United States 2023-2024 Team Preview

The United States is my home federation. In theory that means that I should know these athletes than any others. However, in practice it is much different. As everybody reading this knows biathlon in the United States is not even a secondary sport. It’s basically relegated to small groups of people in a handful of states. In some ways it’s remarkable that a nation with over 330 million citizens has never won a single medal in this event at the Olympics. It’s the only Winter Olympics event the Americans have failed to win. And yet…it’s also not surprising at all. Maybe it only makes sense if you’ve lived here.

Biathlon gets basically no attention. With the demise of the Olympic channel, and even Peacock no longer carrying biathlon, the sport is relegated to streaming on the IBU website. For diehard fans this is great. However it makes growing the sport more and more difficult. During those fleeting years when the World Cup was on the Olympic channel I actually had a handful of friends who finally watched it and actually really enjoyed it. But not being as in love with it as me, they’ve since stopped following. It’s just another barrier to entry into this wonderful world.

This carries up to the treatment of the national team as well. For the most wealthy nation on the planet it would take a relatively microscopic amount of funding to really make a difference. That doesn’t really seem to happen though. The result is that, with little publicity for the sport, little funding, and lack of success on the one major stage the team has in this country, it doesn’t draw well from the youth. You get a relatively small number of kids going into it and most are late transitions from the World Cup. Then with the lack of funding only a handful of athletes are able to make a go of it through a full career. The team ends up with very few athletes who get to fully develop and race consistently as they grow up. It’s really unfortunate.

And yet…having said all of that I’m as hopeful and optimistic for this season as I have been in several years now. Particularly this is with the men. I have just huge optismism in the young men that we have coming up. Combine them with the core of the team that exists and I think they have some potential. So lets get into it!

Women

Having said all of that about the men, of course I have to start with the women. Really though the women are a better example of what that whole intro was about. Right now the American women have just two women who have gone through a full development: Deedra Irwin and Joanne Reid. There are a few in the midst of it. And then some really interesting stories.

Quota: 4 Athletes to Start

World Cup Regulars

I think we’re pretty fair at betting that these three women take every start on the World Cup that they are healthy to and fits with their training and overall schedule.

Deedra Irwin (31)

As with many of the American athletes, Deedra Irwin began her career as a cross country skier. Actually if you go back further to her early days in Wisconsin, she actually was skiing as a way to keep in shape for running. I’m sure teenage Irwin would find it very hard to believe that all these years later that she’d actually be a professional winter sport athlete but here she is! She only made the transition from cross country skiing to biathlon in 2017, which means she was already 24 years old when she started. That’s about 10 years later than many if not most biathletes on the World Cup level.

With such a late start you might expect it would be a bumpy road. And while certainly not a smooth start, she’s actually doing really well! After finishing 95th in the Overall in her first year on the World Cup, 2020-2021, she’s finished the last two seasons both at 58th. In the middle of all of that she managed to have the best finish by an American biathlete ever at the Olympics, finishing 7th in the Individual in Beijing in 2022.While her high finish on the year last season was just 20th, compared to the 7th and 14th she had in 21-22, she overall held a consistent level and had an average finish of 47th, just 3 spots behind 21-22 even with those higher finishes.

	Prone %	Standing %	Total %	Shooting Time
2020-2021	83.2	79.2	81.2	31.3
2021-2022	91.9	78.5	85.2	32.6
2022-2023	81.3	70	75.6	33.8

Her stats show that her skiing was ever so slightly better year over year. She ended up ranked 56th overall in skiing and was just barely off of the average World Cup pace on skis last season. However, she did have a bit of step backward with the shooting. Her overall shooting dipped 4 points from 85.2 to 81.2 driven entirely by her prone shooting dropping from 91.9 to 83.2. Also, not surprisingly for somebody who transitioned so late to biathlon, she’s a bit slower on the range. Her average shooting was 31.3 seconds, so she’s dropping anywhere from 3-6 seconds on some of the top tier biathletes per shooting. In a Pursuit race that could add up to 12-24 seconds which is substantial.

It’s entirely possible that she never regains that shooting touch and her 2021-2022 season was her peak of her career. However, if you look back at her limited history, in general she has been a fairly good prone shooter. It would not surprise me in the least to see her shooting rebound back to the mid 80’s. If she can continue the steady skiing improvement to nudge just faster than average we should be looking at a career best year in the Overall. I don’t know that she’ll break her career best ever finish but a couple more top 20’s this season is certainly not out of the question.

