A standout cross country runner and skier from Wisconsin, Deedra Irwin picked up biathlon at age 25. Now, seven years later, her poise and confidence are readily apparent as she talks to Heartbeat about the World Cup season ahead.

Now a seasoned veteran, she’s coming off a season that saw her score her first top-10 World Cup finish, moving up 20 places in the season rankings.. She also recorded her 100th World Cup start last March in Oslo. And she teamed up with rising star Campbell Wright for a pair of top-seven single mixed relay finishes.

A frequent guest on Heartbeat the past few seasons, Irwin’s smile showcases the joy she is finding in the sport today. In the midst of the final dryland camp before the World Cup season begins in late November at Kontiolahti, Finland, Irwin shared stories of her passion for biathlon, the success she enjoyed last season, and reflected back to her historic seventh-place finish at the Olympics in Beijing. Most of all, she exuded the happiness she is finding in the sport today.

Staff Sergeant Irwin also discussed the value she’s garnered as a soldier athlete in the Vermont National Guard and the World Class Athlete Program (WCAP). The program has provided her with strong athletic support and an opportunity to benefit from cross-pollination among athletes from other sports.

Heartbeat also welcomed a new co-host, U.S. Biathlon Communications Manager Sara Donatello, with this episode.

Our hour with Deedra Irwin was one of the most joyful interviews yet in five seasons of Heartbeat. Settle in to enjoy this Heartbeat episode with one of biathlon’s great stars.

Just three years ago, Susan Dunklee was a regular on the IBU World Cup Biathlon tour. Today, she’s evolving into a formative biathlon coach at the Craftsbury Outdoor Center with its Green Racing Project program. Heartbeat caught up with Dunkee at Craftsbury with the winter season quickly approaching, kicking off season five for the U.S. Biathlon Podcast.

After retiring in 2021 after an illustrious career, Dunklee took on the running program at Craftsbury. Then, last season, she returned to her roots, switching to a new role heading biathlon.

Dunklee is quick to cite balance as a key to her success as an athlete, and it’s something she finds in the program at Craftsbury. “I always needed balance in my life,” she said. “I think it's really easy to get wrapped up in the result sheet and have all your value reflected in what your most recent result says. To avoid that trap, I needed to have other interests and being able to feel connected to place, connected to community, and being able to contribute to the community. And the Craftsbury model of athlete support is, is all about that.”

As an athlete, she admits that coaching had crossed her mind. “I’ve definitely thought about it,” she said. “It's funny because when you spend so much time in one world, sometimes you forget that other options exist. But because I was surrounded by it, I was interested in it. And I had a lot of conversations over the years with (coach) Armin (Auchentaller) what is your coaching philosophy? What advice do you have? How would you deal with this situation? How do you connect with different personality types? So, yeah, I was thinking about it.”

Her Heartbeat interview covers a wide range of topics, including her philosophy on the importance of cross country skiing, the feeling of seeing one of your athletes have success, and how her program at Craftsbury could be a role model for others.

The 2023-24 season was filled with athletic advancement with personal bests across both men’s and women’s team. And with the IBU World Cup in the books, the team has headed to Bend, Ore. for on-snow training six months out from next season’s tour. Heartbeat caught up with head coach Armin Auchentaller live from Bend to analyze the team’s success, and to look forward to the season ahead.

A native of the renowned biathlon venue community of Antholz, Italy, Auchentaller has a strong background with U.S. Biathlon. A former biathlete himself, Auchentaller coached in the USA from 2009-14 before leaving to head the Swiss women’s team. He returned to U.S. Biathlon in 2018 and now leads both the men’s and women’s national team.

“I like to develop things and bring the athletes up to a very high level and succeed in the World Cup,” said Auchentaller. “I really like that journey of having athletes who come from nowhere, almost, and trying to guide them to the top level.”

The 2023-24 season was showcased with notable results by a wide range of athletes. Auchentaller methodically walks through the highlights, both celebrating the success and having an eye on the future.

