U.S. drawing a bead on glory in biathlon

[Drizzt]

U.S. drawing a bead on glory in biathlon

Next month a program to develop American athletes into world-class competitors in the sport will be tested.

By Lew Freedman
Tribune staff reporter
Published January 27, 2002

MIDWAY, Utah -- Jay Hakkinen lives in an apartment as spartan as a prison cell in this small community adjacent to the Soldier Hollow biathlon venue for the 2002 Winter Olympics.

It has a mattress, a stool, a phone and, on a wall, a picture of a maiden sniffing a flower. Hakkinen, one of the United States' leading hopes for the country's first biathlon medal, bought the picture for $15 after talking the seller down from $25. Except for the anguished $600 expenditure for a new rifle scope, Hakkinen parts with pennies sparingly.


Hakkinen cheerfully figured out that when the Salt Lake City Games conclude before the end of February, he will be broke. Then he paused.

"Wait. What am I talking about? I'll be $25,000 ahead," he said.

That is the amount the U.S. Olympic Committee has pledged to any American gold medalist. Hakkinen, 24, of Kasilof, Alaska, would not be the only one immeasurably enriched if he scored an upset of Everest-like proportions at the Games. A biathlon medal, or even a top-10 performance, by any American would be concrete proof that an 8-year-old program to target, teach, grow and polish teenaged prospects into world-class biathletes is paying dividends.

When Algis Shalna became a U.S. national team assistant coach in 1991, the American team was populated with older athletes who made no mark on the international scene. He said the U.S. groups going to the 1992 and 1994 Winter Games were "teams without hope." Indeed, Shalna said he acquired perhaps 20 percent of his gray hair during those troubled times.

In 1994, after becoming the national coach, Shalna embarked on a different path. He scoured the nation for young talent. He attended the junior Olympic cross-country ski championships, seeking converts. He searched in Alaska, where the national biathlon program was once headquartered, and in other hotbeds of nordic skiing.

Shalna, 42, a Lithuanian who was a member of the old Soviet Union's national team between 1980 and 1986, talked to receptive 15-, 16- and 17-year-olds. Train with me, he said, stay dedicated, and you will become an Olympian. You can win a medal in Salt Lake City.

And now, said Hakkinen, who in 1997 won this country's only world junior championship, it's time to put up.

"For eight years I've been thinking of Salt Lake City," said Hakkinen, an Olympian in Nagano in 1998 as well. "The future of [U.S.] biathlon is heavily dependent on this Olympics. It's hard to fund a program [whose competitors finish near the bottom in competitions]. We have to have results to keep the program going. We were especially made and bred for biathlon and for this Olympics."

Prized pupils

At December's six-day, four-race Olympic trials here, four of the eight members of the U.S. team who scored best--Jeremy Teela, 25, of Anchorage; Andrea Nahrgang, 24, of Wayzata, Minn.; and Rachel Steer, 23, of Anchorage, plus Hakkinen--were athletes who traded normal teen pursuits and lifestyles for biathlon.

Shalna said Hakkinen and Teela have the squad's best chances for a medal. Program director Max Cobb said this is by far the strongest U.S. team ever.

Not so long ago, Americans scoffed at how Russians identified athletes only slightly removed from the cradle and nursed them into Olympians. Now that idea is being adapted to American needs.

In Shalna's mind, Teela was the cornerstone, the embodiment of what he was after.

Teela was a dominant cross-country skier, a junior national champion. Often, biathletes acquire shooting the .22-caliber rifle as a secondary skill, but Teela learned to shoot on ranges and through bird hunting at an early age.

Biathlon combines the heart-pounding activity of cross-country skiing with the heart-slowing activity of shooting at 4-centimeter-wide targets from a distance of 50 meters. The contradictory disciplines are the crux of the sport. Nahrgang said biathlon "is like running up 10 flights of stairs and then trying to thread a needle."

Teela initially resisted Shalna's blandishments, but by 1996 he was on board.

"I thought, `That's the kid I was looking for,"' Shalna said. And he told Teela, "You have the potential to be good."

He was right.

Teela placed ninth in the 2001 world biathlon championships sprint, the highest American world championships finish in any event since Josh Thompson's 1987 silver medal, the U.S.' only true world-level success.