Joanne Reid (31)

Joanne “Firestone” Reid is certainly a fan favorite of the online biathlon community. Likely due to her unique online social media style she’s almost certainly the most popular of all of the American biathletes at this point save maybe Campbell Wright. However, take a look at the US Biathlon website and you won’t see her listed. Don’t worry, she’s going to be racing this season. However with the limited resources available for US Biathlon she more or less donated her spot, and national team funding, to another athlete, in this case Chloe Levins. If that’s not team leadership then I don’t know what is. A real sacrifice from the veteran.

With six full World Cup seasons to her record, Reid has been a consistent presence for the Americans on the World Cup over the last five seasons, making just about every start possible. In that period she’s had a bit of mixed success. Clearly her best year was 2018-2019 which included two standout World Championship performances of 10th in the Mass Start and 15th in the Sprint. Interestingly enough she really rises to the occasion as her third best ever finish was 22nd in the 2018 Winter Olympics Individual. She then had a 22nd and 26th last season which are her next best finishes on the way to a 61st Overall finish.

	Prone %	Standing %	Total %	Shooting Time
2018-2019	86.4	83.6	85	35
2019-2020	87.3	69.1	78.2	34.8
2020-2021	90.5	65.7	78.1	33.5
2021-2022	86.7	65.8	76.3	32.2
2022-2023	91.1	73.3	82.2	32.8

In general Reid succeeds because of her skiing and not her shooting. She’s usually right around the average World Cup ski performance for the season. However, ever since hitting 85% in her career best 2018-2019 season she’s usually been in the mid to high 70s. Last season she did tick back up though to the low 80s in total shooting which was propelled by hitting 91.1% of her prone shots. So basically, the skiing is just good enough that when she hits she can pop into the top 20 or higher.

That’s been the recipe for success for Reid in her career. It’s a similar path as Deedra Irwin. It’s just about finding the consistency for both. The consistent skiing at or just a little faster than average, and the shooting in the mid 80’s. Those days Reid hits her shots, she’ll have the chance to race for a top 20. Let’s just hope it’s more often this season!

Chloe Levins (25)

Chloe Levins is a rare breed in American biathlon. She’s 25 years old and she’s been racing IBU races since the Junior Cup in the 2014-2015 season. We just don’t see that all that often. Last year was her first of World Cup racing on a regular basis, making 14 starts and running at least one race on every stop of the World Cup season. She started the season on her best footing, having three of her four best finishes of her career in Kontiolahti, including her career best 43rd in the Pursuit.

	Prone %	Standing %	Total %	Shooting Time
2022-2023	95	80	87.5	31.8

Levins is also unique amongst Americans in that she has a clear strength. For the last several years she’s been a very good shooter. Last year she hit 87.5% good enough for 25th on the World Cup. That was actually slightly down from some of her Junior Cup seasons though. For almost her entire career she’s been an above 90% prone shooter, including 95% prone last season. When she standing shooting comes along too she’s phenomenal. The only thing holding her back thus far is the skiing. She just simply wasn’t good enough to picture much last season. However, she did take all of 2021-2022 off of racing so maybe the legs just weren’t there. She’s never been swift though so that may have factored but certainly wasn’t everything.

In the end, for Levins she has one very strong strength. Being a great prone shooter, and being so consistently is a really good thing. Bringing the standing shooting along to match the prone shooting would be a start. If she can get her shooting up to near 90% that could be simply amazing. Two years ago Lotte Lie was 57th in skiing and 0.6% slower than average. But she hit 90.3% of her shots. That’s the model Chloe Levins would like to duplicate. She’s got one step down. Now two more really bit steps to go. I don’t expect it all this season. But we can hope for some little steps!

Developmental

These women are in varying states of development. I’m really curious to see how they divide up the 4th spot on the World Cup.

Kelsey Dickinson (30)

The 2022-2023 season proved to be a very successful one for Kelsey Dickinson. After closing the 21-22 season on a real run with six of her eight best IBU Cup finishes ever, she went to the World Cup in 22-23 and never looked back. Okay, sure, she had a season and career best finish of just 47th place. But she stuck and raced every weekend of the entire season except for Antholz which was part of the plan.

