Leif Nordgren and Russell Currier are headed to their second Olympic Winter Games.
Nordgren and Currier were the final two pieces of the 10-person biathlon squad that will be nominated to the 2018 U.S. Olympic Team. The announcement came Saturday following two weekends of competition in the IBU Cup.
Both Nordgren and Currier were on the 4x7.5-kilometer team that placed 16th at the Olympic Winter Games 2014 Sochi.
They join a biathlon team headed for the PyeongChang Games next month that is loaded with Olympic experience. All five members of the men’s squad were 2014 Olympic teammates. World championship medalists Tim Burke and Lowell Bailey are headed to their fourth Olympic team, and 2012 Youth Olympic medalist Sean Doherty is on the team for the second time.
The women’s team consistes of world silver medalist Susan Dunklee, who was the first woman in any sport to qualify for the 2018 U.S. Olympic Team, along with Clare Egan, Emily Dreissigacker, Maddie Phaneuf and Joanne Reid.
Nordgren, 28, a native of Forest Lake, Minnesota, who trains in Lake Placid, New York, has been competing in biathlon since 2007 and had a sixth-place finish in the relay in his first world championship in 2011. He was one of Team USA’s busiest biathletes in Sochi, placing 44th, 53rd and 82nd in the 10-kilometer sprint, 12.5K pursuit and 20K individual, respectively. Nordgren had the top American finish in two of the past four IBU Cup men’s races.
Currier, 30, a resident of Maine who has competed in biathlon since 2001, also had a top American finish on the IBU Cup tour last week in Brezno-Osrblie, Slovakia. He has had two sixth-place finishes on the world cup tour and a top-10 finish in the relay at the 2008 world championships. Currier finished 49th and 60th in the 20-kilometer individual and 10K sprint at the 2014 Olympics.
Paul D. Bowker has been writing about Olympic sports since 1990. He is Olympics editor and Assistant Sports Editor at the Cape Cod Times in Massachusetts. Bowker has written for TeamUSA.org since 2010 as a freelance contributor on behalf of Red Line Editorial, Inc.
