Heartbeat: US Biathlon Podcast

Just three years ago, Susan Dunklee was a regular on the IBU World Cup Biathlon tour. Today, she’s evolving into a formative biathlon coach at the Craftsbury Outdoor Center with its Green Racing Project program. Heartbeat caught up with Dunkee at Craftsbury with the winter season quickly approaching, kicking off season five for the U.S. Biathlon Podcast.

After retiring in 2021 after an illustrious career, Dunklee took on the running program at Craftsbury. Then, last season, she returned to her roots, switching to a new role heading biathlon.

Dunklee is quick to cite balance as a key to her success as an athlete, and it’s something she finds in the program at Craftsbury. “I always needed balance in my life,” she said. “I think it's really easy to get wrapped up in the result sheet and have all your value reflected in what your most recent result says. To avoid that trap, I needed to have other interests and being able to feel connected to place, connected to community, and being able to contribute to the community. And the Craftsbury model of athlete support is, is all about that.”

As an athlete, she admits that coaching had crossed her mind. “I’ve definitely thought about it,” she said. “It's funny because when you spend so much time in one world, sometimes you forget that other options exist. But because I was surrounded by it, I was interested in it. And I had a lot of conversations over the years with (coach) Armin (Auchentaller) what is your coaching philosophy? What advice do you have? How would you deal with this situation? How do you connect with different personality types? So, yeah, I was thinking about it.”

Her Heartbeat interview covers a wide range of topics, including her philosophy on the importance of cross country skiing, the feeling of seeing one of your athletes have success, and how her program at Craftsbury could be a role model for others.

The 2023-24 season was filled with athletic advancement with personal bests across both men’s and women’s team. And with the IBU World Cup in the books, the team has headed to Bend, Ore. for on-snow training six months out from next season’s tour. Heartbeat caught up with head coach Armin Auchentaller live from Bend to analyze the team’s success, and to look forward to the season ahead.

A native of the renowned biathlon venue community of Antholz, Italy, Auchentaller has a strong background with U.S. Biathlon. A former biathlete himself, Auchentaller coached in the USA from 2009-14 before leaving to head the Swiss women’s team. He returned to U.S. Biathlon in 2018 and now leads both the men’s and women’s national team.

“I like to develop things and bring the athletes up to a very high level and succeed in the World Cup,” said Auchentaller. “I really like that journey of having athletes who come from nowhere, almost, and trying to guide them to the top level.”

The 2023-24 season was showcased with notable results by a wide range of athletes. Auchentaller methodically walks through the highlights, both celebrating the success and having an eye on the future.

The season saw Deedra Irwin claim her first top-10 World Cup. Newcomer Campbell Wright did the same, setting a new personal best six times. Campbell and Irwin teamed up for three top-10 finishes in the single mixed relay. Crossover cross country athletes Margie Freed and Grace Castonguay had strong debuts. The entire biathlon nation rose up to cheer on the men’s relay to historic finishes at the World Championships and Soldier Hollow World Cup.

What’s the secret? Auchentaller pointed to closing the gap on skiing, but also a strong focus on shooting. “That’s crucial – the shooting time of a team. Four members – four members – need to be around four minutes and a couple of seconds. Four minutes is a goal for us to accomplish.”

Auchentaller also shared his view on the Olympics coming to his own hometown of Antholz – one of the most legendary venues in biathlon.

The interview with head coach Armin Auchentaller offers more benchmarks of a team on the rise, with a new generation of biathletes making their mark on the sport. Tune in now!

This wraps up season four of Heartbeat. Thanks to U.S. Biathlon fans for listening. We’ve had some great episodes throughout the season. Check them out as you head into summer. And we’ll see you back again this fall on Heartbeat, the U.S. Biathlon podcast.

Every biathlete dreams of skiing into the range and having the crowd roar with each shot. Doing it on the snow where you grew up is all the sweeter! At the IBU World Cup in Soldier Hollow, Utah native Vincent Bonacci and his teammates had just that feeling as they skied to a best-ever fourth in the men’s relay. Heartbeat caught up with Bonacci at the end of the season to relive that magical weekend.