	Prone %	Standing %	Total %	Shooting Time
2022-2023	80	88.6	84.3	28.9

So with that why was it successful? Well, oftentimes with biathlon, and life in general, you need to look beyond the finishes to find the success stories. Dickinson, competing on the World Cup, had the best shooting season of her career at any level. She hit 84.3% including 88.6% standing. That was not only her best total shooting percentage but her best in either prone or standing ever.

For Dickinson to take the next step, which for her will mean qualifying for a few Pursuit races and breaking into the top 40, she is going to need the skis to come along. Mid 80’s for shooting is good enough to get there. Skiing 6.5% slower than average is not. She’s never been mistaken for Denise Herrmann-Wick, so it isn’t clear where this ski speed is going to come from, but she’s going to need to find it.

Tara Geraghty-Moats (30)

At 30 years old you might think that Tara Geraghty-Moats has many years of racing behind her. And she does, just not all in biathlon. Now on her 3rd sport, or actually back to her 1st sport, Geraghty-Moats has just four years of biathlon experience with the IBU. However the majority of those happened nearly a decade ago when she was a Junior. She left the sport for a few years and entered into ski jumping and then Nordic Combined. In that she had tremendous success winning the 2018-2019 Continental Cup and won a Nordic Combined World Cup event in December of 2020.

After a year back on the IBU Cup, Geraghty-Moats actually started this season right away on the World Cup, her World Cup debut in fact, which was a bit of a surprise. She didn’t have tremendous success though. Her best race was a 66th place in the Kontiolahti Sprint race. She went down to the IBU Cup following Pokljuka where she raced five times and never finished worse than 53rd, with a high finish of 28th in the European Championship Sprint, after which she shut it down for the season. So all in all, it really wasn’t bad.

It probably won’t come as a surprise that Geraghty-Moats had more struggles with the rifle than on the skis. She ended up shooting 72.7% in her IBU Cup starts and just 58.6% on the World Cup. Just not going to have a lot of success with that no matter how fast you are.

It’s an amazing story and one that I hope continues. This season let’s hope to see, for the first time in her career, some consistency with the rifle. Hopefully then, either on the IBU Cup, or maybe the World Cup even, she can just have a little bit more of a chance for some career best finishes.

Amanda Kautzer (25)

You know how we’ve mentioned American athletes take weird paths? Kautzer raced Juniors until 2016-2017. Then we didn’t see her in IBU races until 2021-2022. She stuck with it and last season raced primarily on the IBU Cup, but did make a single World Cup start too! It’s important to take the big picture with Kautzer, and this is what the big picture view says: 2022-2023 was a year of improvement. It really was. If you look at the Overall standings you’ll see her way down in 106th. I don’t care. She had seven of her top eight career finishes last season. That’s improvement. Her average finish was up a solid 10 places from 60th to 50th.

Her improvement was basically all because of her skiing improvement. She went up from 126th in skiing on the IBU Cup to 80th. That’s some improvement. Yes, she’s still definitively slower than average, but that’s a really solid gain. She even made those improved finishes with worse overall shooting, sliding from 80% overall to 76.4%. If you look at the race by race though, there really is no change in her shooting from the mid part of last season through this season. The drop was basically entirely due to her having three outstanding shooting events to start 21-22 and she just didn’t have those last year. She was actually a little more consistent in her shooting, only shooting worse than 70% one time.

Next season it’s all about continued improvement. The skiing of course can continue to improve. Let’s see a top 70 overall skiing next season on the IBU Cup? Or faster? Maybe we can see that shooting percentage inch back towards 80% except continuing the consistency…just consistently better. Also, her shooting times could stand to improve A LOT. She averaged over 42 seconds per shooting last season. She’s losing over 12 seconds per shooting to the best on the IBU Cup per shooting. Of course you don’t want to shoot terribly but that’s a lot of time. So let’s see mild to moderate improvement in all three please!

Juniors:

The United States has one of the most difficult to anticipate participation schedules of any federation. There A LOT of reasons for this and if you want to know more just listen to both of our interviews with Coach Armin Auchentaller as they discuss this at much greater length. So basically here is a list of some of the young women we might see next season. I did discuss a couple in greater length because of there racing from last season.

