S7 Ep3 - Justin Wadsworth - TRANSCRIPT
Tom Kelly: [00:00:00] Welcome back everyone to Heartbeat. Today our guest is the new head physiology coach for U.S. biathlon Justin Wadsworth. And Justin great to see you again. It's been a few years.
Justin Wadsworth: [00:00:10] Yeah, you as well. Tc great to be back and connected with you and happy to be here on the podcast.
Tom Kelly: [00:00:15] Yeah. For our listeners, Justin and I actually go back to his time on the U.S. Ski Team, which was a couple of years ago. We'll just leave it at that and we'll talk a little bit about it. Three time Olympian. I want to start out, Justin and have you give us a little bit of your background as an athlete and then moving into the coaching ranks?
Justin Wadsworth: [00:00:32] Yeah. So as you mentioned, I went to the Olympics three times for the U.S. as a cross country skier. And yeah, just a lot of learning through over the years there went to a bunch of world championships and then retired in 2003. And yeah, it was, I was really, you know, my ski career was up and down, like everyone's ski career. Unfortunately, I had a really bad habit of getting sick at the major events like Olympics and World championships. But I had a great bunch of teammates and yeah, and enjoyed the process. That was the main thing I look back at my athletic career with a smile and yeah, I had a lot of good times with a lot of good people.
Tom Kelly: [00:01:16] I'm always interested in origin stories and yours is kind of a fascinating one. You were born in the Southern California area, moved to Seattle, came to school at the University of Utah, skied for the Utes, ended up in Bend. So kind of traces through your moves around the country. And how did you find cross country skiing?
Justin Wadsworth: [00:01:34] That is an excellent question Tom. Yeah, La Jolla is not the hotbed for Nordic skiing, nor was Seattle where I went to high school. But I fell in love with it there when I was in grade seven, grade eight. And we had a small ski program at this small school I went to in Redmond, Washington which was the home of Microsoft, by the way. They were just a little building back then that we used to roller ski pass, but yeah, I just, I loved it so much and I really only got to ski on the weekends, even through the winter because, you know, we're down in Seattle where it was raining. And so I really kind of grew this hunger to be on snow more. And I really valued any chance I got to be on snow. So as soon as I graduated high school, I went then to Sweden for a year, and just raced over there and went to a ski program in Mora, Sweden, where the vasaloppet finishes. And yeah, it just, so it was kind of definitely not the most, normal direct route. Like it was not a winter area that I was raised in but I think it made me appreciate being on snow that much more.
Tom Kelly: [00:02:40] We're going to talk about your transition to biathlon but you went into coaching after your career as an athlete, and why don't you trace us through that pathway leading to where you are now in biathlon?
Justin Wadsworth: [00:02:53] Yeah. So that's been over 20 years now that I've been coaching different national teams, which is kind of crazy to think about. But I took a couple years off after I retired and I worked, in Bend, Oregon as kind of a coach, a personalized coach for some triathletes and cyclists and some skiers. I worked with some master athletes and some junior, so I spent two years there kind of developing kind of a feel for coaching and coaching different levels of skiing. Of course my love was still with the World Cup and national team. So I came back with the US ski team as a coach in 2006 to 2010, and really had a great great team of both staff and athletes there with the likes of Keegan Randall, Andy Newell, and then we had a great coaching staff with Matt Wickham and Chris Grover and myself. And yeah, so it was a, it was a really fun time. And then, at 2010, I was recruited by the Canadian, cross country team. We just had moved to Canmore, Alberta. So the timing of that worked out pretty well. And as sad as I was to leave the US ski team, really for travel and everything, it just made more sense for me to be with the Canadian program. And I was really blessed there as well to have some athletes, of tremendous talent. Devin Kershaw, Alex Harvey, Chandra Crawford. I mean, you know, world and Olympic medalists. And yeah, had a great time there for seven years coaching that program. And then I really had been on the road at that point, about 13 years.