Some might consider the impressive Soldier Hollow finish as the luck on home snow in a sport where fortunes can rise and fall quickly. But combined with the fifth in World Championships a month earlier – well this is for real now!

Bonacci grew up on the trails of the 2002 Olympic venue of Soldier Hollow. Coming back home for the World Cup meant family and friends lining the track. It was the first event of the three days and he was skiing opening leg.

In his Heartbeat interview, Bonacci dives into his opening relay lap in great detail from the madhouse on the first lap to his strategy for making time on the field with his knowledge of the course and how he paced himself. And laughs as he thinks back to shooting clean in standing while feeling like he was standing on a waterbed!

“I thought, I would love to do well in front of my home crowd. We’ll see how this goes. I just tried to follow my process. I managed to put down all the targets with some lucky flinches there! For me, it wasn’t necessarily a super high-pressure shooting – it wasn’t terribly nerve-wracking.”

Bonacci was featured a year ago in Heartbeat S3 Ep11 on his World Cup debut. Now with two seasons under his belt, you can hear his experience and maturity kicking in as he talks about the year on the tour and his decision to finish up the season on the cross country SuperTour.

His season opened with a sixth at the IBU Cup in Finland. He made his first pursuit at the World Cup in Lenzerheide, then posted a standout finish at the Open European Championships – standing in the flower ceremony.

Listen in to this episode of Heartbeat to learn more about one of the rising stars of U.S. Biathlon: Vincent Bonacci.

“Having a couple of good relays with the team – it's a crazy feeling. It's a little bit American to watch relays and be like winning a relay is less of a personal victory. But you do it and it's like, doing well in a relay is almost like more of a victory because you get to share it with all your friends.” 

This weekend American fans will be trackside at Utah’s Olympic and Paralympic venue of Soldier Hollow as the BMW IBU World Cup Biathlon tour comes to the USA for the first time in five years. In anticipation, Heartbeat went behind the scenes at Soldier Hollow to learn more about the event – how it got back to America after five years, what it takes to put it together, and how fans can best take in the action.

The event is organized by the Utah Olympic Legacy Foundation (UOLF) along with U.S. Biathlon. Heartbeat gathered in the media center of the brand-new competition building at Soldier Hollow, overlooking the range, to chat with the experts. Calum Clark, the chief operating officer of UOLF, is a veteran of more than two decades organizing winter and summer events at the Olympic and World Championship level, starting with the 2000 Summer Games at Sydney. Sara Studebaker-Hall is a well-known figure in biathlon, a two-time Olympian, now operations director for U.S. Biathlon and the chief of competition.

Studebaker-Hall retired after the 2014 Olympics, finding a pathway for herself working in biathlon. She earned her international referee’s license in 2019, serving as assistant chief of competition for the World Cup, then moved up to oversee Youth and Junior World Championships three years later. She is also now an IBU technical delegate.

The World Cup tour last visited America in 2019 at Soldier Hollow. Then, in 2002, the IBU’s Youth and Junior World Championships came to Utah, a showcase event for upcoming future stars. Looking ahead, Utah also has its eyes on the 2034 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games, bringing the ultimate sport stage back to the state.

To get the tour to return, UOLF and U.S. Biathlon worked together with Canada to create a two-weekend finale to the season-long tour that began in Sweden last November. Over the next two weekends, final titles will be decided in events at Soldier Hollow and up north at Canmore, Alberta.

Thousands are expected over the weekend, with racing Friday, Saturday, Sunday (March 8-10) at Soldier Hollow.

Listen in to this episode of Heartbeat to learn more, including whether or not the dinosaur will return. And if you can’t get to Soldier Hollow, you can watch it all live at biathlonworld.com.

Imagine being 17 or 18 years old and traveling the world, living your life out of a duffel bag while pursuing the sport you love. That’s the life of Alaskan Elias Soule and Utah native Emily Caldwell. Elias and Emily are two of the top U.S. Biathlon junior athletes, rising up out of outstanding club programs and now taking their skills on the road. Heartbeat caught up with them at the IBU Junior World Championships in Estonia, just weeks after competing in the Youth Olympic Games in South Korea.

