Biathlon: Snowy Sprint Starts World Cup 3 in Hochfilzen A fast-moving snowstorm descended on the start of today’s 10km sprint at the E.ON IBU World Cup 3 in Hochfilzen, making conditions challenging for Team USA’s men.
Photo Courtesy: skitrax.com/Herb Swanson - Lowell Bailey at the Biathlon World Cup in Fort Kent, ME
A fast-moving snowstorm descended on the start of today’s 10km sprint at the E.ON IBU World Cup 3 in Hochfilzen, making conditions challenging for Team USA’s men.
Lowell Bailey (Lake Placid, NY) had the top finish for Team USA today at 21st place with a time of 24:58.1 (1+0), finishing 1:00.9 back from today’s winner Tarjei Boe (NOR), who posted 23:57.2 (0+0). Martin Fourcade (FRA) was second with 24:01.2 (1+1), and Russia’s Timofey Lapshin was third with a time of 24:14.4 (0+0).
Following today’s sprint, Bailey moves up to 6th in the World Cup overall standings.
Jay Hakkinen (Kasilof, AK) finished 45th at 25:33 (0+0), Leif Nordgren (Marine, MN) was 48th (25:40.6/1+1), and Tim Burke (Paul Smiths, NY) was 63rd (25:49.7 /1+2).
“Today I had a good solid race with good skiing and finally getting a clean race. Unfortunately, a snowstorm came down before the race and stopped after my first loop so the later starters got a big advantage. Still, I am very pleased with my shooting and it was a close competition. If I can continue my shooting I expect to move up well in the pursuit since nature has less influence when we all start together,” explained Hakkinen this morning.
“Today’s sprint was kind of a lottery, it was hard to predict, said U.S. Biathlon High Performance Director Bernd Eisenbichler. “The snow came before the race and stopped right in the middle of the race. The course got much faster in the end, but that’s biathlon, and that’s the sprint race, and there’s nothing you can do.”
“Seeing the positive things from today is that the whole team had a really good performance, added Eisenbichler. “With normal conditions, we would have a super team result today. In this heavy snowfall we had really good skis and that’s a good confidence booster for the team and the staff. The techs worked very hard and did a great job. The athletes did a great job to swallow this result down and look forward to the next races, because they knew it was not in their hands today and they did the best they could.”
Extended results from today’s sprint are available here: http://services.biathlonresults.com/results.aspx?RaceId=BT1112SWRLCP03SMSP
Team USA’s women will compete in tomorrow’s 7.5km sprint with Susan Dunklee (Barton, VT) starting 36th, Sara Studebaker (Boise, ID) starting 58th, and starting in position 84 is Annalies Cook (Saranac Lake, NY) joining the team for World Cup 3.
Fans can tune in and watch the women’s sprint live at 8:30am (EST) at http://www3.biathlonworld.com/en/ Results will be available live at http://services.biathlonresults.com/results.aspx?RaceId=BT1112SWRLCP03SWSP.