Justin Wadsworth: [00:04:31] So I needed and I had a couple of small kids. So I took two years off from coaching and just spent time with my family. and that was an amazing, really good choice. I was really happy I did that. And then I got a call from Canadian biathlon to see if I would come on for a few months to kind of help restructure their program. And three months turned into six years with that program. I just really enjoyed it. I really enjoyed the challenge of biathlon. It is really a different sport than cross-country skiing. I mean, obviously cross-country skiing is the shared piece of it, but beyond that it's really a different sport. And I grew to really like it in the challenge of it. And so yeah, I was with the Canadian National Biathlon team for six years and I took a year off last year. And again I thought I was kind of semi-retired and I loved to coach, but I was, I was happy just kind of taking some time away again with the family. And then, yeah, the US biathlon team and Lowell reached out to me and yeah, I have a lot of respect for both Tim and Lowell. And I know the program pretty well, having been with the Canadians and been around the U.S. biathlon team a bunch over the years. So I was just excited to come on and see how I could help the program. And that's kind of where I am today and really enjoying it.
Tom Kelly: [00:05:53] Yeah. It's interesting, isn't it? And I'm curious, though, when you first got involved with the Canadian biathlon team, how much background did you have in biathlon and was it just a case where you had to be a quick study?
Speaker 3: [00:06:07] Yeah, it was a bit of a.
Justin Wadsworth: [00:06:09] A case where I had to be a quick study, but I you know, just over the years obviously watched a lot of biathlon on TV and you know, we're around biathletes at training camps and whatnot. But as far as myself, I had been around a little bit, with Josh Thompson who used to be a U.S. biathlete back in the 80s and had won a silver medal at the World Championships. And I know Josh pretty well. And so you know, I had shot a little bit and and listened to the biathlon lingo and whatnot, but it was definitely, I gotta say, it took me a couple years actually to kind of wrap my head around biathlon racing on the World Cup because it just, you know, I wanted things to be more like Linear and kind of how they worked in race situations, but biathlon just blew that apart. You have to have a totally different mindset. Being a coach and watching your athletes, which is good and bad. I mean, there can be times when, you know, you never feel like you're out of the race. and other times where definitely you're totally out of the race and you can be the fastest skier in the field. But yeah, you've missed, you know, half your shots or whatever and you have no chance. So it's, it took me a couple of years to wrap my head around it, but you know, I really grew to love it. And I see why now, you know why as a winter sport, it's one of the biggest winter sports in the world. And just I think it's starting to really dominate like culture in Europe. And it's really neat to see its progression over the last, I would say ten years.
Tom Kelly: [00:07:39] Yeah. It really is a fascinating sport. And I have a similar background to you and having worked in skiing and a lot of years in cross country skiing and it has been remarkable for me to really learn the nuances of it and to see, in particular, to see the popularity of the sport, especially in Europe. And we really saw that in Milano Cortina as well.
Justin Wadsworth: [00:08:04] Yeah. I mean, the crowds were massive. And basically every stop in Central Europe on the Biathlon World Cup has big crowds, lots of energy. And it really just, it makes the sport everything, the vibe and the stadium, the vibe out on the trail. It's totally different than anything I had been around with cross country. Well, I mean, home and colon you know, and maybe the World Championships win there in Norway or Sweden has a similar. But every weekend in biathlon no matter where you are, is like that. And it's pretty it's pretty incredible. And they have a great thing going.
Tom Kelly: [00:08:36] I came to a World Cup in Antholz a few years ago with the US biathlon team. And you know, that's the Super Bowl of sport. And it was just remarkable to see the passion of the crowd, not just the size but the vibe and how everybody is totally into it, right?