The season saw Deedra Irwin claim her first top-10 World Cup. Newcomer Campbell Wright did the same, setting a new personal best six times. Campbell and Irwin teamed up for three top-10 finishes in the single mixed relay. Crossover cross country athletes Margie Freed and Grace Castonguay had strong debuts. The entire biathlon nation rose up to cheer on the men’s relay to historic finishes at the World Championships and Soldier Hollow World Cup.

What’s the secret? Auchentaller pointed to closing the gap on skiing, but also a strong focus on shooting. “That’s crucial – the shooting time of a team. Four members – four members – need to be around four minutes and a couple of seconds. Four minutes is a goal for us to accomplish.”

Auchentaller also shared his view on the Olympics coming to his own hometown of Antholz – one of the most legendary venues in biathlon.

The interview with head coach Armin Auchentaller offers more benchmarks of a team on the rise, with a new generation of biathletes making their mark on the sport. Tune in now!

This wraps up season four of Heartbeat. Thanks to U.S. Biathlon fans for listening. We’ve had some great episodes throughout the season. Check them out as you head into summer. And we’ll see you back again this fall on Heartbeat, the U.S. Biathlon podcast.

Every biathlete dreams of skiing into the range and having the crowd roar with each shot. Doing it on the snow where you grew up is all the sweeter! At the IBU World Cup in Soldier Hollow, Utah native Vincent Bonacci and his teammates had just that feeling as they skied to a best-ever fourth in the men’s relay. Heartbeat caught up with Bonacci at the end of the season to relive that magical weekend.

Some might consider the impressive Soldier Hollow finish as the luck on home snow in a sport where fortunes can rise and fall quickly. But combined with the fifth in World Championships a month earlier – well this is for real now!

Bonacci grew up on the trails of the 2002 Olympic venue of Soldier Hollow. Coming back home for the World Cup meant family and friends lining the track. It was the first event of the three days and he was skiing opening leg.

In his Heartbeat interview, Bonacci dives into his opening relay lap in great detail from the madhouse on the first lap to his strategy for making time on the field with his knowledge of the course and how he paced himself. And laughs as he thinks back to shooting clean in standing while feeling like he was standing on a waterbed!

“I thought, I would love to do well in front of my home crowd. We’ll see how this goes. I just tried to follow my process. I managed to put down all the targets with some lucky flinches there! For me, it wasn’t necessarily a super high-pressure shooting – it wasn’t terribly nerve-wracking.”

Bonacci was featured a year ago in Heartbeat S3 Ep11 on his World Cup debut. Now with two seasons under his belt, you can hear his experience and maturity kicking in as he talks about the year on the tour and his decision to finish up the season on the cross country SuperTour.

His season opened with a sixth at the IBU Cup in Finland. He made his first pursuit at the World Cup in Lenzerheide, then posted a standout finish at the Open European Championships – standing in the flower ceremony.

Listen in to this episode of Heartbeat to learn more about one of the rising stars of U.S. Biathlon: Vincent Bonacci.

“Having a couple of good relays with the team – it's a crazy feeling. It's a little bit American to watch relays and be like winning a relay is less of a personal victory. But you do it and it's like, doing well in a relay is almost like more of a victory because you get to share it with all your friends.”

This weekend American fans will be trackside at Utah’s Olympic and Paralympic venue of Soldier Hollow as the BMW IBU World Cup Biathlon tour comes to the USA for the first time in five years. In anticipation, Heartbeat went behind the scenes at Soldier Hollow to learn more about the event – how it got back to America after five years, what it takes to put it together, and how fans can best take in the action.

The event is organized by the Utah Olympic Legacy Foundation (UOLF) along with U.S. Biathlon. Heartbeat gathered in the media center of the brand-new competition building at Soldier Hollow, overlooking the range, to chat with the experts. Calum Clark, the chief operating officer of UOLF, is a veteran of more than two decades organizing winter and summer events at the Olympic and World Championship level, starting with the 2000 Summer Games at Sydney. Sara Studebaker-Hall is a well-known figure in biathlon, a two-time Olympian, now operations director for U.S. Biathlon and the chief of competition.