Soule, now 17, grew up in Anchorage, discovering biathlon around age 10. He was able to grow his skills through both the Alaska Winter Stars and Anchorage Biathlon Club programs, skiing in the shadows of role models like Gus Schumacher, who recently won a FIS Cross Country World Cup in Minneapolis. He competed in 2023 at the IBU Youth World Championships in Kazhakstan and this February at the IBU Junior World Championships in Estonia, as well as the Youth Olympic Games in Korea.

Campbell, who just turned 18, had many sport opportunities growing up in Park City, and she tried them all. She started in alpine skiing before moving to cross country with the Park City Nordic Club. Then she found biathlon and now trains with the program at Soldier Hollow. Like Soule, she made her international debut a year ago in Kazakhstan, this year competing at the Youth Olympic Games and IBU Junior World Championships.

This episode of Heartbeat comes to you on the eve of the IBU Junior World Championships in Estonia as Elias and Emily recap their adventures on the road and look ahead, with each of their careers on a different pathway for the future.

For over a decade, Susan Dunklee was a prominent face of the U.S. Biathlon Team, competing in three Olympics and winning silver at the 2017 IBU Biathlon World Championships. Now in her second season of retirement from international competition, she’s finding a joyous pathway as a biathlon coach at her longtime home at Vermont’s Craftsbury Outdoor Center. Dunklee spoke to Heartbeat about her coaching evolution and the lessons she’s learning.

Dunklee came into retirement after the 2022 season with a plan, becoming the running director at Craftsbury. But she longed to stay connected to the snow, recently transitioning into a new role leading biathlon. Already in her first season, she’s making an impact at Craftsbury and with the next generation of the U.S. Biathlon as a guest coach in the IBU Cup tour.

Following her IBU Cup guest coaching debut in January at Martell and Ridnau, Italy, she capsulized her thoughts in an impactful Instagram post that talked about the coaching environment and what she’s learned. “As an athlete, you need to be selfish. As a coach, you must be selfless.”

Whether you’re an athlete, a coach, a club leader or a fan, this episode of Heartbeat will bring you both insights and entertainment. What do you think Susan misses least from not traveling the world as an athlete? And what’s the one thing she really does miss?

This is a fun podcast with one of the sport’s true superstars. Click in now to enjoy a Heartbeat conversation with Susan Dunklee.

“As I admired the sunrise this morning, two hours AFTER starting my workday, I thought back on how many people put in these crazy work hours for me all the years I raced biathlon.”

- Susan Dunklee, Biathlon Coach

If the recent U.S. Biathlon Trials event at Mt. Itasca Winter Sports Center is any indicator, athlete development is on the upswing. Record numbers of athletes were on hand seeking to qualify for major youth and junior events. In this episode of Heartbeat, U.S. Biathlon’s Director of Athlete Development Tim Burke, talks about sustained competitive excellence as the objective of U.S. Biathlon’s strategic plan and the progress that’s being made.

Burke, a longtime athlete who won silver at the World Championships in 2013, is part of a strong athletic program at U.S. Biathlon. He works alongside Director of Sport Development John Farra and a longtime biathlete now managing high-performance, Lowell Bailey. The three all have roots growing up in Lake Placid and competing at the highest level. Now Burke is finding gratification in helping nurture the next generation to success.

At Mt. Itasca in late December, 80 athletes showed up to race – a bump of 45% from previous years. Notably, too, the field included a record 31 women - a big focus for U.S. Biathlon.

The trials offered athletes an opportunity to vie for spots on a wide range of international teams, most notably the Youth Olympic Games in South Korea and the IBU’s Youth and Junior World Championships in Estonia.

This episode of Heartbeat takes you into the heart of athlete development, representing the next generation of biathletes who will represent Team USA in the coming years.

Tim, how do you describe your role with U.S. Biathlon?

My title is the director of athlete development. However, we're a very small organization, so titles are one thing, but all of us do a little bit of everything. I work very closely with Lowell in high performance and with John Farra in sport development. But my main role is kind of working in the middle of the U.S. Biathlon pipeline – really focusing on those athletes in the middle of our pipeline who are coming up, ensuring that they have the opportunities and what they need to succeed in this part of their career so they can make a smooth transition into the senior circuit.