Teela attended Anchorage's Robert Service High, a perpetual skiing power in the city of 260,000. Hakkinen's home of 400-plus people is located on the more rural Kenai Peninsula, some 150 miles from Anchorage. They first met in high school and have been friendly rivals ever since, rooming together on the road in Europe.

The 5-foot-11-inch, 180-pound Teela has brown hair, blue eyes and a laid-back demeanor. Probably his most valuable attribute is staying as calm shooting prone and standing as he does in daily life. He understands biathlon requires long-term commitment.

"The Russians are 30 and have shot for 15 years," Teela said. "I've shot for six years. In biathlon it takes years to enhance your shooting and your skiing. It takes patience."

Teela joined the Army in 1996 and became part of the World Class Athlete Program. He calls himself a "soldier-athlete" and is assigned to the Vermont National Guard. He could be called up for duty in Afghanistan at any time, though the Army has made it clear that for now his job is being an Olympian.

When Steer was 15, she began competing in Europe. Her parents handed her a credit card and put her on a plane to Slovakia. It was, she said, "a unique adolescence."

Nahrgang ran track as a youth, began skiing at 14 and was happy in that sport until she was introduced to biathlon at 17. "I was a natural shooter," she said.

Nahrgang advanced so fast she won a national title when she was a junior competitor. Nahrgang, another member of the Army program who is attached to the Minnesota National Guard, says she is still mastering biathlon and thinks "we are just now seeing the results" of the search for young talent.

The gender gap

Shalna does not consider the women as far along as the men. They have had no international accomplishments on the scale of Hakkinen's and Teela's. "They're not as strong," he said.

Seeking a way to make a quantum improvement, Steer boldly left the national team last year to train with a private coach in Europe. A redhead chosen to model U.S. team Olympic uniforms, Steer owns 12 American junior and senior titles and scored World Cup points overseas in December.

Coming into the trials, Steer had not lost a race to another American woman in more than two years. She expected her races at Soldier Hollow to vindicate her overseas training program. Instead, Steer did not win a race, although she accumulated more points than any woman.

This was not the first time Steer was shaken at Soldier Hollow. While rollerblading on the paved trails here last summer she encountered a rattlesnake. Trials week was almost as nerve-wracking. Steer cried over her skiing. A six-course, four-hour New Year's Eve dinner with her mother Bonnie during a break in the trials proved soothing.

Steer followed the "exquisite" meal by closing the trials by hitting 30 straight shots spread over the last two races. By the last day she was exhausted and emotionally drained, but she was smiling.

"Oh, my God," she thought. "I'm going to the Olympics."

Hakkinen may have the best chance to shine in Salt Lake.

He is Teela's height, but at 155 pounds he weighs 25 pounds less, making it difficult to swallow his claims that he has consumed 64-ounce steaks at a nearby restaurant. However, when he was accused of having teammates help him the first time, Hakkinen devoured a four-pound hunk of meat again.

Hakkinen possesses a dry wit and often disparages his work ethic, saying his biathlon motivation is avoiding a 9-to-5 job. At home, he said, he would have to work as a commercial fisherman in Bristol Bay hauling in sockeye salmon.

Hakkinen prefers to slave away at biathlon, and he keeps up his training on rare trips home. The house is isolated enough to pull out the .22, stand on the deck and shoot pine cones off trees. How close are the neighbors?

"Not within gunshot range," Hakkinen said.

Despite mediocre World Cup results since the trials, Hakkinen, who has scored numerous top-20 finishes and a handful of top 10s on that circuit, likes to think that he is within gunshot range of a memorable Olympic result.

Now that Americans have waxing experts, massage therapists, training facilities and high-caliber coaching, he says they should be able to compete with the world's best.

"It's not standing on the line expecting voodoo to win," he said. "We have the staff. We have the resources. Now it's on the athletes' shoulders."

He just hopes his shoulders are broad enough.

http://chicagotribune.com/news/natio...438jan27.story

So that's where that .50 caliber rifle that was found came from.....

[hksigwalther]

To our team, I say Good Luck. Bring home the gold.