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Heartbeat takes you inside the world of the unique Olympic sport of biathlon - a sport that combines the heart-pumping aerobics of cross country skiing combined with the precision element of marksmanship. The US Biathlon podcast brings you close to the athletes to dissect one of the most popularity of Olympic Winter Games sports.
S4 Ep4 - Lowell Bailey
[00:00:00] Tom Kelly: I just love this time of year when the snow sports world travels to Finland for a final tune-up before the grueling five-month season. Today we're heading to Vuokatti, Finland for the final U.S. Biathlon team camp before the season opener in Kontiolahti. And with us today is world champion and now director of high performance Lowell Bailey and Lowell. Welcome to Heartbeat.
[00:00:21] Lowell Bailey: Great to be here, Tom.
[00:00:23] Tom Kelly: So you're in Vuokatti. Kind of set the scene a little bit. Do you have any daylight going, or what's the vibe up there?
[00:00:31] Lowell Bailey: There's not much daylight to speak of, but there is a lot of snow, which is really the reason we came here. So, lots of snow. We've just received a couple of bouts of natural snow, which, actually when we planned this camp, we're really just relying on or expecting the saved snow that they save over the summer and then push out on the trails here in early November. And they do a great job. The organizers, the venue operators do a great job, and it's a great chance for our athletes to train alongside some of the world's best biathletes because a lot of different countries come here to train and fine-tune before the start of the season.
[00:01:16] Tom Kelly: Has Vuokatti become a little bit of a hub of the pre-season for different national teams?
[00:01:22] Lowell Bailey: Yeah, absolutely. Um, they do a great job. Um, Finland has a great culture and heritage of cross-country skiing, so their venues are just top-notch, world-class venues. And so because of that, you see a lot of the the big teams from Central Europe making the trip up here to train in places like Vuokatti, Muonio, over in Norway. There's a few of these big venues, but a lot of the world's teams are are up in Scandinavia right now.
[00:01:59] Tom Kelly: Well, we're going to come back and talk more about the US biathlon camp in Vuokatti. But first I want to reflect back on last season. Some great memories last year, some great athletic accomplishments across the team. And if you could maybe highlight some of the points that stand out for you from the prior season.
[00:02:16] Lowell Bailey: Yeah, I mean, I think we had a really good step forward last year. Um, there's the U.S. Biathlon Team has gone through a lot of transitions over the last few years coming out of Beijing. Um, we had some veteran athletes, especially on the women's side, Susan Dunklee, Clare Egan retiring, and we were really in a rebuilding phase for a couple of years there. But I feel like last year was really the point where we saw what the future of this current generation of the U.S. Biathlon Team is, has the potential to do. And we just caught glimpses of that last year. Um, when you see the diversity, I guess, of results. So you had veterans like Deedra Irwin, with a top ten, eighth place. Her best ever result on a World Cup course. And then you had newcomers to the sport, like Margie Freed who, you know, is really new to the sport of biathlon. Like, you know, less than a couple of years now. And that's incredible that she was able to even, uh, make a spot on the World Cup team, let alone get that 32nd place in Soldier Hollow. So, to be in the World Cup points with that level of experience just speaks to her, yeah, just her rapid development. And then on the men's side, uh, I think you can't talk about last season without without. Campbell writes, um, kind of really these flashes of brilliance that he had throughout the season and, you know, two top tens and eighth place in Oslo flower ceremonies at Soldier Hollow. Um, and then I think maybe one of the other really exciting things is, is just looking at this men's relay relay squad that, um, there's I think that's something unique again, that we saw last year for the first time of just the depth on the men's side, which came through in really some of their historic best results in the relay.
[00:04:35] Tom Kelly: I wonder if you could talk a little bit more about the relay. And to me, one of the things about that event that just so stands out to me is the fact that it's not a one-man show. It takes four athletes to have strong results. And in a team that's really building itself up now into this new next generation, to get those kind of finishes from a men's relay team is really a positive sign for the future.
