FORT KENT – At least one Aroostook County resident is excited by the coming of a second biathlon World Cup to the 10th Mountain Ski Center in 2009.

Like many of the Maine Winter Sports Center team members competing at this week’s North America and U.S. national championships, Grace Boutot was a forerunner at the 2004 World Cup.

The 16-year-old Fort Kent resident and Maine Winter Sports Club team member knows she probably won’t be old enough or have enough experience to compete in the World Cup but just watching three years ago was inspiration enough.

“It was crazy. There was so much energy and the atmosphere was amazing,” said Boutot, who is home schooled but runs cross country and skis for Fort Kent. “It made me realize how popular biathlon is. We don’t realize it [in the U.S.] because we don’t have many races here.”

Boutot said there are still people in town who aren’t familiar with the sport.

“It’s up on the mountain, so they don’t come up here,” she said Friday after a morning training session. “But I think the World Cup brought a lot more people to come up and see what biathlon really is.”

Boutot, who finished just two points away from making the U.S. team for the world junior championships, has been coached by some of the U.S. Olympians and World Cup competitors, including twin sisters Lanny and Tracy Barnes and Brian Olsen, who have all lived and trained at the 10th Mountain facility.

“It’ll be great to watch them,” said Boutot, who credited MWSC coach Gary Colliander with helping her improve in just her second year of competition.

Postponements to be publicized

Although it’s highly unlikely, the approaching snowstorm – the 10th Mountain Ski Center could see up to 18 inches of snow early this morning into this evening – there could be postponements for today’s 10 a.m. start for the sprint events.

Any spectators planning to attend the races can tune to WAGM-TV and Channel X radio for postponement notices. In Fort Kent, tune to 103.1 FM. Channel X in Caribou is 97.7 FM and 102.3 FM in Madawaska.

Barnes seeing red

No, Lanny Barnes isn’t crazy or upset, no matter how red her eyes may look during a biathlon competition.

Barnes, a member of the 2006 U.S. Olympic team and a former Maine Winter Sports Center team member, has been using red-tinted contact lenses during biathlon races this season. The lenses, called Nike MAXSIGHT, are made by Bausch and Lomb and were introduced last summer.

The lenses supposedly reduce glare and sharpen images.

“They’ve been great,” Barnes said after she placed second overall in Thursday’s 15-kilometer senior women’s individual race, which was held in overcast, rainy weather conditions. “They were good on a day like today. They really helped brighten up everything.”

Barnes, whose twin sister Tracy plans to be fitted for the lenses this year, said plenty of World Cup athletes asked her about the lenses during the season.

Some of the Eastern Europeans she came across while wearing the red lenses were caught off-guard by Barnes’ red eyes.

“They thought I was part wolf or something,” the Durango, Colo., native said with a smile.

Charters may be on tap

The World Cup competitors who come to Fort Kent for the 2009 World Cup will do so in the middle of a brutal travel stretch. That’s why the organizing committee will look into chartering a plane to fly athletes directly to the airport in Presque Isle.

The mid- and late-season schedule will send athletes from the world championships in Pyeong Chang, Korea, to a World Cup in Vancouver, British Columbia, to World Cup in Fort Kent, and then on to Holmenkollen, Norway, for another Cup and then the series final in Khanty Mansiysk, which is in the Siberia region of Russia.

A charter would fly from either Vancouver or Montreal straight to Northern Maine Regional Airport in Presque Isle.

The organizing committee chartered a flight from Lake Placid, N.Y., to Presque Isle in 2004 to ease the travel from one World Cup to the next. Athletes pay their own way.

The 2009 travel schedule apparently won’t deter Norwegian star Ole Einar Bjoerdalen from competing in Fort Kent, which he did in 2004. U.S. Biathlon Association executive director Max Cobb asked Bjoerndalen about his 2009 plans at a World Cup in Norway last week, and the five-time Olympic gold medalist said he planned to be in Fort Kent and stressed that transportation for athletes going from Vancouver to northern Maine be considered.