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From the FasterSkier archive — posts syndicated from athletes’ and coaches’ own blogs between 2004 and 2012, kept online as published. Current coverage is at fasterskier.com.

Tag: U26 Championships

Nordgren 16th in Final Senior Race at Under-26 Championships, Two More Americans Top-30

Leif Nordgren anchoring the U.S. World Cup relay in Antholz, Italy last weekend. Photo: NordicFocus/USBA.

Tuesday’s individual races in Osrblie, Slovakia, left the U.S. team at Under-26 Open European Championships one chance to grab the results they’d been hoping for all week.

So could they do it?

“The individual was another decent race, but not what I wanted,” Russell Currier told FasterSkier in an e-mail. “I’m a little disappointed, but there’s still plenty of room for hope left in the season.”

Currier finished 21^st in the 20 k, four-stage race, his best result of the week. But he was still left wanting more. It’s his third time competing at the European Championships, and Currier had set big goals for himself: a top-six finish.

Given that a few weeks ago he placed that high on the World Cup race, it didn’t seem like an unattainable goal. But Currier said that his plan had actually come before his breakthrough race in Nove Mesto, Czech Republic, and that he hadn’t changed his attitude much since notching that top-ten.

“My expectations were never any different after the World Cup in Nove Mesto,” he said. “That was just one very good race for me. The goal was a top six for [U26’s] this year. I didn’t make that goal, but I never had a melt down race either.”

That attitude could pretty much sum up how the American team felt about their last day of senior competition (junior Casey Smith still has his individual race yet to come, on Wednesday). Even Leif Nordgren, who finished 16^th in the individual, wasn’t thrilled.

“The race went okay this morning, to be honest I was a little disappointed with that result,” he told FasterSkier. “Skiing wasn’t great today, and I had about one miss too many.”

The top two finishers in the men’s race, Daniel Bohm of Germany and Artem Pryma of Ukraine, hit all twenty targets on Tuesday, a definite plus given that the format penalizes each missed shot with a minute of added time rather than a short penalty loop as in the other formats. Nordgren and Currier missed three and four shots, respectively. The consensus was that it wasn’t terrible shooting, but it wasn’t great either.

In Currier’s case, he saw a four-penalty day as consistent with the improved, but still not stellar, shooting he has displayed in the last few weeks of European racing.

“Overall my shooting this week was still a step in the right direction,” he said. “Unfortunately the level on the range was just too high this year. I need to keep upping the percentages and bring down [my] range times significantly.”

But despite not meeting their goals, both men did find things to be positive about in Osrblie.

“Ski speed is just fine and the good shape doesn’t seem to be going anywhere bad anytime soon,” said Currier, who had the third-fastest course time today.

And for Nordgren, the gradual progression in results – 45^th in the sprint, 21^st in the pursuit, and 16^th in the individual – might be a sign that he is finally coming out of a sickness-induced slump.

“I feel a lot more confident now than I did coming into these races, especially in my shooting,” he said. “There’s still a little ways to go until I’m back on track, but I’m confident I can get there with no problem. Now it’s just to be patient and stay healthy!”

The third American, Mark Johnson, did not start on Tuesday.

Dreissigacker (in green) in a trials race in December. Photo: Roy Kjorlien.

In the women’s 15 k individual, Hannah Dreissigacker cracked the top 30 for the first time in her second trip to these championships, placing 26^th with four penalties. Her time put her six and a half minutes behind winner Anastasia Zagoruiko of Russia, who missed a single shot and won by almost a minute.

Like the men, Dreissigacker saw positives in her performance along with a few disappointments. Her main frustration was with her skiing. While she said that she “could go hard,” it didn’t get her as far as she’d hoped – a strong skier on the U.S. circuit, she was aiming for more than the 25^th-fastest ski time she produced on Tuesday.

“I would have liked to have had a faster ski time today, but I know that I went hard,” she wrote in an e-mail. “The big hills definitely were getting to my legs.”

