37 athletes vying for nine spots on Olympic squad

FORT KENT – First-place finishes won’t be necessary. But if you want to make the U.S. Olympic team for the biathlon, you have to shoot clean and ski fast over the course of four days and four competitions.

Starting with Thursday’s individual race, 16 men and 21 women will vie for spots on the team. They will represent the U.S. at the Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy, starting Feb. 10.

The trials for biathlon, which combines cross-country skiing with target shooting, is a four-race series of two sprints, one individual, and one pursuit.

Each athlete must compete in at least three races in order to be considered for the Olympic team because the point system that will determine the team is based on the competitor’s top three performances.

There are five spots open for the women and four available for the men. The top U.S. biathlete, Alaska’s Jay Hakkinen, has already qualified based on his results in the World Cup last year.

The team won’t be official until a day or two after the trials end. That’s because the U.S. Biathlon Association, which runs the trials, can only nominate athletes for the national team. The U.S. Olympic Committee makes the final determinations.

“We nominate athletes based on these competitions,” said Max Cobb, the USBA marketing director who is serving as the technical delegate for the trials. “[The USOC] officially selects the team. But for those that are nominated … it’s pretty much just a formality.”

Starting with Thursday’s individual competition, each race will be scored using what is called a percent back system that looks at the average of the top three times and compares each individual to that average.

“It’s done by points, basically,” Cobb said. “The athletes combine their best three races out of four and then they’re ranked according to their best three races.”

In the case of a tie, the athlete with the most points accrued in World Cup competition would make the team.

Why two sprint races? The USBA was just looking for a fourth race from which to take the top three results, as opposed to taking the best results from two out of three races. The USBA also wanted to mix up the type of races and the number of shooting stages in each race. The individual and pursuit both have four shooting stages and the sprint has two.

The U.S. has earned five spots this year compared to four at Salt Lake City in 2002. The number of starts each country gets is based on Nations Cup points, which are awarded based on the previous year’s World Cup finishes.

“That’s the result of strong performances for both the men’s team and the women’s team last year,” Cobb said.

Strong performances were what earned Hakkinen a free pass for the trials. One of the methods by which athletes can qualify for nomination is by finishing well in last year’s World Cup or World Championships. A season-ended ranking of 40th or better in World Cup, or two top-15 World Cup finishes, are enough for a nomination.

Hakkinen, a native of Kasilof, Alaska, was seventh in the sprint race at Ostersund, Sweden, in December 2004 and 15th in the pursuit at Ruhpolding, Germany, in January 2005.

This will be his third Olympics. Hakkinen’s top finish at the Games came in 2002, when he was 13th in the pursuit.