Three Dartmouth alumnae will compete for the U.S. at the Winter Olympics as part of a 10-person biathlon team, the largest team the U.S. has sent in 22 years.
Hannah Dreissigacker ’09, Susan Dunklee ’08 and Sara Studebaker ’07 will compete in Sochi, Russia. The five men and five women on the U.S. Olympic Biathlon Team will try to win an Olympic biathlon medal, something no American athlete has ever done. The best individual finish from an American came in 2010, when Jeremy Teela placed ninth in the 10-kilometer sprint.
A combination of cross-country skiing and rifle shooting, the biathlon has military roots.
“I think that we’re poised to do really well,” Studebaker said. “But anytime you go into the Olympics, it’s really hard to say for sure.”
Big Green women’s cross country skiing coach Cami Thompson Graves said she was not surprised that the three women are on the Olympic team.
Graves credited the mentality of Dartmouth’s program with fostering a large crop of Olympic hopefuls. Skiers are encouraged to race outside the intercollegiate circuit, she said.
Sochi will be Studebaker’s second Olympic appearance. In the 2010 Vancouver Winter Games, Studebaker had the highest finish among Americans in the 7.5-kilometer race, and started for the team in the 4x6 kilometer relay.
After graduation, Studebaker earned a spot on the development team for the U.S. Biathlon, then joined the national team. She credits Dartmouth for her professional athletic development.
Dreissigacker has strong Olympic roots. Both of her parents, Dick Dreissigacker and Judy Geer ’75 Th’83, were Olympic rowers. Her aunt, Charlotte Geer ’80, qualified for the 1980 Moscow Olympic Games and the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games, ultimately earning silver as a rower in 1984 and becoming the first Dartmouth woman to win a medal.
Dreissigacker, who majored in engineering and studio art, graduated from the Thayer School of Engineering a year after finishing as an undergraduate at Dartmouth.
“My time on the Dartmouth Ski Team taught me so much about what it takes to be a good athlete, and also how to have fun doing it,” she said. “If you can be a good athlete while also juggling classes and labs and a social life at Dartmouth — then you can definitely be a good athlete after you graduate.”
After leaving Dartmouth, Dreissigacker joined an elite cross country racing team based in Vermont to train full time. She said she transitioned to competing in biathlons because she enjoys the nuance that shooting adds to racing.
At the World Cup in Italy two weeks ago, Dunklee surprised onlookers when she missed a sprint medal by just six-tenths of a second, marking the third time than an American woman cracked the top four.
“The Olympics are something I have dreamed about for a long time,” Dunklee said. “My father was an Olympian and I always had him to look up to as a role model. However, my focus these last few years has not been so much about making the next Olympic team as preparing to be a strong contender once I get there.”
Dunklee, a biology major, and Studebaker, a government and Latino and Caribbean studies double major, highlighted the difficulties and challenges of biathlon competition as the reasons they compete in the sport.
The psycological component of shooting makes the event a lot more unpredictable than a normal race, Dunklee explained. “For example, if you hit the first four out of five targets you might think ‘oh, I only have to hit one more to clean and avoid the penalty loop,’ but the second you start thinking like that, it becomes nearly impossible to hit it because you are tensing up with anticipation, or you broke your breathing cadence, or your focus has drifted away from crucial things like having a smooth trigger squeeze.”
For Studebaker, the dichotomy of the physicality of cross-country skiing and the mentality of shooting attracts her to the sport.
“You’re basically sprinting 100 meters, then trying to thread a needle,” she said.
As biathletes, Dreissigacker, Studebaker and Dunklee train six days a week and sometimes twice a day, logging 25 hours of physical activity per week in addition to shooting practice.
“Biathlon requires two very different skill sets: striving to the utmost limit of physical endurance and staying mentally centered and relaxed under high pressure,” Dunklee said. “You have to be able to switch between those two opposing modes in an instant.”
The 2014 Sochi Olympics kick off on Feb. 7, and the first biathlon event will be the men’s 10-kilometer race on Feb. 8. The next day, the Dartmouth trio will compete in the 7.5-kilometer sprint.