Still, Dreissigacker was pleased with her performance on the range, especially given some disastrous shooting days in NorAm races this year.

“Shooting is funny- it just has ups and downs,” she said. “And there’s a lot of factors that affect it, like confidence, so the ups and downs can be self-perpetuating too. In the ten or so days that I’ve been here, I’ve had basically my longest stretch of consecutive days shooting in the last year. It’s amazing how that helps.”

In a sense, Dreissigacker felt like she was just getting started in the last race of the series.

“With each of these races, I felt myself getting more confident with my ability to hit targets,” she wrote. “That’s a good feeling!”

The occasional biathlete, occasional skier said that the trip had provided some motivation to work on shooting more consistently when she heads back to the U.S.

“It does make me want to do more biathlon,” Dreissigacker said.

Teammate Laura Spector had more trouble on the range, in an unusual reversal of their usual positions. Spector missed seven shots and placed 36^th.

Results: men / women

January 31, 2012
Nordgren Leads U.S. Charge in Slovakia, Climbing from 45th to 21st in U26 Pursuit

Leif Nordgren racing in a World Cup race in Hochfilzen, Austria earlier this season. Photo: NordicFocus/USBA.

After a successful but unspectacular start to the Under-26 Open European Championships in Osrblie, Slovakia, the American team kicked things up a notch in their second outing. In Sunday’s pursuit, not a single one of the six U.S. starters lost a place from their sprint ranking, and one – Leif Nordgren – rocketed up 24 places over 12.5 kilometers and four shooting stages.

“It was nice to finally have a good race,” said Nordgren, the youngest member of the men’s national team.

The Minnesotan’s career took an upward swing last year when he scored World Cup points for the first time and was then the top performer at senior World Championships, placing 17^th in the mass start, collecting two more top-30 finishes and anchoring the U.S. relay team to sixth place.

This year, he has been unable to recapture that success. One reason, he told FasterSkier, was that he’s gotten sick over and over.

“I’ve struggled a lot with sickness this season,” he wrote in an e-mail. “This [weekend] I almost decided not to start because I was sick… and since I’ve only done one or two races in the last three weeks because of sickness I wasn’t really sure what to expect on the skis.”

Saturday’s sprint race brought another frustrating result. Nordgren placed 45^th and said he was “hurting pretty bad.”

But on Sunday, things picked up on the trails. Nordgren notched the 20^th-fastest ski time in a race that included World Cup regulars and even a few podium finishers.

“I’m still nowhere near where I expect myself to be, but hopefully I can stay healthy from here on out and my form will keep going up,” Nordgren said.

Between his faster skiing and his strong shooting – in a race where only Jan Olav Gjermundshaug of Norway and Tomas Hasilla of Slovakia cleaned, Norgren’s two penalties were a good showing – the American gradually climbed out of Saturday’s hole.

After the first prone stage, he’d made it to 36^th. After the second, 29^th. Then 23^rd. By the finish, he sat in 21^st place, having lost only 35 additional seconds on Alexey Volkov of Russia, who won both the sprint and the pursuit and skied one less penalty lap than Nordgren to boot.

The American wasn’t surprised that his pursuit performance was better than the opening race of the series.

“The pursuit is one of my favorite races,” Nordgren explained. “For some reason I do a lot better in the head-to-head races. I just focused on my own shooting today, and it worked out. I had a lot of confidence coming into this race which helped a lot.”

As for the move from 70 % shooting on Saturday to 90 % shooting on Sunday, however, he was flummoxed.

“This is a pretty easy range to shoot on – don’t ask me what happened on Saturday,” Nordgren wrote.

Norgren leapfrogged his two teammates on his way through the field. Mark Johnson, in his second international race of the season, started just one place ahead of Nordgren and also missed two shots. But slower skiing kept Johnson bouncing around in the 40’s and he finished 44^th, exactly where he had started.

Russell Currier had seemed like the Americans’ best chance for a top-20 finish, since he started 27^th and has consistently shown top ski speed this season.

