* Rosanna Crawford, biathlete: snow, snow, snow

Who am I?

My name is Rosanna Crawford, I was born and raised in Canmore, AB and started cross country skiing by the time I could walk! At the age of 10 I started biathlon and fell in love! Something about the challenge of skiing and shooting really stuck with me and being able to hang out with your friends wasn't too bad either! At 14 I got to compete in my first National Champs and got a taste of what it was like to race on a bigger scale! By 16 I was on the National team and trying to make international teams. In 2008 I competed in my first World Youth and Junior Championships in Ruhpolding, Germany. That was when I got hooked!

I train full time out of Canmore and spend my winters racing all over Canada and Europe. Follow along as I compete and train all around the World!

Sunday, December 12, 2010

snow, snow, snow

I sit here trying to find the words that can describe my sprint race on Friday, some that come to mind are; frustrated, so close, one more shot, good effort, so close. As you might have guessed I didn't make the pursuit race. I hit 8/10 one miss prone, one miss standing and ended up 70th, about 20 seconds out of top 60. It hasn't stopped snowing since Thursday so the trails were soft and visibility was poor. I was one of the last starters and the snow and wind seemed to be coming on pretty strong right when I started. I am happy with how my skiing is improving, I am much more consistent than last year, and feel much stronger. Zina also had two penalties finishing in 62nd, Megan had 4 and finished in 80th.

snow on our balcony Wednesday evening

snow the next morning

Salmon car that didn't get moved since Thursday

Saturday was the 4X6km relay, for those of you who might not know how a biathlon relay works I will give you a quick explanation. Each person skis 6km with two shootings and for each shooting you get 3 extra bullets. So that is 16 bullets to hit 10 targets, if you still miss then it is off to the loop of shame. Our relay order was Megan, Zina, Me, Melanie. Megan had a good start using 3 spares in her standing and tagging off to Zina in 9th or 10th. Zina needed two spares for prone and had one miss in standing, so unfortunately a loop, tagging off to me in 11th. I was pretty close behind Italy as I came into my prone shooting and used two spares. Standing was clean with no spare and I tagged off to Melanie still in 11th. Mel had a good prone bout with no spares and two spares in standing. We finished in 11th. Not too bad, but with some better shooting on all our parts we could have done much better. This was a good improvement from our relay last year in Ruhpolding with the same team, still one penalty but we were 16th.

The guys raced a sprint on Friday as well, in the same snowy conditions. Yesterday was their pursuit race with some tough shooting and then today they raced their relay. Brendan was the first leg of the race, and had a great start, he used two spares in standing and tagged off to Nathan in 8th only 30 secs behind the leaders. Nathan and Scott both had some trouble in these windy conditions and ended up with some penalty loops. They finished 16th out of 26 teams.