Celebrating a new best for World Cup shooting!

Yesterday was the first individual competition of the World Cup season. I was confident after my performance in the single-mixed relay last Sunday that I could ski and shoot my way to a good result in the 15k Individual.

Great action shot of Susan in the Ostersund stadium.
Susan had the 7th-fastest ski time of the day.

Because it is a longer race, the 15k Individual requires more endurance fitness than top-end speed on skis, which suits me well right now since I am just starting to get into racing shape. Many European teams hold their World Cup team trials one week before the opening races, so those athletes must already be in peak form in order to qualify. Our team has an earlier team selection process which allows us to focus on peaking later in the season for World Championships (and also to buy plane tickets to Europe more than one week in advance). It means that sometimes we start slow relative to other teams but get progressively faster over the course of the season. Susan, pictured above, starts fast and gets even faster!

Crossing the finish line of the 15k Individual on Thursday in Ostersund.

I skied a smart race yesterday and did my best shooting so far at the World Cup level. I cleaned both my prone stages, missed one in the first standing and two in the second for a total of hitting 17/20 targets or 85%. In the Individual, there is no penalty lap but rather a 1-minute time penalty added for each miss. With three misses I ended up in 44th place, +4:52 from the race winner, Dorothea Wierer of Italy. That means she skied and shot 1:52 faster than I did. Get it? 

Hannah leads a pack of skiers on course. 

It was a great way to start the season because I know I will get much faster on skis, so I am excited to do even better. Yesterday I had the 59th fastest ski time and last year when I was in great shape at World Championships I was in the top 40 for ski time. I consider this my best World Cup result so far, because although I did get 40th in one race last year, I had a lot of luck that day in the form of avoiding wind gusts on the range and starting with a late bib number after a blizzard slowed down all the early racers.

Our next race is the 7.5k Sprint on Saturday. My goal is to finish in the top 60 so I qualify for Sunday's 10k Pursuit race.

15 Individual Results

L-R: Susan Dunklee, me, Hannah Dressigacker, and Annelies Cook