cup circuit, with Germany’s Hildebrand finishing third and Schempp fourth. Tandy and Davies had not qualified for the final of that event.

In this competition the athletes — while not wearing skis — were required to run up to the shooting mats and hit 20 targets as fast as possible (5 prone, 5 standing, 5 prone, 5 standing), using as many spare rounds as necessary.

The organizers also used the shootout event as a farewell to Germany’s national team member Daniel Böhm, men’s relay gold medal winner at the 2015 World Championships in Kontiolahti, Finland, and silver medalist in the relay at the 2014 Olympics in Sochi, who announced his retirement from biathlon earlier this month. He qualified for the final round of the shootout, where he finished fifth. Böhm plans to begin a training program to become a helicopter pilot with the German federal police.

“In the shootout I was a little bit shaky,” Böhm told ZDF. “It is something very special to compete here at Schalke. And I think there is nobody who can completely tune this out. It’s crazy what the fans are doing here, and great that I am allowed to say goodbye on this stage. That is a special honor, and now I can enjoy it looking on from the outside.”

While the IBU has adopted the mixed and single mixed relay formats in the last years as attractive new disciplines, Biathlon auf Schalke is an invitation-only race not hosted by the IBU, so there were no World Cup points to win in the event. However about €168,000 ($175,000 dollars) in prize money were awarded.

The IBU World Cup will resume next week Jan. 5-8 in Oberhof, Germany, with sprint races, pursuits and mass starts.

Canada Biathlon’s Megan Tandy (in black) greets her relay partner Macx Davies in the tech service area after the mass start race during the 2016 Biathlon auf Schalke invitational event. (Photo: ZDF broadcast)
December 29, 2016
Semerenko, Semenov Top Annual German Stadium Biathlon Event — Now with More Snowball Fights!

Fireworks are set off at the Biathlon World Team Challenge in Gelsenkirchen, Germany. Photo: Karsten Rabas/www.biathlon-aufschalke.de.

There was plenty of hype going into Saturday’s Biathlon World Team Challenge, a two-person relay event held in the Veltins Arena stadium of the Schalke 04 soccer team in Gelsenkirchen, Germany.

A mostly-annual event since 2002, the races feature many of the World Cup’s top biathletes in competing in relay-style mass starts and pursuits. And for the first time, Martin Fourcade of France, the reigning World Cup Champion, multiple medalist at the Olympics in February, and commonly deemed the best biathlete in the world, was participating.

But biathlon in a soccer arena is not the same as biathlon on real ski trails, and Fourcade didn’t make much of a splash. He and French teammate Anais Chevalier – whom Fourcade had specifically picked for the event – finished eighth in the mass start and fifth in the final pursuit.

Fourcade was still impressed with the whole shebang, though. “What a great experience in @BiathlonWTC!!!” he tweeted after all was said and done.

Serhiy Sememov of Ukraine leads Erik Lesser of Germany in the World Team Challenge. Photo: Karsten Rabas/www.biathlon-aufschalke.de.

What’s crazier about the event: is it the biathlon, or the race, surroundings, and spectators themselves? We look at each. And if you want a true taste of the event, check out the broadcast by Germany’s ZDF, which has been posted on YouTube.

Ukraine On Top

In each race, the women started by skiing a small loop, which took around three minutes, then shot prone. They skied any penalty loops they might have accrued, then tagged off to the male member of the team, who skied and then shot prone. This continued for eight shooting stages in total: women prone, men prone, women standing, men standing, and then all over again. The men got the honor of racing the final loop to the finish line.

(The format has since been adopted for the World Cup as the “super sprint mixed relay” and will see its debut in Nove Mesto, Czech Republic, this year.)

Germany’s Franziska Hildebrand excelled both on the range and on skis.

Fourcade and Chevalier were beset by shooting woes, and with such short loops of skiing, Fourcade was unable to make up ground on the trails as he can in World Cup racing. Two other pairs were similarly unlucky: Switzerland’s Elisa Gasparin and Benjamin Weger never figured into either race, and Norway’s Fanny Welle-Strand Horn and Lars Helge Birkeland were never close to the front.

It wasn’t just the short loops that kept strong skiers from strutting their stuff. The entire format is an anomaly for those used to racing difficult World Cup courses with natural terrain. For instance, consider the range approach: the final loop of skiing around the stadium before the ten-lane range (facing a section of the stadium which was blocked off to spectators – no problem, as well over 40,000 people still got to watch live) culmintated in a man-made bridge requiring a few quick and hard V1 strides and then a fast downhill, sharp corner, and the shooting range.

Skiing could still win out over shooting, though. Italy’s Dorothea Wierer and Lukas Hofer won the mass start competition despite having five penalties to the four by runners-up Laura Dahlmeier and Florian Graf of Germany.

