In the long history of biathlon at the Winter Olympics, which stretches back to the 1960 Games in California, no American – man, woman or team – has ever won a medal.
The event – which combines cross-country skiing and rifle shooting – has long been dominated by Norway and Germany, and the United States hasn’t had a realistic shot of landing a podium in 62 years. But Deedra Irwin could change all that.
The 33-year-old from Pulaski, Wisconsin, finished seventh in the 2022 Beijing Winter Games, the best-ever finish for an American at an individual biathlon event, and could better that this time around in Milan Cortina.
Perhaps though, her first mission will be to find a good bakery for her secret weapon and guilty pleasure: donuts.
“It goes back to being in high school. We had this really amazing bakery in Pulaski – Smurawa’s, shout out, still makes amazing donuts – and we would go running in the morning and our coach would be like, ‘Oh go for a 30-minute run, come back, we’ll do core,’ and me and my friends would just sneak away and we’d run to the donut shop. We’d try to eat as many donuts as we could before we got back to training,” Irwin told CNN Sports in late October.
“Then when I started biathlon … I would have headaches all the time. And (retired US Olympian Susan Dunklee) said, ‘Well, are you consuming enough sugar? You know, your brain runs on sugar.’ And I was like, OK, donuts. And so I just was like, ‘I’m gonna eat donuts now,’ and it kind of just became a whole thing.”
Once fully energized, Irwin knows that focus and preparation for performing on the day is key, saying “anybody can have an incredible race.”