[00:04:58] Lowell Bailey: Yeah, absolutely. It's a testament to how hard they've worked over, you know, the last. So again, we've got a really interesting mix of newcomers and then veteran athletes that have been on the team for, in some cases, several Olympics. And, it's a very potent mix of talent. But yeah, you're right. The relay is all about consistency. You can have if you have a star performance, but then you have another leg of the relay where you know someone is not performing, then you're out of the game. And, that's what we're really working on. That's what we worked on throughout the summer, is just really trying to shore up some of those weak points and establish consistency both in ski speed and shooting accuracy, and we saw it last year several times where it was one of those two variables that just was just slightly, slightly off. And that's the difference between podiums and almost podiums.
[00:06:13] Tom Kelly: It seems like just yesterday that we were at Soldier Hollow cheering on the relay team, but you've had a full 6 to 8 months of preparation now leading up to the opening of the World Cup in Kontiolahti. Kind of walk through what you've done with the team this spring, summer and into the fall to get them ready for the season ahead.
[00:06:33] Lowell Bailey: So, you know, I think this season was all about building a training camp schedule to complement, you know, the year- long training schedule. So you have camps that are that are spaced out throughout the training season, which starts in May and is concluding now. And those camps all have a focus. They all have goals. And then in between those camps, of course, the training continues. And it's really a bridge from one camp to the next to the next. So we tend to look at our training year as defined, as defined by the camps they're in. And so it started with the bend, Oregon camp, which is such a great start to the season. It happens in May. Bend is a magical place. It has it has late-season snow. And so what tends to happen is you have late-season snow, but spring-like temperatures, spring-like sun. And it makes for a great couple of weeks of skiing in the sun. The goal there physiologically every year is really just building base hours. And It May is really about that. It's putting in it's putting in a lot of grueling hours. And so if you can put in those grueling hours in, in the sunshine on a really good snowpack, that makes it a lot easier. Another really high point of that camp was the collaboration with Team Canada. And also the U.S. Ski Team holds their camp there simultaneously. So we were able to combine efforts and have some great collaborative training sessions with both teams.
[00:08:28] Tom Kelly: Did Jessie Diggins try her hand at biathlon.
[00:08:32] Lowell Bailey: I don't I don't believe so. I wasn't able to make it out there, but but they did have a shared community event where they were able to the teams were both able to kind of, you know, interact with the community and, and have a, a great opportunity to, um, interact with what is a great community, a great ski community.
[00:08:58] Tom Kelly: Yeah, it really is. I love the collaborative stuff. We talked with John Farra on Heartbeat a short time ago about the laser rifle program, and getting that out at some of the cross country events where you can reach kind of a mass population, but going back to biathlon camps, you also you had a huge camp in Lake Placid this spring.
[00:09:15] Lowell Bailey: Yes, that was that was a sort of the, I won't say experiment, but it was the first time that we did a camp like this. And the goal was you can't do this all the time, but in limited ways, I think it can really boost all different levels of our sport. And let's not forget that our sport and our community are quite small. So we may have a national team, but we have development athletes, senior athletes training in some of our top clubs and also junior athletes all over the country that are that are training as well. But the goal of this camp in Lake Placid in June was to bring together. Um, really the top senior athletes in the country. Not only the national team, but a group that we've designated the National Development Group. And essentially, when you put those two groups together, what you have is biathletes that competed internationally last year or the year before, as it were. And so it was a large camp with a large variance of experience. So that was something that you don't always do. But I think it was great for some athletes that were less experienced to train alongside veteran, um, senior national team members. And then the other part of that camp that was, uh, was really great was we've, um, we've recently started a partnership with the Montana State University and their physiology department led by Professor Jim Becker.
[00:10:59] Lowell Bailey: They came out to Lake Placid. And they bring, you know, the top of the line, top notch physiological testing equipment and use the facilities there at the US Olympic and Paralympic. Um, center in Lake Placid. And we've done this before. We've done this for the last two years with our national team. But this year we opened it up and actually did a lot of this performance testing with our National Development Group athletes as well as our X Program athletes. The X program is that talent transfer program where top cross country skiers, they come, they try the sport of biathlon. They get a really in-depth, sort of rigorous view of biathlon and and hopefully gain a small passion for it and that's our aim, and then they can grow that passion. So he had all those groups there, all those groups went through the performance testing. And it was just a really good, really good large camp. It felt like we kind of took over the training center, which is a place where you often have, uh, bobsled luge, a lot of other winter sports. But for that period of time, it felt like it was just biathlon.
