The Penalty Loop Podcast

As the 2024-2025 season rapidly approaches Polish Women's Head Coach Tobias Torgersen joined us from team training camp in Lenzerheide! In this interview we discuss:

- Thoughts on Lenzerheide and particularly the potential trickiness on the range

- Coaching anxiety as the season approaches

- What led to the Polish women having a surge in the 2023-2024 season

- How he coaches his team

- Summer progress and looking ahead towards 2024-2025!

Justus Strelow, coming off of a very exciting City Biathlon race in Dresden, joined us from the German training camp in the French Alps for a wonderful interview. He as an amazing guest and gave us tremendous insight into:

- His intro into biathlon and his journey to the top level of the sport

- His lifelong affinity for shooting and how fast and how accurate can biathletes get?

- The one missed shot that sticks with him from last season

- The current status of his training and goals for the upcoming season

- How he met his the love of his life and the secret to the best mattress for a couple. 

The first of our preseason interviews is here and it's Regina Ermits! This was a joy! With Regina we discussed:

- Regina vs. Kalev in the battle of the Ermits

- How is she so good at standing shooting?

- A new training regimen and "finding her voice" leading to 7 of the 9 best finishes of her career in 2023-2024

- Her amazing 2024 Nove Mesto Worlds

- And more!

The IBU has floated changes to how start bibs are allocated for Sprint and Individual races and it's generating some great conversation. We do our best to lay out what the changes would be as well as the perspectives of various athletes, coaches, and media members. We also share our own thoughts. Then we talk about the phenomenal Czechia summer national championships event and the different directions roller biathlon could go. Thank you go Jacques Jefferies for the social media conversation. We hit a few other news pieces before getting into the Italian, German, Czech, and Finnish national championships.

It's a touch late but we needed to catch up about the first half of the summer biathlon racing. We primarily focused on the recently completed 2024 Summer Worlds in Otepää but also briefly discussed Blink, as well as the Swedish, Belgian, and US Summer biathlon National Championships. Tune in soon for interviews and discussions on Martin Fourcade Festival and more national championships!

It is truly a quiet time in the world of biathlon but we still found a few things to chat about including:

- It's wedding season!

- RJ's EXTENSIVE breakdown of Emilien Jacquelin's shooting which is now published: https://biathlonanalytics.com/would-changing-high-risk-high-reward-strategy-pay-off-for-emilien-jacquelin/

- A preview of Jordan's Ultimate Biathlon Timeline which will be up very soon.

- Biathlon story time: Have You Ever Heard of Kari Swenson? 

This one is for the rifle nerds out there! We had on Logan Pletz and after a short discussion on his background in biathlon it turned into a deep deep deeeeeeeeep dive on rifle construction, particularly with 3D printing. Logan was so generous sharing his adventures in rifle construction including the not so successful trials. Even if you're not a rifle nerd, any biathlon fan is really going to have fun with this one! Then we close with a short bit about what next season is going to look like for Canadian biathlon. Enjoy!

We were so fortunate to be joined by the author of one of the truly unique stories in biathlon: Tara Geraghty-Moats. Sure, you might know that she was once a Nordic Combiner, but what else do you know about her journey? We discuss her start in Nordic sports at a very young age and the winding path that has brought her here to the IBU Biathlon World Cup. 

We also learn about how passionate she is about truly improving the experience of athletes including her work for Nordic Combined. We have a truly enlightening and gratifying discussion about healthcare for athletes and recovery from injury and illness.

We discuss her ability to strategize for her races and how that has impacted her ability to race her best on the biggest stages. 

If you love biathlon and the biathlon family you're going to love this. 

Surprise! We are back after just 1 week! This was actually a surprise for us as well as we didn't know we were recording it until we started. Today we discuss:

- RJ's recent deep dive on if any national wax teams or ski brands were particularly successful in this most recent season

- Coaching carousel including the Ricco Gross update, the Swiss coaching restructure, and a few other changes

- The Italian team set their roster

- Congratulations to Sebbe Samuelsson!

It's time to catch up on all of the biathlon news from May 2024 including:

- Dorothea Wierer continues through 2026 Olympics

- Stina Nilsson back to XC skiing

- Discussion of Rico Gross going to the Bulgarian team (this was recorded just hours before it was announced that he's not going to the Bulgarian team)

- Czech team coaching changes

- Early reactions to team announcements from a few nations including Germany, Canada, Austria, and USA

- Summer biathlon schedule for North America announced

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