After traveling around covering skiing all winter, I'm settled in to Fort Kent for the last stretch of the year--a ten-day stint in Fort Kent for the North American Biathlon Championships and then the SuperTour Finals. The best part about this is being able to thoroughly abandon impartiality and cheer for Walt, since he's racing. And today he did something awesome, which I thought I'd relate. I mentioned it briefly in the report on FasterSkier, but I can expand on it a bit here.
On his second of two shooting stages, Walt came into the range just as Casey Simons was leaving. Walt was having a good race, but he saw that Simons had cleaned (meaning he hit all five targets), and that meant that Walt had to hit all five of his own targets, and quickly, if he wanted to be able to stay with him. What followed was probably the single most impressive display of shooting that I saw all winter. And that's saying something, because I did hang out at the Olympics and watch biathlon gods like Ole-Einar Bjoerndalen and others. After squeezing off his first shot, Walt went through the next four rounds so fast that I kept looking around to see who else around him was firing at the same time. Which was foolish, because as I was doing this, I was watching Walt's targets falling. But he was shooting so quickly that the idea that he could be hitting targets seemed ludicrous. Nonetheless, he hit four, and the lone miss was really close. It wasn't quite enough to win (Walt got second), but it sure as heck was fun for me to watch... Huge baller stuff.
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