Alexandra Rud (19)

One of two pure Youth/Junior women who raced last season and are on our list, Alexandra Rud raced just twice last season. She lined up for the Sprint and the Pursuit at the Youth Worlds in Kazkhstan. She finished 38th and 43rd in those two races. Prior to that her only career IBU level racing were the Youth Worlds in Soldier Hollow where she had similar results. It’s just five races but we have a little bit of a pattern forming. In general she is a fast shooter who is okay on the range hitting 75% in those five races and with an average shooting speed of 33 seconds (that’s good at this level!). She needs to work on the skis though, losing 3:41 seconds to last year’s Youth Worlds Sprint winner, Julia Tannheimer. So that’s the goal for this year, to improve the skis without losing any of the shooting!

Virgina Cobb (18)

Virginia Cobb has raced exactly three times on the IBU level, racing the Youth World Championships in Kazkhstan last season. She started out with a 59th in the Individual. However she bounced back in a big way going 16th and 26th in Sprint and Pursuit. You won’t be surprised to learn that she is a pretty good skier with course time ranks of 23rd, 17th and 19th. So when she hit her shots, as she did in the Sprint and Pursuit, she looked pretty darn good. Three races isn’t a lot to draw a conclusion from, however. And there is this: she had the same number of misses as Julia Tannheimer who won and finished 2:31 faster. I have be honest though, I’m excited to see whatever we get from Virginia Cobb this season. It was just a little taste, those three races, but I’m really curious to see what is next!

Lexie Madigan (21)

Lexie Madigan didn’t race at all last season but appears ready to be active this season. I didn’t profile her last year (I guess I could see she wasn’t going to race!). Madigan’s last season in 21-22 was her best to date. She was regularly finishing up in to the mid 40s in the Junior levels, and scored a career best 24th in the Junior Worlds in Soldier Hollow. It’s been a little bit since we saw her last but in general she is average to a little slower than average on the Juniors and she has been improving her shooting up to a career best 80% in 21-22. She also is one of the slower shooters on the range usually about 40-50 seconds per shooting. So, definitely definite growth areas available to her! Hopefully we see some racing from her this year. Would love to see how much she’s improved in that time away.

Aurora Cramer (20)

Cramer raced just one season on the Juniors, 2021-2022 with no prior history and no racing last year. In that one year though she left quite an impression. She closed out the year in Soldier Hollow taking 11th in the Sprint and 15th in the Pursuit. I’ll say I was looking forward to seeing her last year! But alas, as is so often the case with Juniors, and especially American Juniors, we did not. Hopefully she’s back this season. She is listed on the University of Denver skiing roster though so maybe focusing on school this season? In the time that we saw her she looked good. She was a little faster than average already, and she hit 74.2% overall with an average shooting time of 35 seconds. She’s not Selina Grotian but that’s not bad. I mean look, she had two top 15’s at Junior Worlds!

Men

The men’s team I’m actually going to stratify a little differently than I do with every other squad in this entire exercise. Usually I break down by the the athletes I expect to see on World Cup, the in between athletes, the IBU Cup, or Juniors. I’ll use different names but that’s basically what there is. With the United States, as discussed above, having such difficult to predict participation, I’m basically doing this completely differently. It will make sense.

Quota: 4 Athletes to Start

The Future Leader

Campbell Wright (21)

The addition of Campbell Wright into this United States men’s team is like a little jolt of electricity. The squad seems to have a really good balance of veterans, and now multiple Junior World medalists. Not only that but Wright has already started to make a little bit of an impact on the IBU Cup and even World Cup scene. I will greatly miss seeing the New Zealand kit out on the course. And I really will miss having such an under represented nation visible on the international level. But also, it sounds like this something Wright wanted to do. With his American parentage it wasn’t a crazy thing and he had been moving in this direction already. So, it doesn’t feel as much like poaching. And I think being a member of this team will help elevate his ceiling.

What is his ceiling you ask? Well so far it looks like it might be pretty good. Even at this young age he’s competed a decent amount on all three levels so we have some data to go off of. On the Junior level he’s raced 21 solo races over five seasons. The last three of those he’s only hit the Youth/Junior Worlds. He has four top 10’s including three 6th place finishes and the 2022-2023 Junior World Sprint gold medal.