Justin Wadsworth: [00:08:51] Totally into it. And they really know their stuff. And yeah, it's just always crazy traveling around with the athletes because the fans recognize the athletes. And yeah, it's, it's really good. I like it that our North Americans can have some feeling of like, yeah, that they're, that they're, you know, they're, they're known and they're, they're kind of people like, you know, are sought after to get their autographs or whatever. And I think that's really healthy because we just don't have that much here in North America. So it's really fun for me to see the athletes, when the fans want to get autographs and get pictures with them and whatnot, because it's it's huge. They're huge over there. And someone like Campbell, right after a couple silver medals at the World championships, I mean, he's on everybody's radar. I think, you know, he's a fun guy. And I think he's he's captured a lot of the European fans and kind of as like Jesse had. And I think they like to see outsiders doing well.
Tom Kelly: [00:09:48] Yeah they do, and that they love the Americans. That's something throughout my entire career, no matter which sport or discipline and skiing or snowboarding, they love the Americans. Let's get to your job now. you're the head physiology coach, and I know that covers a wide gamut. We're going to dive deeper into altitude, but give us an overview of what your responsibility is and what you're excited about and bringing your skills to the team.
Justin Wadsworth: [00:10:15] Yeah. So I guess I'll just use this time to say I'm not a physiologist at the title. yeah, I don't know where the title came from and but I on my, below my email, I sign off is a performance consultant because I think that's a little more apt. But you know, I'm working right now mainly with the training, planning and working with Mike and Emil, who are the two head coaches for the men's and the women's team really helping just kind of talk through training and general year planning, and then the intricacies of day to day training and each of the athletes and going through their monitoring. yeah. So just another set of eyes and ears for them. You know, they're both, they both have quite a bit of experience. but this is their first year, both of them as being kind of a head coach. So I think I was brought on just to help with them a little bit and just kind of be a sounding board. Not that either of them need any really help because really what I've seen from them is just tremendous. They're both really intelligent and really, have a good grasp of the sport and training and the shooting aspect. So I think they're great choices as head coaches and but I've just brought in to help with that part of it and then also work with athletes on technique.
Justin Wadsworth: [00:11:33] So it's kind of a two sided thing. So I come to most of the training camps, the first 5 or 6 days, really hit the athletes hard early on with a lot of technique. We do a lot of video work. We were on the treadmill quite a bit. so it's really front loaded on the camp. Then I take off and then the athletes do the rest of the camps, kind of working on those things. And then they'll send me videos and I'll analyze them from home with on form video review. And that's a great tool because I can do voice overs and draw angles and whatnot. And so yeah, it's, you know, doing that virtual technique once we have, you know, they've met me in person and we go over what we're trying to accomplish, I think it's almost better. I step back and let them work on it for a while on their own, because each athlete has a different way. They process technique. And that's, I think for me, one of the biggest things I've learned is just to how to communicate with each athlete different, to get them to feel what I'm trying to get them to feel.
Tom Kelly: [00:12:32] Yeah. When you go back 30 some years ago when you were a World Cup and an Olympic cross country skier. The opportunity to analyze technique today with some of the tools that you have with the high quality video and some of the software analytical tools. How does that change the role of a coach, and how do those tools help enhance the knowledge that coaches have and the ability to convey that to the athletes?
Justin Wadsworth: [00:13:01] Yeah, I mean, the tools right now, as we know, like every year, there's new products coming out. I mean, that part of the technology has just been like growing so quickly. but really we can do like, biomechanical markers now right away, like as we're filming and it's on the on my phone on the screen showing me the angles and whatnot. So I don't even have to guess. I can just see it right there and I can show it to the athletes right away. And like I said, if we can draw angles, we can do, I do a lot of side by sides or layovers with other athletes to compare. so compared to when I was Adley, it's not, it's like we used to film, I think with a little like handheld VHS, you know, where you take the whole big tape out and have to put it in the machine and watch it later at night. Kind of some grainy old TV. so it's, it's totally changed things. And I love the fact that you know, the athletes can send me video. Like, I just got a video yesterday from Vasic, him on the treadmill. He just sent it to me. He wanted some feedback and I was able to analyze it and get it back to him within two minutes of him sending it to me.
