Roster Named for Final World Cup of 2022-23 Season
by Bill Kellick
Maxime Germain races at the 2023 IBU World Championships in Oberhof, Germany (photo by NordicFocus)
The 2022-23 biathlon season wraps up in Oslo, Norway, this weekend with an eight-person roster representing the U.S. The four-day event begins on Thursday, March 16, and will feature sprints, pursuits and mass starts.
Named to the BMW IBU World Cup women’s roster for Oslo by the U.S. Biathlon International Competition Committee were Deedra Irwin (Pulaski, Wis./National Guard Biathlon), Joanne Reid (Grand Junction, Colo.), Kelsey Dickinson (Winthrop, Wash./Craftsbury Green Racing Project) and Chloe Levins (Rutland, Vt.).
On the men’s side, the U.S. will be represented by Sean Doherty (Center Conway, N.H./National Guard Biathlon), Jake Brown (St. Paul, Minn./Craftsbury Green Racing Project), Maxime Germain (Chamonix-Mont Blanc, FRA/National Guard Biathlon) and Vincent Bonacci (Salt Lake City, Utah/Crosscut Mountain Sports Center Elite Team). Germain is coming off two top-five individual performances at last week’s IBU Junior World Championships, winning a bronze medal in the junior men’s sprint and finishing fifth in the junior men’s pursuit.
"The world cup final in Oslo will decide the overall world cup rankings and athletes will get one last shot to try and reach the world cup podium,” said U.S. Biathlon Director of High Performance Lowell Bailey. “This week, it will be great to see Maxime Germain hit the start line fresh off of a bronze medal at the junior world championships in Kazakhstan over the weekend. Also last week, we saw Sean Doherty post his second-best finish of the season…a 14th place in the individual in Oestersund and he is now knocking at the door of the world cup overall top-30."
Both Irwin and Brown return to action after post-world championship bouts with COVID. Meanwhile, National Team athlete Paul Schommer (Appleton, Wis./Crosscut Mountain Sports Center Elite Team) is undergoing season-ending knee surgery and will miss the world cup in Oslo.
Competition at the BMW IBU World Cup in Oslo gets underway with the men’s 10-kilometer sprint on Thursday. Live coverage can be found at https://www.eurovisionsports.tv/ibu/, and below is the full event schedule:
Thurs., March 16 – Men’s 10km sprint (10:15 a.m. EDT)Fri., March 17 – Women’s 7.5km sprint (10:20 a.m. EDT)
Sat., March 18 – Men’s 12.5km pursuit (7:45 a.m. EDT); Women’s 10km pursuit (10:10 a.m. EDT)
Sun., March 19 – Men’s 15km mass start (7:50 a.m. EDT); Women’s 12.5km mass start (10:10 a.m. EDT)