Then over the last two seasons he’s raced primarily World Cup with a few IBU Cup thrown in there. On the World Cup he’s had two top 20s, one each season, with a career best of 17th. Both top 20’s were in Individual races. He also just missed the top 20 in the Kontiolahti Sprint last year, finishing 23rd. He ended the last two seasons ranked 64th and 55th respectively.

As a biathlete he has thus far had most of his success off of the strength of his skis. That doesn’t seem to make sense when you see that he’s had his two best races in Individuals, but it’s the truth! As a Junior he was regularly finishing 15 in course time rank over the last three years at Junior Worlds. This included all three top 10s in 2022-2023 in Kazakhstan with a 1st and 3rd course time rank in Sprint and Pursuit. On the World Cup so far he’s been right around average for skiing. Last year this gave him an overall ski rank of 53rd. Shooting has been a bit more of a challenge as he’s regularly finishing upper 70s or around 80% for overall shooting. Last year on the World Cup for example he was 80.9% overall with an 86.7/75.2 prone/standing split.

What does this mean for Campbell going forward? Well my hope is that he continues to grow into a future leader for Team USA. At just 21 there are several seasons before we expect to see that out of him though. For this year my expectation is that we’ll see him move into the slightly faster than average range with an overall ski ranking maybe closely to 40. Last year that was Olli Hiidensalo finishing around 0.5% faster than average. That seems reasonable. My hope is that we see the shooting catch up a little bit with his overall shooting percentage nudging up towards 82.5%. Nothing dramatic, just a little more consistency. He’s already shooting quickly, right around 27 seconds per shooting last season, good for 34th overall. We don’t need to see much improvement there at all!

The World Cup Stalwarts

These three men have really been the core of the team for several years now. While they aren’t quite up to the levels of the men that preceded them, namely Tim Burke and Lowell Bailey, they’ve been holding the fort well. And help is on the way!

Sean Doherty (28)

Entering his age 28 season, Sean Doherty should be coming into the true prime of his career. Right on schedule, it seems, he is having the best form of his career. Last year he finished 32nd Overall. It was a really nice bounce back to where he was when he started his career. Back when he was just 23 years old he finished 25th Overall. After that though he had three straight years finishing in the 50’s in the Overall. Now though, after a year with five top 20s, the 2nd most of his career, he seems to be really be moving in a positive direction.

Last year’s rebound was driven by some of the best skiing of his career which is what has me excited about his future. He finished 41st overall in skiing which was right around where he was when he had his best ever skiing year in 2015-2016. All of the metrics seem to indicate that he recaptured that form. Meanwhile, his shooting held shooting with an overall hit rate of 82.7%. Really not much different than where he has been for the last few seasons.

I can’t help but be excited for Doherty. A few years back it felt like he was riding serious potential and momentum was going to carry him to regular finishes in the top 20 Overall. So far that hasn’t materialized. It feels like the pieces are once again coming into alignment. Not only that, but it’s right when it “should” be happening. Late 20’s into the early to mid 30’s should be the prime performance of his career. Hopefully he can keep rolling towards the top. Is a top 25 Overall this season out of the question? I don’t think so.

Paul Schommer (31)

**Since this post was written Paul Schommer announced that he is delaying the start of the season as he continues to have trouble wit his knee. We will of course hope for all the best and a swift recovery!**

I have to imagine that for Paul Schommer, 2022-2023 was a season he would much rather leave in the rear view mirror. He joined the team late, not racing in Kontiolahti, trying to rehab a knee injury to avoid surgery. He fought the good fight through Worlds, but after that the same knee caused him to shut down his season early, missing the last three weeks of the season. While successfully avoiding knee surgery to start the season, it couldn’t wait any longer and he finally had the surgery in March.

The finally tally was 12 races, two top 30’s with a season’s best of 28th which he achieved twice. It was especially tough coming on the heels of his 2021-2022 successes which took him to 41st in the Overall. Interestingly though, his average finish only dropped two placed. Also, maybe even more amazing, even with what was surely a fair amount of knee pain, he still finished a little faster vs the competition in 2022-2023 than he ever had before. Last season he was 0.5% slower than the average biathlete while in 21-22, his previously fastest, he was 0.9% slower. He also managed to maintain his shooting percentage in the mid to low 80s. It was just that the knee wouldn’t let him see the season to completion.

