After last night’s drama, I was relieved to have the tire chains on the car for the 10km drive up to the biathlon course. But first was clearing the car of a foot of new snow and shoveling out the sides to inspect the chains. Thankfully all looked good. A fuel up of the amazing breakfast buffet before I hit the road.
With the chains, the steep climb up to the course was no problem. My next concern was parking but thankfully a spot was open where I parked a couple days ago and then it was time for the 1km hike up the road. With the road conditions, I left early so there was I had some time to kill. A small beer and a Team USA stocking cap on the bar led to a conversation with a couple Germans. One was the father of the woman who won the first race, interesting to hear that they spent three weeks training over winter break in Norway (location of last IBU Cup race before the break). He was a former professional cyclist who was sponsored by Maloja (one of the current US sponsors and thus the stocking cap) and after retiring opened a store with them near the Austrian border in Germany. We had to wrap up the conversations due to a race!
I hiked away from the shooting range to a steep uphill and made it my cheering spot. There were a number of coaches on this hill so I tried to give them space. It was a fun spot, since this was a sprint race and there were five Americans racing, there was not a lot of down time from cheering. Hopefully I helped them a tiny bit and wasn’t too annoying. After the race I met up with Anna. Her shooting was a bit off which pushed her out of the top 60, which meant she would not be racing tomorrow. So this was goodbye for a few days, as she would be traveling to the next race location in Ridanna to train while I would make a stop at the ski area in Cortina d’Ampezzo.
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