A Milestone Para Biathlon Season Continues With This Week’s World Championships In Pokljuka

Seven of the top American Para Nordic skiers have made their way from Italy to Slovenia to compete in the next leg in their European racing schedule.

U.S. Paralympics Nordic Skiing has brought a team consisting of six sit skiers and a standing skier to the International Biathlon Union’s Para Biathlon World Championships in Pokljuka, Slovenia. The competition starts Thursday with the 7.5-kilometer sprint race and runs through Sunday.

For the Americans, it has been a quick turnaround to get ready for the world championships, leaving them little time to stop and enjoy the alpine scenery. They competed at a world cup event in Val di Fiemme, Italy, that wrapped up on Feb. 2 — giving them only four days to rest before they start racing again in Pokljuka.

“All our athletes are coming out of Val di Fiemme with some great momentum and having gained some good experience and having a sort of warmup going into world championships,” said Eileen Carey, director of U.S. Paralympics Nordic Skiing. “These races will be a great opportunity to build on the experiences from Val di Fiemme.

“For some athletes, this might mean trying to have peak performances, and for others, they are working on small incremental adjustments to improve in some key areas.”

The U.S. team that will compete at the world championships includes four Paralympians in standing skier Dani Aravich and sit skiers Kendall Gretsch, Erin Martin and Aaron Pike. Paralympic hopefuls Michael Kneeland, Ty Wiberg and Nicole Zaino, who are all sit skiers, round out the group.

A Paralympic gold medalist in both Nordic skiing and the triathlon, Gretsch heads into the world championships as one of the favorites following a strong showing in Val di Fiemme. She won a gold medal in the biathlon sprint pursuit event on Jan. 29, and she earned another gold four days later in the 10K cross-country skiing classic race.

She also took the bronze in the cross-country skiing sprint classic race on Feb. 1.

Gretsch, a seven-time Paralympic medalist, won’t have to worry about racing against perhaps her biggest rival at the world championships. Oksana Masters, the most decorated U.S. Winter Paralympian of all time and Gretsch’s teammate, has been sidelined this season after undergoing a medical procedure.

“Kendall is an incredible athlete, and biathlon is something she excels at,” Masters told the IBU website. “If anyone can challenge her, I’d say Anja Wicker from Germany. She’s a fantastic biathlete with years of experience and success. However, Kendall will still be tough to beat in this category.”

For relative newcomers like Kneeland, Wiberg and Zaino, the world championships will provide them with an opportunity to gauge their progress over the past few years. It will also allow them to see how they fare while racing against some of the world’s top sit skiers at a large international competition.

Kneeland, a teenager from Bozeman, Montana, is the youngest of the seven Americans who’ll compete this week in Pokljuka. He trains regularly with Wiberg and Zaino at Crosscut Mountain Sports Center in Bozeman, where U.S. Paralympics Nordic Skiing is based.

“For any major event, we always hope it is an opportunity for athletes to practice what they have been working on in all areas of sport,” Carey said. “This can be what they are working on in their shooting process or technical skills and also how they are fueling and their mental skills in approaching a major championships event.

“We are excited for this opportunity, and we have a great staff here to support them in all areas. For those who are experiencing their first world championships, there are always a lot of learning opportunities, and we look forward to working with athletes to capitalize on those to improve moving forward.”

This week continues the first season in which Para biathlon is entirely governed by the IBU. The athletes have 11 races over four events and get an opportunity to compete at esteemed venues such as Pokljuka. The courses, which run through a spruce forest with the Julian Alps in the background, have long been used for IBU World Cups, but this will be the first time Pokljuka will host an IBU Para Nordic skiing event, Carey said.

Not that the Americans will have a lot of time to enjoy the venue.

Following the biathlon world championships, the team returns to Italy next week to compete in the FIS Para Cross-Country World Championships in Toblach, from Feb. 12-14, and then skiers head to Norway for a pair of competitions, including the season’s third and final world championship event.

For now, though, they’re taking it one event at a time.

Carey said the U.S. skiers and staff have loved the opportunity over the past few days to familiarize themselves with the Pokljuka venue as well as the surrounding area.

“The organizers are very experienced and welcoming, the courses are fun and fast, and the range is world-class,” Carey said. “Plus, the views and sunshine are hard to beat, and the little town of Bled is beautiful. We couldn’t ask for a better situation for a major event.”

Alex Abrams has written about Olympic and Paralympic sports for more than 15 years, including as a reporter for major newspapers in Florida, Arkansas and Oklahoma. He is a freelance contributor to USParaNordic.org on behalf of Red Line Editorial, Inc.