How does your role fit into U.S. Biathlon’s strategic plan?

Our plan of sustained competitive excellence. So what does that mean? That means taking us from an organization that has occasionally had some success for sure, that we're all very proud of, but we want to have that more consistently. And to have that more consistently, we need to be more professional. We need more athletes in our pipeline, and ultimately, we need to be able to field teams on the World Cup, at World Championships, at the Olympics, where we can field a full team of athletes who are capable of stepping onto that podium. If we can do that, we will finally win that elusive Olympic medal. But it all starts at the bottom. It all starts with grassroots. It all starts at our clubs. It all starts down there building those numbers so that we have the athletes, enough athletes coming through our pipeline that can rise to the top.

What differences do you see in athlete development today versus a few years ago?

One of the biggest differences right now, as compared to when I came through the pipeline, is we're seeing a lot more of these crossover nordic athletes transitioning into biathlon. And it's not only true for our country, but it's true for others as well. You've seen other countries have a lot of success, like Sweden, like Germany, like Slovenia right now. And we want to be a part of that, and we have been a part of that. If you look at our national team right now, if you look at the World Cup that just happened this morning, many of those athletes racing for us, racing in that US uniform, are athletes that came over from cross country at a pretty late age. A lot of them came after they finished college. You know, they were successful collegiate skiers and they wanted to try something different. And we tried to provide those opportunities for them in biathlon. And that's one thing that we are continuing to really focus on and even double down on. Here at U.S. Biathlon is making sure that we have a really [00:06:00] well-developed pathway for these talented nordic skiers who want to give biathlon a chance.

How important are venues like Mt. Itasca?

Mt. Itasca is definitely an important venue for us. They've hosted a lot of trials events for us in the past, and we've also seen a ton of athletes from Mt. Itasca, from the Minnesota area, come on to our national teams and Olympic teams in the past. I certainly think that's something we're going to continue to see in the future.

You qualified a team of three men, three women to Youth Olympic Games. What do you want to see for them in South Korea?

My goal for those athletes, the biggest takeaway I want them to have from there, is I want them to leave there just incredibly motivated to continue pursuing biathlon at a high level. I'm sure they will have that experience in Korea. You know, to be there at an event that's not only drawing the best athletes your age in the world for your sport, but to be there at an event where you have athletes from all different disciplines from all over the world is incredibly, incredibly motivating for these athletes. I'm super excited for them to have this experience.

Do you remember your first international trip?

Absolutely! I remember my first international trip was to Torsby, Sweden. It was a Scandinavian Cup at the time. I remember being incredibly nervous. But again, getting over there, having a having an amazing time, and coming back motivated and really hungry for more.

You had a record women’s field at Mt. Itasca, which has been an organizational goal, right?

Expanding the number of women in sport is definitely a big goal of ours. At U.S. Biathlon, it was great to see a record number for us in Mount Itasca. We had 31 women competing, and really nice to see some fantastic up-and-coming athletes who I wasn't really familiar with before this trials event – to see them coming up through the system and doing really well. And again, back to the competitiveness of those races, that women's race for those last team spots, for all of the team spots, really, it was tight. It really came down to the last race, and it could have gone to a lot of different women. That was just really, really cool and inspiring for me and everyone at U.S. Biathlon to see.

What gives you the most satisfaction now as an athlete leader?

Oh, that's a great question and a really tough one. It depends on the day, os I think what my answer would be. But since this one is really fresh in mind, since we just finished up with team naming, I'll give you this. It was so fun to call those athletes who qualified for our teams and chat with them and let them know that their hard work paid off and that they would be headed out soon on an international trip. Hearing that excitement in their voices was really, really inspiring for me to hear. And those are the calls, you love to make.

There are many routes into biathlon. Grace Castonguay is part of a new generation of athletes who are finding the sport and moving quickly up the ranks. A passionate runner, Castonguay only got into cross-country skiing when an injury curtailed her running. She loved it! Just a few years later, she made her World Cup debut in December 2023, racing in Hochfilzen and Lenzerheide.