With the knee surgery so early in the season, Schommer was able to pick up with training in April. All signs so far point to him racing the full season. If he was able to do that on a hurting knee, I am really curious to see what he’ll be able to do after a full summer of training on a healthy knee. Sure he started off behind where he would normally be, but it was still close to a full offseason of training. Hopefully he’s got a little more left in the tank. Plus maybe 1-2% better shooting when your knee isn’t aching? Maybe I’m being a little too optimistic but hey why not!

Jake Brown (31)

Next amongst the veteran triumvirate for Team USA is Jake Brown. Coming off of the two most successful seasons for Brown to date, 2022-2023 was a little set back. After finishing in the 40’s in the Overall the last two seasons, last year he slipped back to 67th in the Overall. Even though he wasn’t nearly as consistent as he was before, 22-23 delivered the 2nd best finish of his career, 20th place in the Pursuit in Kontiolahti.

When you look at the statistics there wasn’t a major slip pretty much anywhere for Brown. His skiing was remarkably consistent over the last several seasons. He’s finished either 1.3 or 1.4% faster than average in each of those three seasons. His shooting even reached a new high for him, hitting 79.2% of his overall shots. The end result though was one top 30 and two top 40’s. This comes on the heels of five top 30s and 13 top 40s the season before. I guess what this shows is that it’s a really really slim margin when you get into the middle of the pack on the World Cup!

In 2023-2024 can we expect any improvement? Well his performance has been incredibly consistent the last two seasons with skiing and shooting more or less unchanged. Hopefully we’ll see each of those just a touch better. Even if they aren’t though, and he once again is 1.4% faster than average and shooting 79-80% he’ll likely still improve in the Overall. It would seem just a tiny bit of positive regression would happen right? Well one can hope!

The Young Hopes

Speaking of hope, this crop of young American men, including the recently arrived Campbell Wright, has me more excited about United States men’s biathlon than at any time maybe in the last decade.

Maxime Germain (22)

Outside of Campbell Wright, nobody on this men’s team has me more excited than Maxime Germain. Last season was really the first time I started paying attention to him, and honestly, he was just 21 so don’t feel too bad if you hadn’t seen much either! It was also really his first extended run on the international IBU level seeing time at all three levels.

On the Junior Cup, Germain raced five times and scored four top 10s. That includes a bronze medal in the Junior Worlds Sprint. This is actually his second Worlds medal after a bronze in the 2019-2020 Youth Worlds Sprint at Lenzerheide. In addition to his Juniors success he also was a hit on the IBU Cup. He hit the IBU Cup in Brezno-Osrblie for his races of the season (after just two the prior year) and immediately had success getting 7th in the Super Sprint qualifying race and 6th in the Sprint race. He was 23rd in the Super Sprint final. He also raced the European Championships and finished 15th in the Sprint and 13th in the Pursuit. He also ran eight World Cup events including two World Championship races. He collected two top 50’s to end the season in Oslo including a career best 45th in the Pursuit.

Even just a brief read through of that and you’ll have a pretty good picture of who Germain is as a biathlete. He’s a good skier who uses that speed to his advantage. And when he shoots well, which is happening with more consistency, he’s able to really grab some solid finishes. Last season on the Junior Cup he was regularly top 10 in course time rank and regularly top 15 on the IBU Cup. Not surprisingly he wasn’t nearly as fast compared to the World Cup athletes but he was still 40-50s so he wasn’t getting blown off the course.

Meanwhile his shooting could use a little work. He’s been regularly mid to upper 70’s the last few seasons. That’s not bad. Don’t get me wrong at all. Even without improving one bit in his shooting he could still have a career finishing in the top 50 or top 40 of the Overall. I just think his aspirations are high.

I think that between him and Campbell Wright they dream of being a modern day Tim Burke and Lowell Bailey. Do I think they will reach those heights? Probably not only because those are really high highs for Team USA. Germain can be really good though. I truly think that he will have a top 20 Overall finish at some point in his career. What do I want to see next year though? How about another year getting experience racing the highest levels? Maybe get his overall skiing to about World Cup average for the season? Shooting around 80%? That would be a great start!