On Sunday, the skiing wasn’t the problem – Currier raced to the fifth-fastest split of the field.

What held him back was shooting. Currier failed to clean a single stage and ended up with five penalties. Incredibly, he was still able to gain three places and finished 24^th.

“I haven’t moved up in a pursuit in a long time, so only moving up a few spots is a step in the right direction,” he told FasterSkier. “It was a decent race. I would have liked to have hit an extra target or two. 75 % is far from great, but it’s not that bad either, more just mediocre.”

He said that he felt better on his skis than he had in the sprint, which could mean that he’ll find more success as the week goes on. And he was sure to thank the U.S. wax team, too.

“We are currently limited on wax supplies, so I think the wax techs did an exceptional job,” Currier said.

* * *

In the women’s 10 k pursuit, two Americans started just outside the top 30, but only one was able to cross to the other side. Starting 32^nd, Laura Spector missed five shots, including two in each of the last two stages, but was still able to climb up to 28^th.

“It’s frustrating to miss so many shots in standing, but I felt like I skied the course well today,” Spector said. “It’s a much higher stress situation skiing in a pursuit and there’s less time to mentally prepare when entering the range.”

Teammate Hannah Dreissigacker started a second behind Spector in 33^rd, but made a tactical blunder when she failed to “take clicks” on her rifle sight to adjust for wind in the first shooting stage. As a result, she missed four shots and immediately dropped to 41^st.

“I’ve had practice this year in not getting discouraged after bad shooting,” said Dreissgacker in reference to several domestic races this season, including a NorAm that she won despite missing eleven targets. “I definitely wish that I could redo that first shooting, but it was a good learning experience.”

The two women had opposite experiences on the trails: Spector told FasterSkier that she spent all but the first two laps skiing alone, and eventually finished with a 20-second gap in either direction.

Thanks to the missed shots, Dreissigacker, a strong skier, dropped back to a slower portion of the field.

“It meant that I got to do a lot of passing during the skiing for the rest of the race,” she said. “That kept me motivated and skiing pretty hard.”

Dreissigacker cleaned her second stage before missing three more shots for seven total penalties, and was able to work her way back up to 33^rd, her starting position.

Canada’s lone starter in either race was Megan Heinicke, who improved from 18^th to 15^th.

Results: men / women

January 30, 2012
U.S. Has “Quiet Success” in U26 Sprint Races; Currier 27th

Russell Currier racing in last week's World Cup competitions in Antholz, Italy. Photo: NordicFocus/USBA.

The U.S. biathlon team could be forgiven for having high expectations going into this year’s Under-26/Open European Championships in Osrblie, Slovakia.

Last year, Leif Nordgren entered just one race at the event, and didn’t even finish. But a few weeks later, he notched three top-thirty finishes at senior World Championships.

In that same U26 series in Ridnaun, Italy, Russell Currier repeatedly finished in the 20s and 30s. But just two weeks ago, he bettered those results on a higher stage when he sprinted to sixth place in a World Cup in Nove Mesto, Czech Republic.

Both athletes have taken major steps since their last appearance at the U26 races, as has Laura Spector, whose top finish in 2010 was 34^th, but who spent the entirety of last season on the World Cup.

So this year, the team had every right to hope for better finishes. And while it didn’t happen on Saturday – Currier was the only American to crack the top 30 – coach Patrick Coffey didn’t consider the pair of sprint races to be a wash.

“Today’s races were a quiet success I would say,” he told FasterSkier in an e-mail.

Currier and Nordgren, who missed three shots to finish 45^thin the 10 k sprint, were disappointed nonetheless.

“Tough race this morning in Slovakia,” Nordgren tweeted after the race. “Tomorrow is another day though and I’m looking forward to it!”

Currier, who said the race was “decent, but not up to expectations,” was undone mainly by his shooting. Not only did he miss three shots, but he lost over thirty seconds to his fastest competitors during the two shooting stages alone. There were bright spots, however: Currier’s seventh-fastest ski time of the day mitigated some of his other problems, and he finished 27^th.