[00:12:29] Tom Kelly: What a great program. I want to just touch a little bit more on the testing program, and it's great to see you're able to do that. Performance testing. Now that you've been able to do this with some athletes over a couple of years, are you able to utilize this in kind in of your training and preparation plans for the individual athletes to maybe give them more measurable markers as they move forward?
[00:12:51] Lowell Bailey: Absolutely. I think really impressed at the degree of not only effort, but just sort of ingenuity that Jim and his students apply to this. It's really, really fun to work with their team because, um, they, they bring such joy to the work, and, um, and they're really helping our athletes get better. I mean, it's really impactful, actionable stuff that they're uncovering. Um, each athlete is getting measurable data that they can act on. So to say that a different way, they're learning different things that maybe the coaches, I couldn't see where they can work on to improve. And when you're at the top level, that's some of the hardest things to do is to uncover, well, where can I work? Where can I get better? Everyone's at such a high level. Often the hardest part is figuring out what to work on. And so they've been really, really helpful at applying some, uh, some of the, you know, top science in their field and top technology that we haven't been able to use before. And that is being used quite honestly, for the first time in this realm and in these ways. So it's been it's been really fun. And I think, more importantly, it's been just had a lot of impact on on our athletes.
[00:14:31] Tom Kelly: You also had the opportunity to get athletes over to Europe for a little bit of high-altitude training, and also to see the venue at Lenzerheide, where you'll be at the World Championships this February. What was the genesis of that camp and what were your takeaways?
[00:14:47] Lowell Bailey: So I think, you know, in that camp. Obviously, the altitude is a huge part of our program. So we do a periodized approach to altitude with world championships as our goal. And for those that aren't acquainted with that approach you when you do an altitude periodized training schedule, you're up at altitude for usually three weeks, sometimes a little longer, and then you're down maybe at your home venue. That can be, you know, sea level. It can be, you know, a couple thousand feet, but you go up and down essentially all year long. And so that dynamism in the altitude, has a lot of positive effects on the body and performance. And so, um, we, we are really lucky to work with, um, Some of the top scientists in the field that have researched this for 30 or 40 years, probably longer. Um, and so we've got some great partners. USOPC physiologist Dr. Randy Wilber helps us a lot. He's also the architect behind USA Track and Field, USA Swimming’s altitude programming.
[00:16:13] Lowell Bailey: So just the guy knows altitude better than anyone on the planet. He helps us develop our plan. And, um, and so this, this training camp in Livigno and Lenzerheide, that was, I would say, first and foremost, the goal, you know, get to places that have the right altitude. And then secondly, get to places that are going to challenge our team in the right ways and prepare our team in the right ways. And Livigno is a challenging place. It's an inspiring place to train. It's beautiful. It has a ton of, uh, training opportunities. And then, of course, Lenzerheide is the World Championship venue this year. So the goal there was just continue to get familiar with that venue and, you know, as much as possible try to gain that little bit of, I don't want to call it home field advantage. But you got to feel comfortable and familiar with the venue. And if you can feel that way, um, it's just you can be in the right space when it comes to the competition.
[00:17:15] Tom Kelly: Were you able to actually get on snow there, too?
[00:17:19] Lowell Bailey: This time we did not. We have in the past and gone in ski tunnels and done that. But we really tried to focus on the physical training in those locations. And, I think that was really the, big goals this year.
[00:17:42] Tom Kelly: I love Livigno, it's such a remote location in northern Italy, just across the Swiss border. It will be the site of some of the snowboard and freestyle events at Milan Cortina in 2026. Had you been there before?
[00:17:56] Lowell Bailey: The team had not been there, but our assistant national team coach is from there. It's his home, so his name is Emil Bormetti and so we had a local guide. We had, you know, a really good person to just guide the whole process of setting up the camp, getting the right lodging, getting the right venues, organizing and, um, and reserving all the places we needed to reserve. Uh, and I will say that some of our athletes are really familiar with Livigno. Campbell Wright spent a lot of time there. A lot of our athletes will head there over the Christmas break. And so it's a home away from home for some of them.
