It’s going to be a busy New Year for the Wasatch Back as Park City prepares to host the 2019 World Freestyle and Freeski Championships and then right on its heels is the Biathlon World Cup in Soldier Hollow. Melissa Allison has more:
A Biathlon World Cup hasn’t been held at Soldier Hollow since 2001. It will be the final World Cup event before the World Championships are held and some 90 female and 90 male athletes are making their way to compete in the event that got its start in Austria 60 years ago.
This is only the second time Soldier Hollow has hosted the event. U.S. Biathlon Executive Director Max Cobb said it’s only back because of the generosity of the Utah Olympic Legacy Foundation.
“Biathlon is incredibly popular in Europe and there are huge crowds and the organizers make a lot of money so, it’s a competitive race to be able to hold events,” Cobb said. “In addition to that, we hadn’t been able to get a license for events until the Utah Olympic Legacy Foundation took Soldier Hollow under its wing and they’ve invested about a million-in-a-half so far in improvements there to make sure that the venue is up to current standards and make ready to host the World Cup.”
The World Cup starts on Valentines Day and Cobb said the stadium and range is exactly the same as the 2002 Olympics, but the course has been altered.
“We’ve made some changes in the course because it lets us use terrain that was used by our sister sport, cross-country skiing so we can make the layout a lot more spectator friendly using some of the cross-country terrain,” Cobb said. “So, we’ve changed the course a little bit, but the fundamentals are still the same.”
World Cup biathlete and 2018 Olympian Clare Egan got her start as a cross-country skier but started training with the U.S. Biathlon National Team in 2014 and hopes to qualify for the event in February.
“We’ll have seven other World Cups prior to the one that we have here in Salt Lake,” Egan said. “So, I’ll be doing my best at those to make sure I can compete here in the U.S.”
Egan said if you’re a good cross-country skier you’d also do well in this fast-growing sport.
Cobb said right now there is a six-day camp right now in Soldier Hollow with 25 high school kids from all over the western region, including Alaska.
For the first time, NBC will be showing all of the World Cup races starting in December through March.
Time trials are being held this week – the final one taking place on Friday morning.
I’m Melissa Allison, KPCW News.