“I actually didn’t feel that great on skis,” Currier told FasterSkier. “My transitions were a little sloppy in some parts. I was surprised to have the seventh fastest loop time.”

Of his shooting, he said that he was also surprised to have missed two shots in standing.

“I’m still kicking myself for that,” he said. “I really thought I could clean standing today.”

His time placed him 1:45 behind Alexey Volkov of Russia, a World Cup regular who anchored the winning mixed relay in Hochfilzen, Austria this season and whose victory today surprised nobody.

In fact, the presence of athletes like Volkov is one thing that makes this year’s U26 races unusual – and more competitive than in past editions. In 2010, the event was held directly after the Vancouver Olympics, and only a handful of athletes, generally from smaller countries, competed in both. In 2011, the Ridnaun races followed the World Cups held in Fort Kent, Maine, leading to a similar situation.

But this year, the U26 Championships are being held during a World Cup off-week between Antholz, Italy and Oslo, Norway, making travel and jetlag less of an issue for athletes wanting to work the event into their World Cup schedule. Today’s field was almost 20 % bigger than last year’s.

“It was a little more competitive than I thought it would be,” Currier said.

While the results were disappointing and the races themselves less than exciting for the pair of men who had competed in Antholz – Currier said that the crowd “could not hold a candle to your average World Cup” – it was part of a cautious return by the third American man, Mark Johnson.

A five-time World Junior Championships competitor, Johnson recently graduated from Williams College and hasn’t appeared in an major biathlon race in three years.

“For me, this was a fun introduction back into international racing,” Johnson wrote in an e-mail. “After spending my last season focusing on collegiate cross-country racing, my confidence on the ski tracks has improved. That showed today. My skiing was on pace with much of the field.”

Johnson missed two shots and finished 44^th, just over a second in front of Nordgren, and said that he was “very satisfied with the result.”

While he hasn’t made any international squads until now, Johnson had offered up a series of fairly dominating performances in domestic competition this season. He may have been happy with his result, but it didn’t mean that he wasn’t expecting more in the coming races, just like his teammates.

“Overall, I think we performed solidly,” Johnson wrote. “There is room for improvement on the result list, and the hope is to realize that in the coming races.”

The U.S. trio seemed enthusiastic for Sunday’s pursuit, which should feature large packs thanks to the many tight finishes in today’s sprint. Currier, for example, sits about 20 seconds out of the top 20, or one penalty loop; Nordgren will start in a pack of six skiers within ten seconds.

“I’ll be starting with a large group, and right alongside my teammate Leif, which will definitely make for a thrilling environment to race in,” Johnson said.

“And as a team, I believe we can make up some major ground on our competitors.”

* * *

In the women’s 7.5 k sprint, Spector and teammate Hannah Dreissigacker narrowly missed the top 30, placing 32^nd and 33^rd. Neither, however, seemed too disappointed.

“In skiing I felt all right, nothing exceptional,” said Spector, who started this season on the World Cup circuit before being moved to the second-tier IBU Cup tour. Spector has so far been unable to find the form she showed last season, but said that her ski speed was coming back little by little; she had the 31^st-fastest ski split today.

“This is the first ‘World Cup’ course I’ve competed on since mid-December, which means that it’s more challenging than most courses used for IBU Cups,” Spector said of the skiing. “There are two really long, steep hills in the first half of the course, followed by a lot of downhill that still requires efficient skiing, where I lost the most time.”

Spector missed two shots, both in the standing stage. Her prone shooting, however, was exceptional: not only did she clean, but she did it with the second-fastest time in the field.

“I was surprised to see how fast my prone time was because the shots felt scattered,” she explained. “I jammed a shell in standing so it took a little time to clear that out, otherwise I would expect standing to be faster.