[00:18:46] Tom Kelly: That's great. Yeah. Love that place. Lastly, the Soldier Hollow camp that you've been doing in October has really, really blossomed. I think you had the biggest group ever there this year. But tell us about the importance of that as a preseason camp. But also it's another altitude experience.
[00:19:03] Lowell Bailey: Yeah. It's again that up-and-down effect. Soldier Hollow was one of the altitude periods. Another big part of that camp was some really close collaboration with Team Canada. And this was highly organized and intentional workouts with Team Canada to really try to draw on each team's strengths so that we, you know, we raise both teams' performance level. And it's it's so great to work with them. And I think maybe the best part of that culminated in our fall racing festival. Where? Canada. Not only the national team, but a lot of their elite club athletes came down and participated, and it made for one of the largest North American biathlon races I've ever. Maybe the largest North American domestic biathlon race or regional biathlon race that I've ever, ever seen. And, it was so great to do it there in Soldier Hollow. Right? Kind of during the period of transition for USBA moving to Soldier Hollow, officially being there as the headquarters, as our headquarters. So it was a really positive series of races, and it was just great to see. It felt like the whole community was there as well as the Canadian biathlon community.
[00:20:40] Tom Kelly: Well, I know the community loves having this camp out here. It's a very festive time at Soldier Hollow. We're going to talk more with Lowell Bailey about the Vuokatti camp that's going on right now, as well as the upcoming season, which kicks off shortly in Kontiolahti. We're going to take a quick break and we'll be right back on Heartbeat.
Tom Kelly: We're back on Heartbeat with Lowell Bailey, the high performance director for US Biathlon. Lowell, you are in Vuokatti. Just give people, first of all, a sense of where Vuokatti is. I think all of us this time of year, when we think of Finland, we think of the Arctic Circle, reindeer and so forth. But you're more down in the kind of central-ish part of the country, right?
[00:21:33] Lowell Bailey: Yeah. And it's it is, you know, there's daylight, and it's just that daylight doesn't come until maybe 930 or 10 a.m., and it goes pretty quickly, but it just it feels almost like an extended dawn into dusk. But it's a highly like I spoke of. It's just that they do everything right here in terms of venue preparation. So it's a great place to train. And I think yeah, one of the biggest challenges is, is uh, especially for the athletes is just coping, dealing with that the fact that it is pretty dark and there's not a whole lot of sunlight.
[00:22:19] Tom Kelly: Yeah, it's it is to me. Finland is a fascinating place around this time of year, and also in that June period when it's switching from spring to summer. What are some of the specific elements of this camp that you're implementing?
[00:22:34] Lowell Bailey: Let's see, we've got all of our ski technicians for both tours here. And so it's an opportunity for the athletes to get acquainted. If that's the term with their new skis for the year. So, over the last couple of months, our ski technicians have been working with the European ski companies to select, sometimes going from 50 or 60 pairs of skis down to maybe 6 or 7 of the best pairs, and then getting those prepared to bring up to Vuokatti. And, this is the first time that the athletes are getting a chance to get on those skis. So there's a lot of ski preparation. Of course, there's the training. And then this camp is the final selection phase for the World Cup and IBU Cup rosters. So we've often referred to it as the selection pool camp, where, uh, Utah is the roller ski trials that determines the pool of athletes that comes to vacate. And there are some athletes that qualify directly to the World Cup from Utah, but by and large, this is the chance for athletes to demonstrate their performance on snow and then get nominated to the World Cup in Kontiolahti.
[00:24:00] Tom Kelly: Are you also continuing the performance testing program in Vuokatti?
[00:24:05] Lowell Bailey: Yes. Yeah, that's another exciting part of this camp. For the first time, this partnership with MSU has grown into something very powerful. And so, for the first time, we have been able to bring Jim and his team over to Vocati and do some performance testing with really some, again, just looking at uncovering the areas of opportunity for these athletes. So, for one athlete, it might be downhill transitions, for another, it might be steep uphills, and it's different for every athlete, so we're doing that. We're also working on what learning what we can from partnerships with other countries. So we had some great meetings with the university here that works with the Finnish biathlon program. And so we had a really collaborative couple of days of meetings with their team. They have a state-of-the-art lab here. We toured their lab. They shared some of the interesting testing that they're doing. And I think that partnership is going to grow into something really powerful for both programs. So we might be you might see us partnering with some of the Finnish entities as well.
