- Sweden’s Anna Maria Nilsson, age 28, has announced that she is retiring from biathlon. Nilsson had competed in six World Championships as well as the 2010 Olympics, where she finished 16th in the sprint. This season, she had her first podium, finish on the World Cup. Her departure, along with that of teammate and former World Champion Helena Ekholm, leaves the Swedish women’s team reeling.

“This week, I have always launched into my training again,” Nilsson wrote on her blog. “It feels strange not to do so this year, but also nice. It is the hardest decision I have ever made, but it feels right.” She will spend her time this year coaching disabled skiers.

- Magdalena Neuner of Germany announced her retirement long ago, but several more athletes are joining her and the Swedes on the sidelines. Among them are Lois Habert of France, Tomasz Sikora of Poland, and Herbert Cool of the Netherlands. Ronny Hafsas of Norway, meanwhile, will focus on cross country skiing.

- Norway has named junior coach Espen Andersen Nordby as its new men’s coach, with Roger Grubben assisting with shooting. Grubben is a former national team coach who has also worked as Ole Einar Bjørndalen’s personal coach; Norway hopes that the duo can return the team to dominance in time for the Sochi Olympics. They replace Mikael Löfgren, who left the team in April; at the time, Löfgren said that the split was amicable, but he now says that he was fired.

“If we look at the last four years combined, we’ve had a good run,” Nordby said in a press conference. “The ability of the team is clearly there. Roger and I probably have a few changes to make, but the basic philosophy is there and we will continue with it. It is important to create a good team spirit where we trust each other, while still daring to take chances.”

- Norway also named its national team, and Johannes Bø will join his older brother, World Champion Tarjei Bø, for the first time on the senior team. Junior Hilde Fenne was also bumped up on the women’s side.

- Austria announced that Remo Krug will be taking over as men’s head coach. Krug formerly headed the German men’s team, and most recently was in charge of Germany’s IBU Cup women’s squad.

- Eight-time World Champion and all-around French legend Raphaël Poirée has signed on to assist Klaus Siebert in coaching the Belarus team.

VALCARTIER, Québec – Marc-André Bédard and Rosanna Crawford made the last of competition at the Canadian Biathlon Championships at the Myriam Bédard Center count, successfully skiing away from the pack and winning their respective pursuit races on Sunday.

Bédard, who started 5 seconds in front of Alberta runner-up Scott Gow, won the 12.5 k pursuit in 40:57. Gow was 1:46.1 minutes back, and both missed four shots total. Third-place finisher Vincent Blais was the second Québec skier on the podium after Bédard, and missed one shot for the best shooting of the day.

In the women’s race, Crawford (Alberta) topped Claude Godbout of Québec by 11.4 seconds in 37:48. Crawford started 15 seconds ahead as the top dog in the pursuit, and missed three shots. Godbout climbed the ranks from starting fourth to finish second, missing two shots along the way for the best female shooting percentage. Yolaine Oddou (Québec) was third (+2:16.9) with four shots missed.

Canadian Championships results

Canada’s Zina Kocher started today’s World Cup pursuit in ninth place and finished in 12th after missing just two shots over four stages. She also had the eleventh fastest ski time.

Kocher and American Susan Dunklee spent the first three loops skiing together, and hovered in the top ten; Dunklee had told FasterSkier that it was her favorite part of the race. Kocher confirmed that the U.S.-Canada partnership was a good one.

“Yes was great to ski a few laps with Susan,” she wrote in an e-mail. “We were a little frustrated about shooting clean and not moving up the positions!”

Aside from that, here’s what Kocher had to say about her race, the second-to-last of the season:

“I’m happy with the shooting. 90% is always a decent day and glad I pulled that out today. Felt a bit more tired today in skiing but still managed a pretty good ski time overall despite the softer fresh snow out there. I was having some problems every single shooting bout with snow in my sights so this was really costing me a lot of shooting time on the mat. Unfortunately there was a lot of good shooting out there with the athletes around me and it just wasn’t quite enough to move up the results page today.”

Full results

Race report

World Championships may be over but the biathlon season is not, and Tim Burke popped his best result of the season by placing fourth in a World Cup sprint in Khanty-Mansiysk, Russia today. With a single penalty, he finished 23 seconds behind Martin Fourcade of France, who won the race by shooting clean. Germany’s Arnd Peiffer and Sweden’s Fredrik Lindstrom finished second and third in a tight race, five and six seconds behind Fourcade, respectively.

Stay tuned for a race report tonight.