“I have not been working on shooting speed this year, although I have noticed an improvement,” she continued. “I think it’s simply come from having a good number of years of shooting training behind me now, being able to calculate a good range approach, and being comfortable with shooting faster; it’s really been a natural process.”

The same could not be said for Dreissigacker, who hasn’t contested an international biathlon race in two years and has only competed in two U.S. events this season. A successful skier for the Craftsbury Green Racing Project who made the top 20 in every race at 2012 U.S. Nationals in Rumford, Maine. Dreissigacker was surprised to be nominated to the team, and wasn’t sure what to expect.

Once the racing began though, she was no longer as apprehensive.

“I felt like I actually was a real biathlete,” Dreissigacker, who accrued three penalties, told FasterSkier. “I successfully accomplished my goals of going through all the equipment checks, shooting at the right targets, skiing the right number of penalty laps, skiing hard, and having fun!”

Like Spector, Dreissigacker noted the difficulty of the course’s long climbs, and said she was looking forward to shorter loops with less vertical in Sunday’s pursuit. But despite the challenges, she said that the venue actually suited her well.

“There’s about 1.5 k of flat rolling [terrain after the hills], which makes for an easy approach to the range,” she said. “That’s good for me – it means that I can ski pretty normally and then just back off a little bit on the gradual downhill into the range.”

Coffey, the team’s coach for this trip, was impressed with both Dreissigacker and Johnson given their lack of recent big-race experience.

“Both have been taking it all in stride,” he said. “There is an adjustment that needs to be made when jumping into the European racing circuit, but both looked relaxed today and will feel even more at home tomorrow in the pursuit race.”

Canada’s Megan Heinicke finished 18^th in the women’s sprint; she could not be reached for comment.

Results: men / women

January 28, 2012
Casey Smith 31st in First Sprint of Open European Championships

Casey Smith competing at U.S. National Championships last year. Photo: Gregory Haugen.

Thursday night, the Slovakian town of Osrblie kicked off the 2012 Open European Championships of biathlon with an elaborate ceremony featuring athletes from 32 different countries. On Friday, racers flooded past on the trails and hundreds of shots were fired on the range, by the best field the venue has hosted since its last World Cup in 2005.

What are the Open European Championships? The event, which lasts a week, actually serves several purposes. It’s designed for athletes under the age of 26, which in many ways makes it a championship of biathlon’s second-tier circuit, the IBU Cup. But because this year the races fall on an off-week for the World Cup, several racers from the very top of the biathlon hierarchy will be competing as well, including Valj and Vita Semerenko of Ukraine and Alexey Volkov of Russia, who have stood on the World Cup podium already in their young careers. For the U.S., Russell Currier and Leif Nordgren will be spending their “rest week” racing in Slovakia.

Competitions opened on Friday with junior sprints. The first winner, Norway’s Vetle Sjastad Christiansen, had picked up five individual podium finishes in international competition as a youth, but was surprised to find that moving up an age class brought him his first win – by exactly one second over Alexandr Loginov of Russia.

“Maybe it helped me that nobody was looking at me,” he said in a press conference.

Christiansen’s big challenge was expected to come from fellow Norwegian Johannes Bø, younger brother of last year’s overall World Cup leader Tarjei Bø. But Bø missed four shots and even with one of the fastest ski times over the 10 k course finished over a minute behind Christiansen, who had missed only one shot.

“Normally, Johannes is better than me, but he missed a few too many today,” Christiansen.

He then faced a late challenge by Loginov, who started several bibs earlier and whose split had been 20 seconds back at the last shooting. Loginov said that he started slowly on purpose, and had saved his energy for the last lap; Christiansen, meanwhile, had attacked from the start. As he tired on his final 3.3 k loop, he began hearing the difference to Loginov shrink and shrink.

“I thought I would lose this gold medal, but in the finish I won by one second,” Christiansen said.

The pair will have just over a 30-second lead on third-place Maxim Tsvekov of Russia when they start Sunday’s pursuit.