When Castonguay first stepped onto skis during high school in 2019, she passionately embraced the sport. Together with her younger brother Theo, they traveled around the New Hampshire high school circuit. In her senior year, she helped the Kennett High School Eagles – Sean Doherty’s alma mater – win a state title.

The vital step in her storybook tale came when she accompanied Theo to a fall biathlon camp at Utah’s Soldier Hollow in October 2020. There, she caught the attention of coach Zach Hall, who invited her to the biathlon range. Now she was really hooked! 

She progressed quickly. The next March (2021), she raced in her first biathlon event – U.S. Nationals at West Yellowstone. In October 2021, she was the second and third junior in races at the Soldier Hollow Schutzenski trials. While she failed to make the Junior Worlds team out of trials, she doubled down on cross-country, transferring mid-year to ski for St. Michael’s College.

That December (2022), she posted strong results again during trial races at Craftsbury, qualifying for the IBU Cup and eventually the IBU Youth and Junior World Championships in Kazakhstan, where she had the top U.S. women’s results in both sprint and pursuit.

Her success on the college carnival circuit and with biathlon has created a bit of a juggling act for Castonguay, which she is embracing. As the team captain for the Purple Knights, she’s committed to the college schedule in January and February. But she is also looking to take advantage of her biathlon opportunity, going to Europe for the first races of the second trimester before heading back to ski for St. Michael’s. In the back of her mind, she realizes that the NCAA Championships in Steamboat Springs overlap with the IBU World Cup in Soldier Hollow in early March.

Needless to say, it will be a busy season. But for a young athlete who only slid on a ski track four years ago, she’s anxious to embrace every single opportunity, be that as a member of the Ethan Allen Biathlon Club, the St. Michael’s Purple Knights, or the U.S. Biathlon Team.

Here’s a sampling of what you’ll learn in this episode of Heartbeat. This is a remarkable story of a young athlete’s passion for sport and the emotions that athletic success can bring.

So, Grace, that was a long road trip!

This was my longest span of time in Europe – my longest time away from home forever. It was about a month and a half on the road.

How did you originally get into skiing?

So the punchline of this story is that I actually did not learn to ski, or step foot on skis, until four years ago. So, I am pretty much a baby in this sport. I grew up playing soccer and running cross country. When I was 14, I broke my leg playing soccer, and that kind of switched me fully into the endurance mode or lifestyle. I ran high school cross country and was really into running. I wanted to run Division 1 in college. That was my big goal. And then, because of the lasting, effects of my broken leg – I broke my tibia and fibula, which caused my growth plates to close. – running just really did not suit my body. I broke down a lot. My mom became the high school Nordic coach for our team so my brother could enter races. My indoor track season ended a little early and she was like, ‘Come on. Like, don't you want to join the team? It will look good on college resumes.’ And I figured, hey, why not? I entered my first Nordic ski race about three weeks after I learned to ski. I looked like Bambi on ice skates. 

What clicked for you when Zach Hall invited you to the range in Soldier Hollow?

I had shot a biathlon rifle before because my brother was a biathlete, but I hadn't really caught the biathlon bug at that point. So I figured, okay, why not? I'll go to this practice. I'm here. Something to do. And I went to that practice that day, and things clicked for me. I really started to see why people love this sport. One of the big things was that Zach identified that I am left-eye dominant despite being right-handed. And when I had shot a biathlon rifle before, I was shooting righty and I couldn't hit the broadside of a barn. So once we figured out that I was left-eye dominant, that made a huge difference to how I felt about the sport. And I also just really enjoyed the way he explained the process. Zach is a really phenomenal coach in a multitude of ways. He's really great at the mental aspect of sport. I remember going home that day from practice, and I said to myself, ‘I want to be really good at this.’ And I remember watching videos of Dorothy Revier and her extremely fast standing shooting time. And I was like, ‘I want to be this good someday.’ So, from that point, my goal is kind of shifted gears all in towards biathlon. There was no operating biathlon range in Jackson at that point, so my brother and I built a little range in our backyard because we live kind of in a pretty remote place, and I would just shoot.

What was your biggest takeaway from Junior Worlds?