Yes Valj, you’re going to win!

Another German team, Franziska Hildebrand and Erik Lesser, were leading until Lesser – whose shooting speed was unparalleled throughout the day – missed three shots in the final stage and lost the win.

Less than an hour later, the ten teams regrouped and raced again. The format was the same, except it was an interval start based on the finish from the sprint. It would seem that winning the mass start would be a huge advantage – but Wierer and Hofer had a disastrous race, unable to replicate their efforts from earlier in the evening. With nine penalties combined, they finished second to last.

Instead, Valj Semerenko and Serhiy Semenov of Ukraine climbed steadily through the field from their fifth-place starting position to finish on top by seven seconds. They had just four penalties in the second competition.

The podium from the final pursuit competition in Veltins Stadium. Photo: Karsten Rabas/www.biathlon-aufschalke.de.

Hildebrand and Lesser matched that tally and finished second, while Russia’s Yana Romanova and Evgeniy Garanichev had the same tally and climbed from seventh into third – not only thanks to the good shooting, but to an aggressive final loop by Garanichev where he not only pulled off a pass of the Czech Republic’s Evgeniy Garanichev, but then put four seconds on him in the final few hundred meters.

The Scenery and Sideshows

Here’s another thing that World Cup racing doesn’t usually feature: institutionalized snowball fights. The event is also the host of the 2014 World Snowball Fight Championships, where teams of three have two three-minute periods to try to annihilate the competition. Helmets and goggles were required.

Also on the docket? A huge display of indoor and outdoor fireworks.

The soccer stadium was filled completely with snow, and trails delineated with large plantings of Christmas trees in the middle to make route easier to follow from the stands. Of course, many a ski race has seen lanes marked with evergreen twigs – but organizers at Schalke take that to a whole new level, creating fake forests of perfectly-spaced trees between the looping ski trails.

The podium from the snowball fight. Photo: Karsten Rabas/www.biathlon-aufschalke.de.

The luckiest spectators were not in the stands but got to watch trailside, on the snow level of the arena. A few of central Europe’s ubiquitous wooden huts were built to serve hot mulled wine.

Between loops, each team’s technicians furiously applied and brushed out layer after layer of fresh fluoros to the skis before athletes grabbed them and ran back to the exchange zone. In the center of the stadium, ski service was as much on display as the skiing.

And finally, a few snafus happened in the race that would rarely be seen on the World Cup: for instance when, at one of the many transitions, Norway’s Fanny Welle-Strand Horn forgot to bring her rifle.

“It was so hectic between stages,” she told Norway’s NRK news broadcaster. “It did not dawn on me until I see Lars Helge come into the exchange. I saw that people were beginning to point towards my back, and suddenly I realized I did not have a gun on my back. Then you get a little panicked.”

December 28, 2014
In Packed Soccer Stadium in Germany, Biathletes Put on a Show; Burke and Dunklee Tenth At Schalke

Anton Shipulin and Ekaterina Yurlova of Russia, center, celebrate after their victory in the pursuit relay at the World Team Challenge on Sunday. They bested Martin Fourcade and Marie Dorin Habert of France (left) and Fanny Welle-Strand Horn and Lars Helge Birkeland of Norway (right). Photo: Biathlon auf Schalke / K. Rabas.

Who would think of holding a biathlon race inside a soccer stadium with 50,000 fans?

Who would think of dropping retired German star Magdalena Neuner into the stadium on a trapeze, while the theme from the James Bond film “Skyfall” blared in the background?

Who would think of asking elite biathletes to do three competitions in a single day?

The answer to all of these questions is the organizers of the RheinPower World Team Challenge 2012, an event that has been held at the Veltins Arena in Gelsenkirchen, Germany, for the last ten years. Usually the home of the FC Schalke 04 football club, the arena was outfitted with plenty of snow, a bridge, a tunnel, and a shooting range backed by bulletproof glass so more spectators could be crammed in to watch.

“[I’ve] never seen anything like it,” U.S. biathlete Susan Dunklee told FasterSkier after completing her first World Team Challenge on Saturday. “Very loud, but dark in the stands so it was easy to zone the crowd out. It became one roaring creature rather than thousands of individuals.”

And the day wasn’t just about biathlon; there was also a celebrity shooting competition (won by Alexandra Popp, the striker of the German football team) and plenty of other entertainment.

Magdalena Neuner making a dramatic entrance to the arena. Photo: Biathlon auf Schalke / K. Rabas.

But biathlon was the centerpiece, including a farewell to Neuner, who retired at the end of last season as the second-winningest woman in the history of the sport. After her special entrance, she highlighted a women’s-only race – which was actually won by Dorothea Wierer of Italy by three seconds over Neuner, with each accumulating three penalties. Wierer meant to wait at the finish and let Neuner cross before her, but ended up slipping across the line first anyway.