Justin Wadsworth: [00:14:11] So he's got that instant feedback. so it's, yeah, it's really, it's really neat. And you know, it allows me for some one of the parts I didn't want to do so much with this kind of job anymore is travel too much. And it allows me to travel just enough where I can have an impact. But when I'm home, I can still help out by reviewing the video and talking to the coaches and the athletes directly. So it's kind of a nice, really nice balance because I think over the years, ski coaches and biathlon coaches have probably been a bit overworked and over traveled. And it's really a limiting factor to your to your career of how much time you can be on the road. I think the most I ever did was 220 days, with the Canadian cross country team. And it's just too much. but this allows the freshness, for me to come in again be there, kind of have an impact and then go home, be with my family, but still at the same time, have that dialogue with athletes regarding technique and training.
Tom Kelly: [00:15:14] Justin I'm curious, this might be deviating a little bit from what we're talking about here with the national team, but let's talk about club coaches right now and some of the things that you're doing in analyzing the technique of the national team athletes. Any words of wisdom that you can pass down to the club coaches who might be listening to this?
Speaker 4: [00:15:32] Well.
Justin Wadsworth: [00:15:34] I mean, just that try to try to get the big things, are done right early, even as young as like, you know, 8 to 11 years old in that range, like how to double pull correctly, really the big, the big pieces. Because really, if you look at like for biathlon just skate skiing, there's two big pieces, like how do you use your legs, how to use your upper body. And if you can do those two things early and do it well and spend a little bit of time not to take the joy away from, you know, a nine year old out cross-country skiing. You don't want to make it just like technique, training, technique training. You want to have fun and jumps and stuff, but a little bit of technique. And they're amazingly. Absorbent at that age to do the right kind of things. And if you can just do that at a really young age, then I think a lot of the problems down the road are taken care of. so yeah, just, I think take care of those big things at a young age. don't be afraid. You know, we see our, our hockey players up here doing two ice sessions at you know, eight years old. So it's 15 minutes a technique for a cross-country skier. Every couple of days. Gonna hurt them? I don't think so.
Tom Kelly: [00:16:42] So good. Well, thanks for sharing that with Justin Wadsworth from the US biathlon team. We're going to take a short break and we'll be right back. And we're going to talk about altitude training.
Tom Kelly: [00:16:42]And we're back on Heartbeat with Justin Wadsworth. And Justin thanks for sharing all of the insights that you have from your vast experience in cross country and now in biathlon. I want to dive into altitude training. And you tried something with the US biathlon team athletes this fall at the Soldier Hollow Camp to let them live up at altitude and come down a little bit to what is an already high venue, but much lower than where you live. Tell us about the benefits of altitude training and how did you deploy that in the Soldier Hollow camp in October?
Justin Wadsworth: [00:17:31] Yeah. So you know, starting with the big picture, when looking at altitude training, You're really trying to majorly impact one thing and that's your blood values. And to be able to carry more oxygen, have more red blood cells that carry that oxygen. So that's really the premise of it. But there's a lot of other, peripheral adaptations that take place when training at altitude. So you want to you want to make sure that you have an impact. And I feel like a lot of people in the past have said, oh, we're going to an altitude camp, in Park City, you know, which is a catch all phrase for Soldier Hollow, midway, Deer Valley, wherever. But then they're doing the camp down in midway or they're staying down in midway, which is, you know, fine. It's a little bit of altitude, 1700m, you know, roughly 5500ft. And that kind of altitude, although it can give you some adaptations, really doesn't push the push your body enough to make the adaptations for the big changes that we want to see in some of the blood volume and blood parameters. So I kind of challenged the coaches this year and said like, you know, we can't say we're going to an altitude camp unless we're really going to do altitude. And we have, you know, we know we want to in four years time build our altitude program. and kind of keep pushing the limits altitude.