Studebaker-Hall retired after the 2014 Olympics, finding a pathway for herself working in biathlon. She earned her international referee’s license in 2019, serving as assistant chief of competition for the World Cup, then moved up to oversee Youth and Junior World Championships three years later. She is also now an IBU technical delegate.

The World Cup tour last visited America in 2019 at Soldier Hollow. Then, in 2002, the IBU’s Youth and Junior World Championships came to Utah, a showcase event for upcoming future stars. Looking ahead, Utah also has its eyes on the 2034 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games, bringing the ultimate sport stage back to the state.

To get the tour to return, UOLF and U.S. Biathlon worked together with Canada to create a two-weekend finale to the season-long tour that began in Sweden last November. Over the next two weekends, final titles will be decided in events at Soldier Hollow and up north at Canmore, Alberta.

Thousands are expected over the weekend, with racing Friday, Saturday, Sunday (March 8-10) at Soldier Hollow.

Listen in to this episode of Heartbeat to learn more, including whether or not the dinosaur will return. And if you can’t get to Soldier Hollow, you can watch it all live at biathlonworld.com.

Imagine being 17 or 18 years old and traveling the world, living your life out of a duffel bag while pursuing the sport you love. That’s the life of Alaskan Elias Soule and Utah native Emily Caldwell. Elias and Emily are two of the top U.S. Biathlon junior athletes, rising up out of outstanding club programs and now taking their skills on the road. Heartbeat caught up with them at the IBU Junior World Championships in Estonia, just weeks after competing in the Youth Olympic Games in South Korea.

Soule, now 17, grew up in Anchorage, discovering biathlon around age 10. He was able to grow his skills through both the Alaska Winter Stars and Anchorage Biathlon Club programs, skiing in the shadows of role models like Gus Schumacher, who recently won a FIS Cross Country World Cup in Minneapolis. He competed in 2023 at the IBU Youth World Championships in Kazhakstan and this February at the IBU Junior World Championships in Estonia, as well as the Youth Olympic Games in Korea.

Campbell, who just turned 18, had many sport opportunities growing up in Park City, and she tried them all. She started in alpine skiing before moving to cross country with the Park City Nordic Club. Then she found biathlon and now trains with the program at Soldier Hollow. Like Soule, she made her international debut a year ago in Kazakhstan, this year competing at the Youth Olympic Games and IBU Junior World Championships.

This episode of Heartbeat comes to you on the eve of the IBU Junior World Championships in Estonia as Elias and Emily recap their adventures on the road and look ahead, with each of their careers on a different pathway for the future.

For over a decade, Susan Dunklee was a prominent face of the U.S. Biathlon Team, competing in three Olympics and winning silver at the 2017 IBU Biathlon World Championships. Now in her second season of retirement from international competition, she’s finding a joyous pathway as a biathlon coach at her longtime home at Vermont’s Craftsbury Outdoor Center. Dunklee spoke to Heartbeat about her coaching evolution and the lessons she’s learning.

Dunklee came into retirement after the 2022 season with a plan, becoming the running director at Craftsbury. But she longed to stay connected to the snow, recently transitioning into a new role leading biathlon. Already in her first season, she’s making an impact at Craftsbury and with the next generation of the U.S. Biathlon as a guest coach in the IBU Cup tour.

Following her IBU Cup guest coaching debut in January at Martell and Ridnau, Italy, she capsulized her thoughts in an impactful Instagram post that talked about the coaching environment and what she’s learned. “As an athlete, you need to be selfish. As a coach, you must be selfless.”

Whether you’re an athlete, a coach, a club leader or a fan, this episode of Heartbeat will bring you both insights and entertainment. What do you think Susan misses least from not traveling the world as an athlete? And what’s the one thing she really does miss?

This is a fun podcast with one of the sport’s true superstars. Click in now to enjoy a Heartbeat conversation with Susan Dunklee.

“As I admired the sunrise this morning, two hours AFTER starting my workday, I thought back on how many people put in these crazy work hours for me all the years I raced biathlon.”

- Susan Dunklee, Biathlon Coach