Vaclav Cervenka (24)

While Cervenka doesn’t have the same high profile as Wright or Germain, he’s certainly not one to overlook as a future member of the American World Cup team. Last season was another positive season for him as he got in racing both on the IBU Cup and the World Cup. Cervenka raced just seven times on the IBU Cup but he did have some good outings. This includes a 12th place Sprint in Pokljuka, just one week after Germain’s high finishes. He also had nine World Cup races with the high point of the season being his 37th place finish in the Sprint in Kontiolahti.

At this point Cervenka’s profile is like Germain but not as fast. Basically he’s a high 70s to low 80s shooter that is a bit slower than average. While Germain has shown good speed on the Junior and IBU Cup level Cervenka hasn’t shown it as much. That’s not to say he won’t show it, he just hasn’t yet. This season, with the addition of Wright and Schommer presumably being healthy, should lead to a more consistent IBU Cup season for Cervenka. With that I’m hoping that we can see some improved finishes in the top 20 range. I am not expecting a huge number of them, but like 4-5 would be a solid season and would be a good indicator that he’s making appropriate gains.

Vincent Bonacci (23)

Is the entire United States team between 21-24 years old? I mean outside of Doherty, Schommer, and Brown it really feels that way. Vincent Bonacci is another man right in the middle of that age range. He had, to me at least, a little bit of an “out of nowhere” good season on the IBU Cup. I mean he wasn’t dominant and pushing for a top 10 finish, but my expectations for him were really not that high at all. I was hopeful that maybe he could get a top 20 finish. Well he got five of them and his average finish for the year on the IBU Cup was 30th. It was a solid leap up from an average finish of 53 the season prior. He ended up 43rd on the IBU Cup Overall standings.

Bonacci good season was a result of improvements primarily to his skiing with his shooting returning to form. And for a developing 23 year old that is precisely what you want to see! Looking solely at his IBU Cup performances for this exercise we can see his skiing improving every single season. From 2.3% slower than average in 2020-2021 to right around average in 21-22 to 2.1% faster than average last season. His total shooting percentage is bounced back to 81.6% overall. That’s around where his best shooting has been. That’s with a HUGE improvement in average shooting time from 34.4 seconds to 28.6 seconds. Really solid stuff there.

I’m actually really high on Bonacci, not to be a future top 20 World Cup athlete, but to make it to the World Cup for several solid seasons. He’s putting in the work and it’s showing. Those five top 20’s were no fluke. That included a career best finish of 10th in the Pokljuka Sprint and 11th in the European Championship Sprint. This season I’m really hopeful he can again see another season of steady skiing improvement. If he can take that to about 3% faster than average that would put him top 30 in skiing. Pair that with shooting in the low 80’s and he could absolutely be top 25 on the IBU Cup next season. Marco Gross, 19th in the Overall on the IBU Cup, was 27th in skiing and shot 87%. That’s probably a bridge too far for this season, but let’s dream big!

Bjorn Westervelt (22)

We keep on rolling with the young American men with Bjorn Westervelt. With just three total IBU Cup starts in his career you could say he should be in the “True Juniors” category. I’m putting him here though because this is my website and I want to. Truthfully it’s primarily because of his performance at the World University Games. No, it’s not the top level competition. It’s not the IBU Cup. It’s not even Junior Worlds. But it wasn’t completely devoid of talent and Westervelt walked away from there with a silver in the Sprint and gold in the Pursuit.

On the IBU levels last season he raced just three times, the Junior Worlds. In Kazakhstan he finished 28, 18, and 24. He’s continued to make steady gains on the Youth and Junior level over the last five seasons with not only better finishes but more consistently high finishes.

Looking at his statistics we really only have six races over the last two seasons. However, in those races he has been improving very well on the skis. He’s moved up to 6.9% faster than average vs the Juniors. That’s is good enough to regularly be right around 10th in course tie rank. Shooting needs to move along though as he’s hit more than 80% just one time over the last two seasons. Obviously when he hits, he can compete, but for him to take the next steps, while he continues to ski well, that shooting has to come along with it. Honesty hitting like 75% would be a really strong goal.

Hopefully we see him a little more on the IBU Cup and he can work towards that. His skiing right now should translate to somewhere around Vincent Bonacci on the IBU Cup. So that, plus 75% shooting and we’ll see how another year of experience goes. He’s really young and knows how to win like he did at the World University Games. Maybe that shooting is just about to break through!