Justin Wadsworth: [00:18:58] So let's stay high, really high, about 2400m or about 8200ft roughly. and that's upper Deer Valley. And then we can do a lot of our training down, lower some of the intensity down low, some intensity at Soldier Hollow, but even some lower down in Salt Lake City. And then we can also do some of our long training up higher up around 3000m, 9500ft, some of the ridge tops and whatnot around the Wasatch. and really try to really push the limits there. and we all agreed that was a good idea. We know one thing you have when you do that kind of training that you really need to monitor it well. So we brought in some new monitoring. We had the athletes get on board with doing some hrvs in the morning and have a bunch of data going in. We also did a bunch of blood tests, you know, three, four weeks out to make sure iron levels were good and everything was kind of lined up because you can't stay up at that kind of altitude and have really anything off, whether it's your nutrition or your iron levels or your sleep or whatever. So you really have to get things dialed in. And you know, the athletes did a great job with the monitoring, which isn't always, you know, the most fun thing to do for them waking up and putting on a heart rate monitor.
Justin Wadsworth: [00:20:15] And before they do anything else in the day, you know, sitting still for a few minutes to get those, you know, heart rate numbers. And then, yeah, so but they did everything. we, everyone checked out with good blood values going into the camp. And so yeah, we stayed up high. High. And you can definitely tell. Even walking upstairs the first couple days up there. You know the athletes could feel it. We could feel it as coaches. but after three weeks of that. you know, it really does have an impact. And then the goal is to. Take those high blood values and use that to go down lower and actually work faster than you would ever be able to work at the same heart rate, same lactates than you would before, because you have this increased oxygen carrying capacity. And so really, that's the goal. The altitude camp is just the setup. And then the real, the payoff of it is doing this hard intensity block for the two, three weeks following the camp. And so that's really where we're just in the tail end of it now. They've done a great job doing a lot of hard work over these last two weeks since the camp. And now we're taking a little bit of a downtime before we head to Europe. And then, yeah, it's kind of one more training camp and they start racing World Cup.
Tom Kelly: [00:21:33] I was thinking about this, Justin as you went through it. This is really a somewhat unique location and the opportunity to have down at Salt Lake City 4000 to 4400ft. And then you've got Soldier Hollow of mid 5000, and you get up over 8000 at Deer Valley. Not a lot of places where you can do that. And everything's within an hour of each other.
Justin Wadsworth: [00:21:55] Yeah. And I mean, where else would you have a venue like Soldier Hollow on top of it? I mean, it's really Utah is really blessed with that. There's great roads down low. Like you said in Salt Lake, you can use the avenues or Emigration Canyon or you can, you know, do your go on the roller ski track for really good terrain at Soldier Hollow with a world class biathlon range. And then, you know, all the great roads up high, whether it's, you know, up in the uintas or, you know, up roller skiing, up to guardsman pass up to almost 3000m up a beautiful paved road. It really has it all. So us being situated at Upper Deer Valley, we were really able to utilize everything quickly. I mean, relatively quickly. Everything's within about a 3040 minute drive there. So you can get down, like you said, to Salt Lake and almost a half an hour and being able to do intensity at almost virtually, like what sea level the oxygen down there is more or less what you'd the same, you know, the same density as it is at sea level. So yeah, it was, it's really a fantastic place. And I guess that's why you see now, you know, Clabo and a lot of the other Norwegians and people coming here, I mean, we always used it back in the day, for ourselves. but the Norwegians have been coming there since before Salt Lake City. And I think once they saw the quality of the training there, they've really been coming ever since, you know, 2000, I think 2000 was their first year. They came as a team with Steinar Mundal and the men's and the women's national team. And yeah, they've been coming back and it's it's an incredible place to train.
Tom Kelly: [00:23:32] Yeah. You know, I think for Johannes Clabo and some of the others, one of the other things they like here is that they can go to the grocery store or go out on the street, and they aren't mobbed by fans. So that's another side benefit, isn't it?