The biggest thing I took away from competing at Junior Worlds was just how amazing the IBU sport family is. It was my first Junior Worlds. It just felt so wonderful to be part of such a rich and large group of really high-level junior athletes. I remember going to the opening ceremony, and it was it was just really cool to be there.

You’re passionate about biathlon. What does it mean for you to dig deep?

There's there's this place that has – it's a really fun place to go, and I don't get it very often. You can only capture it for a couple of races a season, where you're just like, you have this moment and I need to dig deeper than I've ever dug before. You can see it like I was never passing out at the finish line, like laying on the ground after a cross-country running race. But you push yourself so hard in Nordic skiing, and I really enjoyed that.

Did you watch videos?

Oh, yeah! YouTube basically taught me how to ski. YouTube was my best friend. I would just watch technique videos religiously and then try to capture that image in my brain and replicate it on skis the next day.

What was your debut like on Hochfilzen?

Going into the training day, I showed up and I was just, like, star-struck. There are so many cameras. There are so many superstars. And it was really hard to not get distracted on the range – like following in awe of some of the greats like Ingrid Landmark Tandrevold and Lisa Vittozzi. It was really a super cool experience. Then getting to the race day, just the noise. Oh my gosh, the noise is so incredibly loud. The sound just kind of envelops you and it's hard to hear your own thoughts. And also another really surprising thing is how many USA fans there were. I was I remember warming up on the course and just hearing USA, USA and people knew my name and that was really special.

What was your emotion when finishing your first World Cup?

I remember finishing the race and my only goal going into my first World Cup start was I wanted to recapture the feeling of pure joy that I had felt ...

In the long term plan for U.S. Biathlon, talent transfer is a big topic – cross country ski racers trying biathlon. How practical is it? Well, just look at the example of Margie Freed. Last season, the veteran Minnesota native and University of Vermont ski team alum, now part of the Craftsbury Green Racing Project, borrowed a biathlon rifle, qualified in trials for the European Championships and ended up with the best USA IBU Cup finish of the year. And she’ll start off the 2023-24 season in U.S. Biathlon’s World Cup lineup for the opener in Östersund.

For sure, it’s not THAT easy! But Freed has shown the possibilities. This season she’ll switch back and forth, starting out with FIS Cup races in Muonio, Finland earlier in November, training with the biathlon team in Vuokatti, then off to Östersund for the IBU World Cup biathlon and after that winging her way to Alaska for the U.S. Ski & Snowboard SuperTour presented by National Nordic Foundation. 

Freed grew up in the cultural hotbed of cross country skiing in Minneapolis, following her older sister into the sport. The noted Loppet Nordic program provided her a bridge from high school racing to U.S. Ski & Snowboard and eventually FIS racing. A four-year stint with the Catamounts, where she was an All America selection, led her to three NCAA Championships appearances. But it was her engagement with Craftsbury that sent her career onto a higher level.

Not only did she have the best U.S. Biathlon finish on the IBU Cup last year (19th in early February at Obertilliach, Austria), but she won a cross country national championship medal and her first SuperTour. Two years ago, she was sixth in the American Birkebeiner, just ahead of her mentor, Caitlin Gregg.

A well-spoken professional athlete, in this episode of Heartbeat, Freed talks succinctly about the value of each step of her pathway. She showcases the opportunity that presented itself through Craftsbury Green Racing Project and drills down into the details of what she learned as a first-year biathlete.

Through it all, you can feel the true enjoyment she’s taking from being an athlete competing in both cross country skiing and biathlon.

Here’s a sampling of what you’ll learn in this episode of Heartbeat.

Are you nervous for your first World Cup start?

I would say I'm a little more excited than nervous. I am really grateful to have my teammates, a lot of them along with me, so they can kind of show me the ropes. And I'm hoping to not embarrass myself too much on the shooting range compared to some of the really good sharpshooters out there.

What's the learning experience that you'll take away from competing in Östersund?

I think that being thrown in with people who are way better than you at whatever you're doing is a great way to make really strong improvements. I'm hoping to just kind of take it all in there and learn from what they're doing, see what everybody else is doing, and try and mimic that to lead me to success.

What motivated you to get into cross country skiing?