[00:25:24] Tom Kelly: Love it. Just to segue into the upcoming season, I want to piggyback on something you talked about a little bit with the camp that the Vuokatti camp will help you to establish your teams for the season, but you have a dynamic selection process. So, as the season goes on, you may add additional athletes to that, particularly in a world Championship year going to Lenzerheide in February. How does that selection process work once you leave Vuokatti and get into the season?
[00:25:54] Lowell Bailey: Yeah, that's a that's a great question. So in Vuokatti, it is the final selection phase for naming the World Cup roster for World Cups one through three. But our selection criteria, and I guess I should back up and say our season, you know, it starts in late November, and it's months until we get to the World Championships. So it's a long season, and performance can change very quickly. So I really feel like it's the fairest. It's it's in your it's in the athlete's best interest. It's in the organization's best interests. If we can provide pathways of selection at multiple points throughout the season to allow athletes to demonstrate changes in performance. And so, but what I mean by that is if you miss the team in Utah and you don't make it to Vuokatti, that doesn't mean your season's over. There's a chance to qualify for the international circuit in late December through our on-snow trials in Craftsbury, Vermont. And then there's also opportunities. Our world championship roster isn't solidified until just before the competition. So some of the spots will get filled sooner. But the last spots on the roster don't get filled until really it's about ten days out before before the World Championships.
[00:27:26] Tom Kelly: Just looking ahead to the World Cup opener. I know this is always a tough one because you have a wide range of athletes, but any one in particular that we should be watching as the team heads to Kontiolahti.
[00:27:38] Lowell Bailey: I mean, I think all of the athletes I spoke of from last year really showed these top results. I think we really the start of the World Cup season is always a really exciting time, because it's a time that you see where athletes that have not competed against each other for nine months are. You get to see all of them back together, all of the world's best back together. And a lot of times you see where people left off the season before they pick up right where they left off. And then in some cases, you see some newcomers, uh, and making their making their statements. So it's my hope that we see some of those newcomers are wearing, wearing the US suit and we see that. So I would say of course, the athletes that we that I mentioned there, but, um, I think we just have to wait and see as we get through our final selection phase and see who's going to be racing at the World Cup and who's going to be racing at the IBU Cup. I think we're going to have really competitive athletes on both tours. In just a couple of weeks.
[00:28:55] Tom Kelly: Yeah, it'll be fun to watch. I want to talk a little bit about Project X. This has been a remarkable program just for me to watch and to look at the transition of these athletes who are great skiers and just finding their way into biathlon with such excitement, like Marjorie Freed is a really good example, but you've got a number of new athletes coming into the program through the project X Group.
[00:29:19] Lowell Bailey: Yeah, it's it's really an exciting, uh, an exciting program. And, um, and I've been quite honestly, I've been shocked at how quickly some of these athletes have progressed as they've come into the sport and in some cases, you know, picked up a biathlon rifle for the first time, and in a matter of months they're, you know, actually able not only to just completing a biathlon competition is hard enough, but they're actually able to compete with top world-class athletes. So if we look at the two women that I see as, um, you know, they've come through our project X program most recently, um, we spoke about Margie. With her first World Cup points last season. She's had a great year. She's had one more year of biathlon training and we're really excited to see how she does on the first races this year. Another athlete, Lucy Anderson, who hasn't competed internationally, will be competing in her first international events here just very shortly. And I think it's just I think one thing that's really inspiring about these athletes is they're doing this for the first time. And that's something that takes a lot of it takes a lot of courage to go out there and, um, and compete in a field where you're competing against athletes that have been doing this for, you know, 15, 20 even more years. These experts at the top level of the sport, and then these newcomers are kind of just thrown into the mix. So I really applaud them. And I just think it's great that they're willing to go out there and give it a shot, no pun intended. Um, but go out there and give it their all and we've seen some just incredible progress from both of them over this, over the training season. So, you know, the sky's the limit for sure as we go into the competition season.
[00:31:36] Tom Kelly: Lowell, I want to talk about a couple other topics before we wrap it up here. First of all, the women's coaching initiative has been something that's been very important to the organization, and it's really starting to make some progress.