Justin Wadsworth: [00:23:44] Yeah. That we don't really look at that part of it. But for them, I'm sure it's quite nice and pretty surreal. I'm sure to walk around and not be recognized at all. So but for our athletes, it's actually, you know, having a town like Park City is super nice, great you know, coffee shops and restaurants and it's, you know, you gotta have those mental breaks from training. So having not just being isolated way out in the middle of nowhere on a mountain top or whatever, you know, we have, you know, when we're up at Upper Deer Valley, we're five minutes to Main Street of Park City, which is just incredible. So really great place to have a camp.
Tom Kelly: [00:24:20] Well, you're welcome any time. We love having the team out here. Let's talk about some of the other camps. Now, you had the altitude situation here in Utah. But you had a few other camps this summer. What was the focus at those camps and what role did you perform there?
Justin Wadsworth: [00:24:34] Yeah, so we had the initial camp in June. We did. We had a testing camp and just some initial time in Lake Placid at a on the treadmill. And the goal that Mike and Emil came up with. Normally they'd have a camp in May, but they decided after the Olympics and all the pressure to take the athletes and let them have may kind of on their own. So the first camp was this June camp in Lake Placid. And yeah, we just had a really a lot of focus on technique. I think I spent over an hour or an hour and a half with each athlete on the treadmill, on top of what we were doing, roller skiing out at the venue and everything. So it was really heavy on technique early on. I think for me, it was important for them to kind of be open minded and hear some a new way of it being presented. I mean, I'm not presenting really any radical new ideas. There's only, you know, so many different ways you can cross country ski. But I think hearing maybe a different perspective of it from me, was something new for them. And I really feel like whenever I've coached a team in the past, my first 2 or 3 years are the most impactful. So I wanted to come in there with a lot of energy and athletes were great. They were really open minded and also really motivated. I think, you know, sometimes you don't see that motivation coming off an Olympic year, but this crew is really motivated. And I think they're, they're really focused on having a great season this year, which is really, I think the team's on a real upswing.
Justin Wadsworth: [00:26:07] And yeah, it's a lot of fun. So that was the first camp. And then, the second camp, I went with just the women to Craftsbury, Vermont, which I can't believe I've never been there before, but I hadn't. And you can see why people go there because it's this little like Mecca out in the middle of nowhere, you know, great roller ski track and biathlon range. But I went there with Mike Gibson and the women's team and just again focused, on kind of a solid block of training there, maybe a little bit more intensity. And at the same time, Emil was with the men over in Europe doing an altitude camp, in front remote in the French Pyrenees. and then we did one more camp at Lake Placid where we did some more testing, again and did some, this time a little more biomechanical work on the treadmill with Jim Becker from MSU and his crew. And we really ran the athletes through the physiological testing at that time. So a lot more like on the treadmill. And then, this last camp in three weeks in Park City. So now we're going to be heading to Obertilliach in about a week in Austria. And that's kind of a, you know, it's not really altitude. It's about 1500m, so about 5000ft. But great venue with stored snow and a great biathlon range. And then from there, we'll head up to Lahti for the first World Cup.
Tom Kelly: [00:27:34] And what is your plan this winter? It's, obviously the World Cup starting in a few weeks. You have a World Championships coming up. Where will we see you on the tour this year?
Justin Wadsworth: [00:27:43] Yeah. So I'm going to be starting with athletes here in a week in over teleac. And the goal was really to make sure a lot of what we've been doing on roller skis and on the treadmill gets translated onto snow. Now, generally, you know, roller skiing and snow skiing are pretty similar, but there are some differences. And a lot of the things we've been working on the roller skis are really going to be felt a lot more on skis, like some of the some of the angles and some of the positioning. We've been trying to get the athletes in on the roller skis, they don't feel it as much, but when they get on snow, some of the things we've been working on will really have an impact. And we just want to make sure that is getting translated those first, you know, handful of days on snow. So I'll be with the team on snow and Obertilliach for the first two weeks, and then I'll be going up to Kontio with the team for the first week in the World Cup racing, where my role will primarily be just again to go over course strategy, ski the course with the athletes, just talk about how we're going to use certain techniques in certain areas.
