Biathlon Preview
The U.S. Biathlon Team will look to ride the wave of its history-making performance at last year’s world championships and capture its first-ever Olympic medal at the Olympic Winter Games PyeongChang 2018. The U.S. team boasts a wealth of experience with six returning Olympians, including all five members of the Sochi 2014 men’s squad.
Lowell Bailey (Lake Placid, New York) and Tim Burke (Paul Smiths, New York) will compete in their fourth Olympic Games and hope to utilize their experience to reach the podium in the men’s events. On the women’s side, Susan Dunklee (Barton, Vermont) has steadily improved since Sochi 2014 to become a legitimate threat to medal in PyeongChang.
Prior to 2017, U.S. men had won only two individual world championship biathlon medals — silvers in 1987 and 2013 — but Bailey inked his name in the record book by winning the country’s first gold medal in the 20-kilometer individual race. He finished the season ranked a career-best eighth in the world cup total score. The first U.S. athlete to qualify for PyeongChang 2018, Bailey hopes to become the first American biathlete to medal at the Games.
Burke placed 19th in the men’s 10K sprint in Sochi, finishing one place shy of his career-best Olympic finish of 18th place in the 15K mass start event in Vancouver 2010. After securing a pair of sixth-place finishes in sprint and pursuit at the world cup final in Khanty-Mansiysk, Russia, he ended the 2015-16 season ranked 15th in the final world cup standings, marking his best ranking since capping the 2012-13 season at No. 10.
No American woman had ever won an individual medal at the world championships before 2017, but Dunklee changed that with her silver medal in the 12.5K mass start. Dunklee finished 11th in women’s 12.5K mass start at her Olympic debut in Sochi. Since then, she has consistently improved her technique and advanced steadily up the world cup rankings. After earning top-20 overall rankings in 2014-15 (No. 17) and 2015-16 (No. 14), she finished the 2016-17 season 10th in the world cup rankings, a career best.