I started cross country skiing when I was about 13 years old. My older sister had joined the high school cross country ski team. I thought she was the coolest person in the world and I wanted to be just like her. So I also joined the cross country ski team. And then I went to Eastview High School and competed there, and my coach was great at introducing me to the junior national circuit, kind of so I could train with people in the greater Minneapolis area. And then I also got connected with Loppet Nordic Racing. From there I worked with Piotr Bednarski and Caitlin Gregg there, and they were great at showing me the ropes of national skiing and going to junior nationals. Then I realized I could ski in college and so I went to the University of Vermont and then to Craftsbury from there.

Once you settled into Craftsbury, it really was a remarkable experience for you, wasn't it?

It was – just seeing how dedicated all the athletes are, how understanding the coaches are, how willing they are to work with everybody's unique schedules and what works for them, and especially all of the data that they do, all the testing and all the opportunities that are offered with Craftsbury. I really appreciate it all.

How did your biathlon experience come about, and what have you learned so far?

I'm really grateful for the support and opportunities that Craftsbury provides, one of those being the opportunity to try biathlon as a cross country skier. There is a biathlon range, there is a biathlon team. And so it was very easy for me to get exposed to that sport. I was able to borrow a rifle for the first trials that I did, and that kind of led me into where I am now. Thankfully, all the coaches kind of worked with me to figure out a plan for shooting and a lot of dry fire when I'm cross country ski training mostly, and then I can add in a bit of dry fire there, so I'm able to work through that because of the support that Craftsbury has given me. Coming from a cross country skier to biathlon, it's pretty interesting to see how the skiing changes a little bit. It's more like doing intervals rather than just a ski race where you're trying to go hard all the time and you feel bad about slowing down here and there. Whereas in biathlon, you have to be very strategic about when you're going fast and then slowing down, kind of calming your body as you go into the range. That's a really interesting change, which I think has helped me as a skier in ski races, doing that transition back from biathlon to ski racing.

What counsel would you give to cross country skiers who are thinking about giving biathlon a try?

It would be sweet to kind of be an ambassador for this transfer. So the Project X Group within the biathlon team is working on switching cross country skiers to biathlon. I encourage people to give it a try because it was kind of something that not a lot of people do. And the stigma around biathlon within the U.S. cross country skiing world is a little like, ‘why would you do biathlon if you can cross country ski?’ Trying to change that mentality and make a name for myself within both worlds and do well in cross country skiing as well as biathlon is one of my goals. I’m trying to show that you can do what you want to do and making that change is something that I'm looking forward to.

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Longtime U.S. Biathlon Team athlete Maddie Phaneuf grappled with her life’s direction after retiring. A full time move into coaching wasn’t really in her plan. But, today, she enters her third season as a coach – leading one of America’s most noted biathlon programs, studying with coaches from nearly 20 nations at International Biathlon Union workshops and serving as a role model for women in coaching. Most of all, she’s feeling gratified by the experience and having fun giving back to the next generation of biathletes.

Phaneuf, who was featured in season one of Heartbeat with an episode entitled Finding Her Way Back, has truly found her way back. From introducing the sport to Alaskan children north of the Arctic Circle to teaching kids in Lake Placid how to gently squeeze the trigger, she is finding a meaningful pathway in the sport as a coach.

After losing her Olympic opportunity in PyeongChang due to race-morning strep throat, she battled with depression, stepping away from racing. During her sabbatical she volunteered on a NANANordic/Skiku trip to Noorvik, Alaska – which opened her eyes on what she had to offer as a coach. She came back in 2020-21 for one of her best seasons ever! After that season, she decided to move on. And when a coaching opportunity came her way with New York Ski Education Foundation, she jumped at the opportunity – rising up after a season to become NYSEF’s first head biathlon coach.

In this episode of Heartbeat, Phaneuf covers it all – from the success she enjoyed as an athlete to her mental health challenges after PyeongChang to her experiences working side-by-side with other coaches from around the world.

Going back in time, how did you get into biathlon?

