Jakob Ellingson: Nova Mesto

From one new bed to another, from one plane to another, from one country to another; the last two weeks have been an adventure, easily the craziest of my life so far! It began with a flight from Minneapolis to New York, then across the pond to Munich. I had to do a little paperwork with the German customs officers so that I could travel around the European Union with my rifle. After that was taken care of I met up with the rest of Junior National team, and we drove in a van to Ruhpolding, Germany.

After a week of training we had our first race of the trip. British Military Biathlon Nationals was really just a warm up race to get us ready for the bigger races later in the adventure. My race went well; I hit 8 out of 10 targets, and skied pretty well. I would have been 5th, behind a few seniors from the Ukraine and Wynn Roberts, a senior from the USA who was traveling and training with us, if I had started the race when I was supposed to!! It was probably the most embarrassing moment of my biathlon career so far. I missed my start by about 6 minutes.

After that disappointment we got in the van and drove to Nova Mesto in the Czech Republic, the venue for the IBU European Open Championships. Nova Mesto is another beautiful World Cup venue, host to several important events every year. Vlad Cervenka, the Junior National coach is originally from the Czech Republic, so he knew almost all of the race officials and his way around town. We stayed in a nice little hotel just outside of Nova Mesto, whose owner is friends with Vlad. Just like last year in Austria, I was blown away by the quality of the food in Europe!

Here I am getting sidetracked again, back to skiing and biathlon. We had two German, and one Czech wax tech working with us for the races at the IBU European Champs. They did a great job with the skis, in all four of my races over the last week I had some of the fastest skis out on course. The snow conditions were tricky, but we had a secret weapon. The US Biathlon team exclusively gets a special grind from a shop in Europe that was right on every day this week.

Race 1: The 15k Individual. I felt and skied like a super hero and stayed almost on pace with the best of the Europeans during the first two laps, and then remembered that you don’t always get away with that in biathlon. My shooting wasn’t on the same level as my skiing, probably because I was skiing too fast.

Race 2: 10k Sprint. I did a little bit better job pacing this race, and the shooting was a little better, but still not what I know I am capable of. 44th place was good enough to qualify for the pursuit, and that was a minor victory for me.

Race 3: 12.5k pursuit. As the week wore on the wind started to pick up. By the time the pursuit rolled around shooting was tough even if you made sure to ski the range approach easy. Considering how poorly I shot, I was surprised that I only moved down 3 places compared to the sprint.

Race 4: 2X6k+2X7.5k relay. Another rough day for me on the range, when I came in to shoot standing the wind was blowing the coaches scopes over. I had a good day on my skis though.

Even though my results weren't that great, I learned so much from these races. By the end of the week I was a lot more comfortable with all the official procedures that come with this higher level of racing. After the relay we packed up and I rode to Prague with Vlad for the night. 24 hours ago the team had split up for different flights to different destinations, so I was again on my own. Unfortunately I didn’t have the right permits and paperwork to fly my rifle out of Prague, so I got to spend a good hour and a half being escorted around by Czech police officers until we worked it out. I made it onto my flight with only a few minutes to spare, connecting in Zurich was easy, and luckily the Swiss didn’t make me show any paperwork on the way thru.

I’m at home right now, and will be for a few more hours before I leave to go hang out in Sochi! I will write another update in a few days from Russia.

Until then!

Photos by Kelsey Dickinson.

About the author... Jakob Ellingson, who has been training with Loppet Nordic Racing and the US Junior National Biathlon Team, is entering his first PG year. His trip to Biathlon World Juniors last year fueled him to put in even more time training and chase after another shot at World Juniors, and the World Cup Circuit in the future. Following him on Facebook and Twitter.