The Penalty Loop Podcast

It's time to recap the 2023-2024 Biathlon World Cup season! Here in part 2 we discuss the women including:

- Lou Jeanmonnot announcing herself as a contender now and in the future

- Lisa Vittozzi finishing off one of the most remarkable career comebacks in biathlon history

- Lena Haecki-Gross in year 10 of her career becomes the best Swiss woman in biathlon history

- Ingrid Landmark Tandrevold just misses out on the Globe

- Justine...

It's our 100th Episode! We recap our journey of where we started and everything that has happened over the last 100 episodes. A big THANK YOU! To everybody who has listened and joined us along the way!

We also cover 2 pieces of big news:

1) Christian Gow, Biathlon Canada mainstay, announced his retirement

2) Tarjei Boe is back! Please check out my very personal thoughts on this here: https://penaltyloop.com/2024/04/08/tarjei-boe-my...

It's time to recap the 2023-2024 Biathlon World Cup season! We broke our recap up in 2 parts rather than giving you one massive nearly 3 hour podcast. Here in part 1 we discuss the men including:

- JT Boe's 5th Overall title was better than you may have thought

- Some young men showing off including Eric Perrot, Tommaso Giacomel, and Campbell Wright

- Tarjei Boe completes the 2nd best season of his illustrious career

- Emilien Jacq...

We head back to Canmore for one more episode! This time around we do our normal discussion about the racing but this time we have interviews! We discuss:

- Exhausted athletes

- JT Boe winning the Globe in style

- Anna Gandler continues to shine

- The French and Italians close out the season very strong

- Lisa Vittozzi and Lou Jeanmonnot giving us a preview of next season?

- Late season redemption for Hanna Oeberg and Marketa Davido...

In part 1 of our recap of the conclusion of the World Cup biathlon season in Canmore we have story time with RJ! He shares the tales of his weekend mixing and mingling with fans, athletes and coaches and gives us the sense of what it was like on the ground as the greatest biathletes in the world converged on Canada. In this episode we hear:

- His day by day and race by race memories

- Hear about some of the athletes that he was abl...

Biathlon returns to North America and the racing was absolutely electric. It absolutely left us breathless so we had to wait and record a little later so we can recover! This week we discussed:

- The epic Men's Pursuit race including JT Boe and the Emilien Jacquelin experience

- The Lou Jeanmonnot weekend and what would have to happen for her to win the Overall

- US Biathlon on an upswing

- Justine Braisaz-Bouchet appreciation 

- E...

It was a rainy and fairly gross weekend in Oslo, but it was another thrilling weekend of racing! This week on the pod we discussed all of the action including:

- The really exciting state of the Overall races with it being completely undecided with 2 weekends to go

- Did Tandrevold fix her shooting and is she now the prohibitive favorite? If not her who is the top challenger?

- Will Tarjei Boe topple his brother?

- Christiansen's e...

Anna Gandler was so kind to grace us with her time this week! We covered many fun topics with the up and coming Austrian biathlete including:

- Her spectacular 2024 World Championships in Nove Mesto by every aspect of racing.

- Getting a new rifle this season and learning to adapt to it.

- A delicious discussion on German/Austrian snacks

- Running a successful social media account as an athlete

- Discussing new ski technology

- Wha...

After a thrilling conclusion to the 2023-2024 Biathlon World Championships in Nove Mesto our heads were absolutely spinning. As we covered the first half of the events on part 1, after covering some big picture take aways we tried to focus on the races and stories from the 2nd half starting with the Individual races. Some of the items discussed included:

- JT Boe is still the boss

- Julia Simon's lightning shooting gives her a supe...

The Nove Mesto World Championships are here and we couldn't be more excited. There were already so many stories and things to discussed so this is an absolutely jam packed episode including:

- Waxing once again taking center stage

- Julia Simon is absolutely unbeatable right now

- Sturla Holm Laegreid's emotional gold medal

- JT Boe's comeback in the Pursuit

- Baiba Bendika!!!!!

- Franziska Preuss and the German ski situation

- Bel...

Come take a lap with us on our most unusual (and hopefully fun!) episode to date. 

- We start out by discussing the actual racing that occurred this week on the IBU Cup and Junior Cup including Johan-Olav Botn, Simon Kaiser, and the dominant Austrians on the Juniors level.

- We discuss the sad news of the Trevor Kiers retirement

- We do some preview work on the impending World Championships in Nove Mesto with some really intriguing...

During what was supposed to be a bit of a quiet time in biathlon there was simply too much news! We dusted off the mics and got together to discuss the really important news of the week including:

- The heartbreaking and infuriating story of Joanne Reid's sexual abuse and harassment by a member of the US Biathlon wax tech team

- The Youth Olympic Games and some great Canadian performances

- A new ski/binding technology from Madshus...

Shortly following the completion of the racing in Antholz we got together to chat about all of the action from the week including:

- Lena Haecki-Gross getting her first win!

- Julia Simon is coming on really strong

- But don't lose sight of Lou Jeanmonnot!

- Johannes Dale-Skjevdal's insane last lap in the Mass Start

- A bit of  Norwegian men's team discussion including JT Boe looking more like JT Boe, Christiansen looking really gr...

After one of the thrilling complete weekends of biathlon racing in the last several years we of course put together our longest podcast of the season. There was just so much to talk about! Breaking from what has become our normal back and forth we decided to go race by race to make sure we didn't miss any of the big moments incuding:

- Simon vs. Elvira in the Women's Relay

- The chaotic 3rd leg of the Men's Relay and Jordan's rant ...

Recorded the night before racing started in Lenzerheide, Polish Women's Head Coach Tobias Torgersen very generously granted us far more time than we had any right to expect or a fantastic interview. In this discussion we touched on:

- Coach Torgersen's personal history including growing up a fan of cross country and biathlon racing

- We discuss his coaching career as he quickly moved up the ranks including his time with the Chinese...

Merry Christmas! We got together just before the holiday weekend to share our thoughts on the first trimester and all of the action from Oestersund, Hochfilzen, and Lenzerheide! We discussed many many things including:

- Did wax affect the racing so far this season?

- Our favorite moments of the season (so far!)

- Our thoughts on some of the top men/women of the season

- Athletes who look to have taken a step forward

- Athletes who...

The World Cup makes the first ever visit to Lenzerheide and we are here to break it all down! In this episode we discuss

- The amazing Justine Braisaz-Bouchet weekend

- JT Boe is back on top

- Emilien Jacquelin is Emilien Jacquelin

- Norwegian men had some adventures with the rifle and RJ gives a breakdown of the rules issues at play and exactly what happened

- We finish up with some rapid fire thoughts on some athletes with bright...