There was also a tribute to Michael Greis, another German star who announced his retirement after the first few competitions of this World Cup season. With 11 World Cup wins, he was ninth on the all-time list.

The main competitions consisted of teams of two athletes, generally from the same country although Carl Johan Bergman of Sweden and Kaisa Makarainen of Finland joined forces again after winning a previous edition of the World Team Challenge.

First, they competed in a “shoot-out,” to see who could clean four stages in a row, prone-standing-prone-standing, the fastest. Spare rounds are allowed to hit targets that were originally left standing. There was no skiing involved and results haven’t been published online, but Dunklee reported that she and teammate Tim Burke each finished in the middle of the pack.

“The shootout didn’t really count for anything, it was just something they have for the show and for fun,” Dunklee wrote in an e-mail. “It is very similar to a drill we do in the summer called the ‘American Test.’ We do it a little differently in practice; we don’t use spares and if you miss more than three you are DQ’ed. During the competition, I did get a little shaky and over excited trying to load the spares, which is great practice for relays.”

The scene during the biathlon shootout, with some of the 50,000 fans filling the stands around the shooting range. Photo courtesy of Susan Dunklee.

After a little break the teams faced a mass start competition unlike anything they will ever see on the World Cup. Much like a cross country sprint relay, each member of the team skied a loop and shot before tagging off to their teammate. But the men and women each did four laps of the 1200 meter track, which wound outside of the stadium after exiting via a tunnel, as well as penalty loops if they missed shots.

In the mass start, the women started on the range, as well, so had an extra prone stage. That made a total of 45 targets for each team in the race – hence the higher-than-usual penalty counts that would seem staggering on the World Cup.

The French team of Marie Dorin Habert and Martin Fourcade won the mass start by 1.6 seconds over Vita Semerenko and Sergey Sednev of Ukraine. Fanny Well-Strand Horn and Lars Helge Birkeland of Norway were third. Dunklee and Burke were ninth out of ten teams. (Field size was limited by the ten-point range that could fit inside the arena.)

Just an hour and a half later, the teams lined up again, this time for a pursuit based on the results of the mass start. 40 more shots, and a lot more small loops awaited them.

“I have never done a biathlon race with quite so much lactic acid in my system,” Dunklee wrote. “It was a lot like a xc sprint relay.”

The French held onto the lead for most of the race, but at the end were passed by Ekaterina Yurlova and Anton Shipulin of Russia, who took the overall crown. The Norwegians were third again, followed by Andrea Henkel and Andi Birnbacher of Germany; the Americans slipped to tenth.

That was despite near-perfect shooting by Burke, said Dunklee.

Tim Burke and Susan Dunklee in the Schalke stadium. Photo courtesy of Susan Dunklee.

“Tim shot awesome (4 misses total between the two races),” she explained. “I struggled with one disaster stage of four misses during each of the races. But I felt good that majority of my stages were 0’s or 1’s despite the head to head pressure, the jetlag, and hearing my name over the loudspeaker.”

Unlike Burke, who has competed at Schalke before, Dunklee was a newbie to the strange formats, 1200 meter loop, 100-meter long tunnel leading to the outdoor portion of the course, and all the rest.

While both suffered from jetlag, Dunklee had a particularly tough transition to German time: she had been scheduled to fly out two days before the race, but her flight was canceled due to the winter storm that pummeled the east. As such she arrived at 7 a.m. and left to race at 3 p.m., with just a few hours to relax and adjust in between.

“As soon as I entered the arena, adrenaline kicked in and woke me up,” Dunklee wrote.

All in all, the experience was unique, she said, but not completely irrelevant to regular World Cup racing.

“My goal was to enjoy the experience and treat it was a learning and training opportunity,” she wrote. “The crowds are huge and the head to head pressure on the range defines this event. The more I can expose myself to things like this, the more prepared I will be for the World Cup. Dealing with pressure on the range is something you must learn by doing… My shooting groups crept higher and higher as my system became more stressed and I started overheating. That created another great opportunity to understand myself better as a shooter – my race groups of shots may differ from my zero.”

Dunklee shared a video touring the Schalke course, which can be seen at the link on YouTube.

The IBU World Cup resumes in Oberhof, Germany, on Thursday with a women’s relay. A men’s relay follows on Friday and then sprint and pursuit competitions will be held over the weekend.

Magdalena Neuner was hoisted onto her teammates’ shoulders after placing second in the women’s race behind Dorothea Wierer of Italy (blue tights, number six). Biathlon auf Schalke / K. Rabas.

December 29, 2012