Susan Dunklee shoots in prone position during a race at the Canadian Nationals last season. Photo by Max Cob
Susan Dunklee of Barton is home on a break from competition with the U.S. Biathlon Team in Germany. She just missed making it on the team that will compete in the Olympic games in Vancouver, but that doesn’t mean her season is over.
The United States will send four women and four men to Estonia in March to compete in an event for European championships for people under age 26. She is pretty confident she will be on that team.
On Monday evening she was on her way home and did an interview from her cell phone while waiting in Chicago for a flight.
Ms. Dunklee has decided to do the Craftsbury ski marathon on January 30, for fun.
Consistently a strong Nordic ski racer, Ms. Dunklee was recruited to try biathlon in 2008. Biathlon is a ski race with shooting stages in the middle of the race. Missing a shot means the skier must do an extra loop, or in some cases a missed shot means a minute is added to the end result.
“You’ve got to plan ahead when you’re racing,” she said. A kilometer ahead of the shooting stage, it’s important to slow down a bit and get your heart rate and breathing more under control. In the last 200 yards it is particularly important. The shot is made sometimes prone, and sometimes standing.
“It’s almost Zen-like in a way,” she said. The shot is timed so that you pull the trigger in the instant after completely exhaling, because at that second your body is still and the shot will be true.
It’s important to shoot as quickly as possible because the overall time includes the shooting time.
“It’s entirely a mental sport in so many ways,” she said. “My Dad used to tell me racing is 90 percent mental.”
Stan Dunklee was in the 1976 and 1980 Olympics as a Nordic skier.
Ms. Dunklee has been writing about her experiences on the Internet, and her entries can be read at susandunklee.wordpress.com.
A personal best came in the Czech Republic, when Ms. Dunklee came in twentieth in the IBU cups races. IBU stands for International Biathlon Union, and Ms. Dunklee’s finish in the 7.5-kilometer sprints that day was the best for anyone on the women’s team representing the United States.
A 7.5-kilometer sprint includes one prone stage, one-third of the way through the race, and one standing stage, two-thirds of the way. The guns are .22-caliber long rifles, extremely accurate and adjustable.
On the blog, Ms. Dunklee explains the process each competitor uses to sight in the guns each day. This is from an entry in the fall:
Before each practice, we ‘zero’ our rifles by shooting on paper. The coaches help us with a scope by watching where the shots fall on the paper. They tell us how many clicks we have to turn the sight knobs and in what direction. We adjust the setting of our sights so that what we see through the sights corresponds to the center of the target. Each day has a slightly different zero because variables such as temperature, wind, and lighting conditions, all affect the accuracy of the rifle. Each time you come in to shoot during a practice or a race, you have to assess the conditions (wind and lighting) and determine whether or not they have changed since you zeroed. If they have, you have to ‘take clicks’ to adjust for the changes. It takes a lot of practice to get a feel for how many clicks to take and even the most experienced shooters still struggle with it sometimes. I am very much a rookie in this regard.
Ms. Dunklee has been living at Lake Placid, New York, and training all over the country. Biathlon has been a wonderful opportunity to travel, and she said one of her favorite places so far has been Banff National Park in the Canadian Rocky Mountains.
“I need to get back there in the summer to do some hiking,” she said. Ms. Dunklee graduated in 2008 from Dartmouth, where she studied ecology. She did a semester in Germany as part of her college experience, so the Olympic trials was not her first trip to Germany.
On Sunday, January 10, Ms. Dunklee got the news that she had not made the U.S. Olympic team. Originally, there were supposed to be three race results that would determine the team. One was a time trial with the other U.S. teammates, and two others were with international competitors. The third race was supposed to happen on that day, but a thick fog had rolled over the area, making it impossible to shoot. It seemed clear that the officials would announce another race for the next day to make their decision, but they did not. Instead, the biathletes, gathered in the hotel hallway, found out from an e-mail, the officials had decided to make their determination based on the first two races, which had not been Ms. Dunklee’s best.
Crushed at first, Ms. Dunklee turned to her friends on the U.S. team who also did not make the Olympic team: BethAnn Chamberlain of Caribou, Maine, and Tracy Colliander Barnes of Durango, Colorado. It was a moment when they understood each other more than anyone else in the world could. In fact, Ms. Dunklee said, it’s even harder on Tracy because she is a twin, and her twin sister made the team.
Six women were trying out; three made it.
She said the U.S. teams are both strong, and two of the biathletes for the U.S. were women she had skied with at Dartmouth.
The men's U.S. team is particularly strong this year. Tim Burke of New York is a World Cup points leader, which is rare for the United States. He happens to be dating a member of the German women’s biathlon team, so everywhere they went in Germany they were super stars.
Biathlon is huge in Germany, she said. Children grow up learning it in school, and everyone watches it and knows the athletes.
“It’s the most watched sport behind soccer,” she said.
She said it seems to be growing somewhat in the United States as well. The challenge that shooting adds makes the sport incredibly interesting and fun, she said.
Biathlon courses are being set up for children in New Hampshire and Rutland with paintball guns and targets.
The Dreissigackers, who bought the Craftsbury Outdoor Center and made it into a nonprofit organization, set up a biathlon course there. Their son, Ethan, is a strong competitor, Ms. Dunklee mentioned. She said he is headed for junior world championships in Sweden.
One question for Ms. Dunklee is whether she will continue in the sport, and try again four years from now. Her two friends who just missed the team are in their late 20s.
She said it’s hard to know how things will be.
“There’s going to be a big mix-up in the coaching staff,” she said.
The last paragraph of her most recent blog post addresses the question of trying again to make the U.S. Olympic team in four years:
Will I be here again four years from now? Hard to say. That seems an awfully long time from now, but it’s a possibility. It’s easy to direct frustration towards the decision makers and the rules system, but Sarah Konrad had some great words of wisdom for me. She is a former Olympian who just missed the cut in 2002 but returned to kick butt and qualify in 2006. Her philosophy is simple: “You were ‘on the bubble.’ You have worked hard, and were close to making the team... Let this experience make you stronger and more determined. Next time, don’t risk being on the bubble. Be the best.”