[00:31:47] Lowell Bailey: Yeah, I think this is a really important initiative for us as an organization. One of our one of our strategic goals is to bring more women into the sport, not only as athletes, but also as, as coaches and, and also other, you know, other, um, team support members. So, what we recognized is that there's just a very small population of women coaches globally, but also in our country. So this this program is really aimed at trying to provide some support and some experience for those, um, for women that are interested in making this a career choice and interested in coaching. And, um, it is a program that has a wide variety of experience. Some of these, uh, some of these, um, candidates are have never coached in the sport but have coached elsewhere, usually cross country being the, being the other sport. Uh, and then some of them have coached. But the goal here is just to, um, continually strive and help these coaches build their skills so that eventually, um, the goal is that they can, um, that they can work at every level in the sport and represent Team USA and that we have, you know, gender parity across all of our programs and all of our teams, and that we keep striving for that because it's really, really, really important.
[00:33:39] Tom Kelly: Just looking at your staff going into the season, you've been fortunate enough to expand your staff a little bit, but I want to focus on the additional medical resources that you have for the team.
[00:33:50] Lowell Bailey: Yeah, I think this effort is really spearheaded by our our team doctors, not surprisingly. And they really identified. I think it opened my eyes. It may sound kind of obvious to everyone, but, um, we started looking at minor illness in terms of performance, and I say that in, in the fact that like trying to measure and quantify how much is minor illness affecting our potential as a team, and the results are maybe more surprising than you would think. And in some cases, when you look at the data, one could argue that minor illness I'm talking like minor colds, um, are maybe the single biggest performance detractor that we have. You know, we talk and spend hours and months working on training programs, different types of workouts, and different types of technology that we use, or third-party experts and consultants. But at the end of the day, like a minor cold, if you have a minor cold at the peak performance time of year, uh, it can totally take you out of the whole equation. So that said, we've taken a few different, um, uh, approaches at this. Uh, one is developing and building out our ability to proactively address minor illness. So, this means monitoring health symptoms consistently over time using an app-based program. Working with our expert staff and our support network of sports nutrition personnel and just looking at health and wellness as holistically as possible. But then also we have a really exciting partnership that is very new with the University of Utah and what that is, it's going to allow us to hire an athletic trainer to come on the tour with the World Cup team and be an athletic trainer for the season.
[00:36:10] Lowell Bailey: And then when we get into the summer months when we arguably have more support, we're training at home. A lot of times, we train at the Olympic Training Center, which has a whole sports medicine department. Um, that athletic trainer can bounce back and forth, in a sense, between working at the University of Utah and, um, and then supporting the team, but not as Intensely as the winter, so I think that's going to be a game changer. Honestly, it's something that a lot of the other big teams have is medical support on the ground 24 over seven. We don't have that. And when you're six, seven, eight time zones away from your medical support, um, it it really makes it challenging for both sides. Honestly. Like our team, doctors get woken up at 2 a.m. frequently throughout the season, and they do incredible work supporting the team. Uh, from from the US. But I think they would tell you that nothing, um, nothing compares to on-the-ground support. So we're really excited to get that going. And we're like I said, it's very new. We've just gone through, um, we've just gone through a round of, uh, or put the application out and interviewing candidates. So we're hoping to, um, to hire someone here very shortly.
[00:37:30] Tom Kelly: What a what a what a great opportunity. I know just from my work with the US ski team over the years, the value of having those doctors on site. And I think your point about just like I have a cold right now, you can probably tell from my voice, but, uh, how little things like that can really impact, um, I just a couple of more things, and we'll wrap it up. I want to look ahead on the World Cup and is coming up traditional stop for the tour for many, many years, and it will be the 2026 Olympic venue at the Milan-Cortina games. But there's some changes in Antholz. And maybe tell us a little bit about those changes and what the athletes are going to be looking for when they get a chance to preview them this January.