I moved to the Adirondacks when I was eight. My family spent the first chunk of my life down in South Carolina – so the complete opposite of the northeast. I began cross country skiing at a young age and got into biathlon with the Polar Bear Biathlon Club when I was 15. That was my first introduction and I quickly fell in love with the sport and kept getting after it and trying to make Junior Worlds.

Had you considered coaching after your athletic career?

When I would think about my career as an athlete and what I wanted to do with my life – my first thought wasn't coaching. I was ‘oh, I think that's something that I don't want to do’ actually. But my first taste of coaching a little bit was when I would help the Polar Bear Ski Club. And when I was an athlete, I would go down and help with some sessions now and then during the holidays. And then my first real taste of coaching was ... I did a NANANordic program. It's basically a volunteer-based program to go up to rural communities in Alaska and bring a skiing program to them for a week or so. So that was my first real taste, and I loved it. I loved working with those kids. It was so fun and different. And so when I was retiring, or kind of in that in-between limbo of not quite sure what I wanted to do with racing or moving on stage, I was still here in Lake Placid. The former head coach, Shane McDowell, was looking for some extra support with the biathlon program. I wasn't fully training, but I also wasn't working, so I figured I would just help and kind of see if I liked it. Then that just turned into me staying with the club and being their first true head biathlon coach, and I've been loving it ever since.

Mental health is very important to you. What counsel would you give young athletes and their parents?

That's a hard question, because I just remember when I was in high school and maybe it's different now. I feel like when I was in high school the last thing I wanted to do was tell my parents anything about what I was going through. Maybe that was just my own personal relationship, because I have a much better relationship with them now and tell them everything. But I think as a parent, it's mostly important just to keep like an extra eye in a sense of like, you don't need to constantly always ask your child, like, ‘how are you doing?’ But it's important just to notice their patterns. And if something seems a little off, like notice it at first and maybe ask them or at least give them the opportunity to be like, ‘hey, you do know that my door is always open. I'm happy to talk to you about anything. And if I'm not the person you want to talk to, I'm totally happy to help you find someone else that you want to talk to.’ That's the main thing – just not expecting your child to want to necessarily open up to you because they might not feel totally comfortable. But if you notice something, at least give them the resources to know that it's okay to talk to somebody else.

You’ve now made friends with coaches from around the world in the IBU coaches program. What are your takeaways from that experience?

It’s really interesting because coming from a sport like biathlon and a lot of these, these coaches, having been involved in the sport when they were young or even recent years, we all have a similar tie. Obviously we all understand the sport. We all are in it for the same sort of reasons. We love the sport, we're passionate about it. We're obviously coaching because we want to give back to the community and want to continue growing the sport for next generations. And so it's cool because we all kind of have this similar bond and we can kind of connect over that. And the other thing that I find really interesting is learning how coaching in different cultures is so different. Like for instance, I would have never known that in Finland, for instance, this coach was saying that the athletes there are fully expected to kind of ask questions and probe why they're doing a certain thing. But for athletes who are maybe in Ukraine or Moldova, it's very much more like authoritarian type coaching, and they're not really expected to ask why they're doing a thing. They're just expected to follow what the coach informs. 

As a woman coach, you’re blazing new territory. Are you motivated to be a role model for women in coaching?

When I first heard about biathlon, the club at the time was only kids that hunted, and they were all boys. And I remember thinking, ‘okay, so biathlon is for boys and it's for people who like hunting’ – which is so wrong and not accurate at all. As I got older and was competing more, becoming a woman and an adult, looking around the world and really, truly realizing what patriarchy is and like how instilled it is in our society that men have these positions of power where women don't necessarily. In a sport like biathlon, it's very male heavy. So it kind of opened my eyes to not only within biathlon, but just the entire world and how male dominated it is in these roles where people are making decisions like coaching or officiating. I just kind of became more interested in taking up more space and being a woman in those roles. And I really, truly encourage more women to take up more space and push the boundary into coaching or officiating.

Are you still playing music?

Well, I recently picked up a piano off the side of the road this past summer. So I am dabbling back in the piano, which I've played since I was eight, so that's been very nostalgic and fun to get back into.

If you want to hear more about the piano, listen in to this episode of Heartbeat where Maddie Phaneuf talks about ...