The lone North American athlete, Casey Smith, missed two shots and finished 31st, 2:46 behind Christiansen. Smith is two-time World Junior Championship competitor as a youth and spent part of last season competing around Europe, so experience isn’t something he’s lacking. But this was his first international race as a junior, and it was a step up.

“I think that the field is fairly comparable to World Juniors,” he told FasterSkier in an e-mail. “Most of the big nations are here, like the Norwegians and the Russians. It feels pretty similar… it is defiantly a high caliber race. It’s pretty cool to be with all of the seniors knowing that some of them are racing on the World Cup.”

Smith’s ski time was not among the fastest, but his shooting times were, something that surprised him.

“For the past week or so I have really been working on my shooting, but not really speed, more mechanics,” he wrote. “Today I didn’t feel like I was shooing fast. I just came in to the range thinking about what I have been working on. After the race I found out… [it] was just a nice side effect of everything else that I have been working on.”

With only six men in the 67-athlete field shooting clean, Smith’s marksmanship was definitely a strong point. His times tied him for tenth-best in the race; he was more than 20 seconds faster than Loginov, for example.

In Sunday’s pursuit, Smith will start about two penalty loops out of the top twenty. And with four, instead of two, shooting stages, he may have a better chance to move up.

The junior women’s 7.5 k sprint saw a fresher face take the win: 18-year-old Niya Dimitrova of Bulgaria. Despite still being a youth, Dimitrova is currently in her third season on the World Cup, where she is her team’s fastest woman. Usually, that doesn’t mean much; her top finish so far has been 46th. On Friday, however, she was afforded a rare chance to compete against her peers, and made the best of it, shooting clean for a 15-second win over Iryna Varvynets of Ukraine. Elisa Gasparin of Switzerland was third.

Results: junior men / junior women

January 27, 2012
Top-Ten Performances from American Women in Last Days of U26 Biathlon

Corrine Malcolm (USA) in the junior pursuit at U26 Championships, Ridnaun, Italy. Photo: Susan Dunklee.

Last year, Susan Dunklee’s top finish at U26 Open European Biathlon Championships was 17th place in the sprint. At the time, she was pleased with the performance, but this year, she’s eclipsed that success – twice.

In the open individual race at this year’s U26 event, which took place in Ridnaun, Italy last week, Dunklee finished 15th – an auspicious start to the week for the only senior U.S. woman nominated for the races. Then in the sprint, she upped the ante, finishing ninth. She only missed two shots, skied the sixth-fastest course time of the day, and finished under a minute behind the winner, Juliane Doll of Germany.

How big is this step for Dunklee?

“Last year, my best result of the season was a 17th place at U26’s with 90% shooting and that felt like a huge achievement at the time,” she told FasterSkier in an e-mail. “This year, I progressed to the top ten with only 80% shooting, and I know that when I shoot clean, I can be a contender to win at this level.”

In the pursuit, Dunklee missed eight shots and lost a few places, but still finished 19th. With three top-20 finishes in three starts, and quite a few ski laps that were among the ten fastest on the day, Dunklee was “psyched”.

“The pursuit was a lot of fun, especially the first lap,” she said. “There were three girls that started within two seconds ahead of me, so I tucked in behind them and focused on skiing smooth and efficiently- it felt easy. Unfortunately I lost ground doing penalty loops.”

U.S. women’s head coach Jonne Kahkonen was impressed with Dunklee’s performances at the Championships.

“I’ve seen Susan’s training and racing now for about half a year and it seems like she has some good potential and she has also proven that on international competitions – more than once,” he said.

But he also warned that she still had a lot of work to do.

“There are a lot of things, very basic biathlon skills that Susan can still improve, which means that there’s quite a lot of room for improvement in general,” Kahkonen said. “To be able to take the next step, Susan will have to commit to the hard work even better and work even more. Taking the next step will be tougher, and the next one after that even tougher and so on.”