Results

This year’s Chief, National Guard Championships were held at Camp Ethan Allen in Jericho, Vermont, and featured 93 athletes from 19 different state teams. Here’s a quick summary of the results from Major Andrew F. Parsons, the National Guard Biathlon Coordinator:

The competition began with Sprint & Pursuit individual races, followed by
Patrol and Relay team races.  The Patrol race is unique to the military and
each team fields 1 patrol leader + 3 team members.  The Patrol team skis
together over a 15km course and stops once for prone target shooting, at
which time the Patrol Leader takes command and orders each member to shoot
one prone target in sequence.  Missed targets and missed commands result in
time penalties for a team and essentially the team is only as fast as its
slowest skier.

The top male athlete was Private First Class Wynn Roberts (VT National
Guard, Vancouver 2010 biathlete) and the top female athlete was Sergeant
First Class Erin Graham (Vermont National Guard, All Guard athlete), as
determined by the Sprint & Pursuit race results.

The team winner was determined by averaging the % back scores for the
Patrol and Relay races.  The team order of finish was (1) VT, (2) MN and (3)
ND.  This result was not certain after day #1 of team racing, the Patrol
event, where Team VT finished in 3rd place, 2 minutes off the pace.  A
strong Relay race brought them back to the front, capped with the fastest
leg of the day skied by PFC Wynn Roberts.

RUHPOLDING, Germany – Susan Dunklee led the four North American starters in the 12.5 / 15 k mass start at World Championships on Sunday, placing 16th with a single penalty. She finished 1:28 behind the winner, Tora Berger of Norway. Zina Kocher of Canada placed 23rd with four penalties.

In the men’s race, Americans Tim Burke and Lowell Bailey placed 23rd and 25th with four and five penalties.

Women’s results / men’s results

There seems to be no gray area here: just like Magdalena Neuner, Swedish biathlon star Helena Ekholm has decided to retire at the end of the season, as widely reported by Scandinavian newspapers.

“It really has nothing to do with results,” said Ekholm, who on Tuesday won bronze in the 15 k individual at World Championships. “It comes from the the heart. I unfortunately don’t have the motivation to continue to the 2014 Olympics.”

Ekholm has won 13 races, including two individual World Championship titles, and has also taken gold in several championship relays. Her departure will leave a large void in the Swedish women’s team; only one other member of the squad, Anna Maria Nilsson, has stood on the World Cup podium, and she has only done so once.

It will also be another blow to the depth of the international women’s field. Neuner, who is 25, is currently ranked first and 27-year-old Ekholm sixth.

Two-time Olympic gold medalist Evi Sachenbacher-Stehle, who also has 14 FIS World Cup wins to her name, is reportedly considering switching to biathlon. According to several German newspapers including Zeit, the 31-year-old three-time Olympian will begin training with the biathletes this spring. She did say, however, that she wanted to keep both doors open for the 2012-13 season.

Sachenbacher-Stehle has not raced on the cross-country World Cup this season, competing instead on the Alpen Cup circuit. At German national championships, she placed eighth in the two races she entered, a 5 k classic and a 10 k skiathlon.

The German women’s biathlon team is facing the retirement of star Magdalena Neuner, and is apparently pleased with the prospect of Sachenbacher-Stehle’s conversion.

“We no longer have the power we have had in the past on the women’s biathlon team.” Deutscher Skiverband Director Thomas Pfuller told Zeit. “To close the gap by 2014, we have to break new ground. Evi is taking it and trying  biathlon. We’ll see how it develops.”

RUHPOLDING, Germany – The Canadians didn’t hit their goals in today’s men’s relay, but they did hit a lot of targets, only skiing one penalty loop thanks to the use of ten spare rounds. The team ended up 13th, 3:20 behind the winning Norwegians.

Marc-Andre Bedard started things off for Canada, and struggled on the range more than his teammates: he used a total of four spares and skied the team’s only penalty. With the 15th-fastest course time, he didn’t drop as low as some of the race’s other shooting-challenged competitors – for instance Sweden, which was a shocking 28th at the first handoff – but tagged in 20th position.

JP Le Guellec turned in a strong performance to move the team up to 12th, using a single spare round and skiing the ninth-fastest time of all second-leg racers. His effort was on par with the best: he only lost 0.9 seconds on the leaders.

Scott Perras gained the team another spot despite using three spare rounds, then Nathan Smith finished things off by using two and leaving the team in 13th position; he had maintained the 11th-place spot through the final stage, but flagged on the last 2.5 kilometer loop, getting passed by the U.S. and the Czech Republic.

Results

Full race report

Le Guellec about to pass Kazakhstan coming out of the range.