[00:38:13] Lowell Bailey: Yeah, I mean, it's a really interesting, um, Olympics in that we a lot of the Olympic venues that we've gone to over the last you know, I'm just thinking back in my mind of like, when's the last time we went where we had an Olympic venue that was on the World Cup. The typical World Cup tour, and I honestly can't point to one. And so this is a real it's actually unique in that regard because handholds is featured on the World Cup tour every year. And so athletes are really familiar with it. However, because it's the Olympics, they've really done a huge, huge, changing of the course. They've changed the venue, how the the flow of traffic works. They've eliminated certain areas and added more. I think one of the biggest changes to the course will be … will really have to look at what the tactics require. There's an entirely new finish scenario where the athletes will go behind the range. If anyone's familiar with like, Oslo. It reminds me a lot of that when I look at it. And, of course, none of us have ever seen it or skied on it, I should say, our head coach, Armin Auchentaller, who lives in Antholz, has definitely seen it. But I think skiing it on snow is going to be new for pretty much everyone. And so that's, um, I think that's that's a great opportunity for our athletes as we go into the World Cup. It's a Pre-Olympic World Cup. And that means we're previewing the course. We're racing the course with the mentality of, yes, it's a World Cup. It's it's a very important event, but it's also the opportunity to preview the Olympic courses for the next year.
[00:40:15] Tom Kelly: Uh, just a couple other things. I mean, this is just an observation. Lowell, you've been retired now for a number of years, and you're clearly comfortable in your role as the director of High Performance. But it looks like you're really enjoying this, and you've really got a good direction going. I mean, how do you feel as you head into this season and just kind of reflect back to your time as an athlete and the transition that you've made into the high performance role?
[00:40:39] Lowell Bailey: Yeah, I mean, I think the more time I spend in this role, the more I realize it's, uh, the, the, the commonalities between, um, sort of what you do as an athlete and, and what you do as a sport director. If you think about it, you know, as an athlete, you're just trying to figure out how I get better, how I find that half a percent improvement. Where is it going to be? Can I shoot a little bit faster? Can I ski a little bit faster? Can I ski a little bit smarter? Um, you're just constantly trying to figure those find those little nuggets and, um, and, you know, my role right now, is not that much different. We're constantly with a great staff and honestly, it's a great core staff that works tirelessly day in and day out to try and uncover those little nuggets of improvement. Where can our athletes. They're the amount of time that our coaches spend analyzing our athletes' performance and trying to figure out what's the thing that this athlete needs to get better is. It's amazing. You don't see that. You see that. What people see is, um, mostly they see a coach behind the scope. That's what you see on TV that is like such a fraction of what the coaches do. And then on top of that, you've got our, our, um, our third party. A third party doesn't do it justice. Our partners, we have partners at MSU. We have partners at U of U. We have partners at the USOPC. I mean, the USOPC … we have sports psychologists, sports med. The training center in Lake Placid feels like our home base. And so, as the high performance director, you know, my role is really trying to help all of those different entities uncover.
[00:42:49] Lowell Bailey: Little things will help our team improve. So in that respect, I'm still doing the same thing. I'm thinking about ways that we can improve. It's just thinking about it from maybe a different, different standpoint.
[00:43:02] Tom Kelly: This will be the last question. But Lowell, what's one fun thing to do in Vuokatti outside of training?
[00:43:10] Lowell Bailey: Oh, that’s a good question.
[00:43:13] Lowell Bailey: Let's see what's I don't know about fun, but, um, challenging maybe, uh, a fun challenge you can say is we just got a great snow storm. Maybe 7 or 8in of snow overnight.
[00:43:29] Speaker3: And, um.
[00:43:30] Lowell Bailey: We the challenge this morning was getting our staff down to the venue because our staff staying at some rented cabins. And, uh, it was not easy to get the vans unstuck this morning. So there was some shoveling. There was some problem-solving. How are we going to get this van unstuck and get it down the mountain and all of that? So, it's always an adventure. There's always something that's good.
[00:43:57] Tom Kelly: Lowell Bailey, thanks for taking time today. We wish you all the best to you and the athletes as we head into the season.
[00:44:05] Lowell Bailey: If there are any athletes and parents out there that may not be here in Vacati going for the World Cup, but they might be going for a club event or regional event. Good luck to everyone who's preparing for a hopefully a nice wintry competition season to come.
[00:44:22] Tom Kelly: Great. Thanks, Lowell.
[00:44:24] Lowell Bailey: Thanks, Tom.