Dunklee’s success bodes well for the chances of other U.S. biathletes who were left behind on this trip. Katrina Howe of the Maine Winter Sports Center (MWSC) and Hannah Dreissigacker of the Craftsbury Green Racing Project both attended trials races, where they finished behind Dunklee. Dreissigacker and Howe had competed at the U26 Championships and maintained the same time differences, they would have finished in the high twenties or low thirties.

A trio of U.S. junior women made the trip to Ridnaun as well, and their finishes were just as encouraging as Dunklee’s. Corrine Malcolm (MWSC) had the top result, racing to an impressive sixth place in the junior women’s sprint.

“This whole past week was pretty incredible,” Malcolm said. “After having the second-fastest ski time in the individual I knew that I could have good races later in the week. Sprints are the best format for me right now because there are less shooting stages.

“My standing shooting has been pretty horrendous all season and so going into these races the coaches and I decided it would be best for me to ski more conservatively before my standing stages,” she explained. “It has to be one of the strangest pacing strategies ever- when I think of racing I don’t commonly think of having to hold yourself back. But it paid off on Saturday when I only missed two targets! I had to work really hard to earn time back during my final loop but it makes me really excited for when I don’t have to be so cautious.”

Malcolm is just finishing her first season as a biathlete, and the switch has clearly been successful – and beneficial for the team.

“Corrine proved that she is a serious contender in the junior races,” Dunklee said of her younger teammate. “We’ve taken some large steps forward as a team this year and I’m fired up to see where it will take us in the future.”

In the pursuit, Malcolm suffered from cramping and had to drop out. She said that it was the first time she had ever dropped out of a race, and she hoped not to repeat the experience.

Grace Boutot, a MWSC teammate of Malcolm’s who has been one of the top U.S. juniors for several years, had finishes of 22nd and 34th this week.

The last member of the junior women’s squad, Kelly Kjorlien, has been in the U.S. junior pipeline for a few years now, like Boutot. But unlike Boutot, she is still technically a youth – so for her, competing in the junior races at the U26 event represented a jump in the level of competition.

“I was definitely a little overwhelmed going in to the races in Ridnaun because I’m younger than most of the field,” Kjorlien said. “But once I started racing I was much more comfortable. I just had to remind myself that it was just like any other race or training day, just skiing and shooting.

“I was really glad to have the opportunity to do some more big races this season,” she continued. “I learn something new with every race which is really valuable, because it’s not something that can be recreated in training. The trip really accelerated my excitement about my future in biathlon.”

The senior men’s squad – which unlike the women consisted of four men until Leif Nordgren left for senior World Championships – had some strong finishes of its own in the concluding sprint and pursuit races.

Russell Currier led the team in the sprint, finishing 25th. While it was a solid result, Currier was still frustrated- he missed five shots, or fifty percent.

“The goal was a top ten,” he told FasterSkier in an e-mail. “I could have done that with almost three misses in the sprint. The podium was within reach all things considered! But since biathlon is such an inconsistent sport I probably shouldn’t be making any excuses. Over all I’m kind of disappointed with U26s.”

He was frank about his difficulty shooting.

“My shooting still wasn’t up to potential. I felt comfortable with it leading up to the race and was shooting well during intervals and time trials, but wasn’t able to demonstrate the same when it mattered. Most of my struggle in shooting has nothing to do with the mechanics, but more so just head case issues.”

Nevertheless, there were definite bright spots for Currier, who had the second-fastest ski time on one of his laps in Ridnaun.

“I was pleased to see my ski speed come back around,” he said. “I did some peaking work the week prior at sea level and I responded well enough to hold my own at altitude.”

Currier’s teammates Bill Bowler and Wynn Roberts finished in the 40s in both the sprint and pursuit.

American junior men Raleigh Goessling and Ethan Dreissigacker finished 43rd and 48th in the sprint, and in the pursuit Dreissigacker moved up to 39th and Goessling to 42nd.

Full results are available at the IBU Datacenter.

March 3, 2011