IBU Cup Stalwarts

Luke Brown (28)

The youngest of the Brown brothers, Luke Brown has been a solid member of the American IBU Cup team for the last four seasons now. 2022-2023 was a bit of an unusual season for Brown as he only competed in the European Championships and then in Canmore with no other races run. Reading his Instagram sounds like he had a bit of a tough fall and wasn’t ready to go until Lenzerheide. However, once he got there it wasn’t all that bad! In fact 2022-2023 ended up being one for the personal history books for Luke Brown. He had each of the top four finishes of his career over those last weeks of competition. The peak was 27th in one the Canmore Sprints. Don’t think it was a fluke though, he was 32nd in Obertilliach Pursuit and had 33rd and 35th at European Championships.

For Brown it was a pretty good few weeks on the skis including some of the best course time ranks of his career. In fact his 19th fastest time on the skis in the European Championships Pursuit was the very best of his career. The shooting was…not so good. He hit just 62.9% of his shots last year. That’s about where he normally has been though. Basically last year if he hit 75%, with his ski speed, he was able to race for one of the best finishes of his career.

What do we expect this year? Hard to say. But hopefully he has more of that! Plus some better shooting. More 75% shooting days please!

Scott Lacy (32)

Scott Lacy is one of those really interesting stories that you see on US Biathlon. He was a cross country skier in college. Then after college he completely retired from competition. He picked up biathlon at age 28. Now he’s racing for US Biathlon. At age 32 he had two seasons under his belt. He’s clearly competing because he loves the challenge he wants to push himself. He’s definitely not making a gigantic sum of money so this is all about continuing to love the competition. I couldn’t love it any more.

Lacy raced just seven times last year. He raced the opening weekend in Idre Fjall and then didn’t race again until Canmore. He had a season’s best of 39th in Canmore where all four of his finishes were 39th to 49th. Last year he was right around average ski speed on the IBU Cup and his shooting was just 60%. I just hope he is having fun out there!

True Juniors

As with the women we discussed how irregular racing can be for Americans on the Junior level. I’m not sure what we’ll see from these men, if anything at all?

Matej Cervenka (19)

The younger Cervenka has just six races in his IBU Career, all at Youth Worlds. Last season in Kazakhstan he finished 25th in Individual (career best!), 40th in Sprint and 31st in Pursuit. Matej Cervenka is a bit of an odd duck in American biathlon…he’s a better shooter than skier. In those three Youth Worlds races he was on average the 20th best shooter on the day while his average course time rank was 43rd. For more solid numbers that was 84% hit rate with skiing about 2% faster than average. Remember on Juniors being 2% faster than average really isn’t that fast. So for this season that’s my hope, that he, like his older brother, found some ski speed this summer and fall, and it will translate in the racing this winter!

Wesley Campbell (19)

After racing Junior Cup races each of the prior to seasons, last year Campbell didn’t line up for a single race. He hasn’t had the greatest finishes in his career with a career bets of 19th and usually finishing in the 30s to 50s. However he has shown some ability. At Youth Worlds at the end of 21-22 he was top 10 in course time each of the three races. And in general he’s been fairly quick. It’s just that shooting part of biathlon where he’s struggled to get over 60%. Hopefully if we see him race again we’ll see him hitting 70-80% with that same speed!

Van Ledger (20)

Ledger raced seven times last season on the Junior Cup in the first IBU level racing of his career. His results were generally middle of the road, finishing usually in the 50-60s. Nothing huge stood out in his performances as he was right around average on the Junior races he ran. His shooting was right at 75% which isn’t bad for this level. Let’s see where he can get to this season.

Nathan Livingood (19)

The 19 year old Livingood was a one hit wonder for US Biathlon last season. He ran just a single race, the first IBU race of his career. He raced the Individual at Youth Worlds and finished 36th. He went 16/20 shooting and was 46th fastest on the snow. Hopefully we see him for more than one race this year!

Thor Sheppard (19)

We close it out with my favorite name on the entire US Team, Thor Sheppard. Cmon Thor you gotta make it to the World Cup man! He’s run 14 Junior Cup races over the last two seasons and has a career best of 20th that he set at Youth Worlds individual this past season. So far in his career Sheppard runs about middle of the road in both skiing and shooting being a touch faster than average and hitting just under 70% of his shots.