Justin Wadsworth: [00:28:44] And and just again you know, I spent a lot of time at that venue and pretty much every venue that they're going to be at this winter. So I'll be trying to give them some strategy. We've also been working on pacing as a team and really identifying. I mean, that seems to be on everybody's radar most of the time, but we've really been trying to put extra emphasis. We did some pacing, workouts in Park City that really worked out well and paid dividends. And I think some of our athletes are going to see huge, if they can race with that kind of confidence where they can just maybe take the pedal off the gas a little bit early on and see the dividends later on in the race. we're going to see some really fast ski times in general. So that's another one of our goals that we just want to make sure is translating as we get on to Europe and we start racing.
Tom Kelly: [00:29:36] Good. Well, it should be an interesting season ahead. will you be at the World Championships?
Justin Wadsworth: [00:29:42] Yeah. Thanks for that. I will be at the World Championships. I'll also be doing this kind of same protocol the two weeks before the World Championships when we go to altitude in Livigno. So we'll have an altitude camp there. And again my role there is just to make sure we're kind of executing an altitude camp as best possible because, you know, right before championship, if you if you do too much at altitude, it can also take the edge off versus the other way around. So yeah, I'll just be helping out, trying to make sure the athletes are executing the workouts correctly at altitude. And then again going to Otepaa in Estonia for the world Championships to to go over course strategies? It's a place that I've also been a lot because cross country World Cups have always been there. So I know how difficult the courses are and so I'm gonna really try to help with some of the strategizing about how to ski certain hills and the pacing around that. So.
Tom Kelly: [00:30:36] Well. Justin it's great to have you on board and thanks for sharing all the information that you've put out for our listeners, we're going to close off this edition of heartbeat with our on target section. Just a few questions to wrap it up. Hopefully some short and sweet answers from you. And I'm going to take you back to your time as an athlete with the US cross country team. Is there a moment in your career that you're most proud of as an athlete, a moment you're most proud of from your career as a cross country racer?
Justin Wadsworth: [00:31:12] Yeah. You know, it's it's not just because it was a good result, but I think our relay in Soldier Hollow at the 2002 Olympics, where we are fifth place, you know, we really came together as a team. I personally was not having a great Olympics. So still to have the trust in that because I had gotten sick early in the games and to have the trust of my teammates to race in the relay still. And yeah, just having a great group of of friends to race with and having that fifth place and really battling it with the best in the world in front of our home crowd was, I mean, amazing. So yeah, medal would have been even more amazing. But to us at that time, fifth place was quite good. And I think we're all still proud of that and really proud of each of us as teammates to the other people, whether it was John Bauer, you know, Karl Swenson Patrick Weaver, Chris Freeman, you know, we really had a great team of athletes and people.
Tom Kelly: [00:32:05] Yeah, you really did. When you when you come down to Soldier Hollow now, as you did, this past month, does it bring back those memories from 2002.
Justin Wadsworth: [00:32:14] A little bit still, I think, you know, it's been so long that I think if I'm down there in the winter, it would. But summer, it feels different to me. It's just it's another venue. We've always been to in the summer, but I think, you know, going into these next Olympics, well, not this next one, but 20, 34, it's going to be pretty fun to get back down there. And I have a son that potentially could be, you know, racing there. So that's pretty wild, especially since Becky won her gold medal there, in 2002. So it is a special venue for us. And I do enjoy going back, but yeah.
Tom Kelly: [00:32:50] I was going to go there. But just for our listeners, Justin's wife is Becky Scott from Canada, the gold medalist or a gold medalist in 2002. Has she been back there in recent years?
Justin Wadsworth: [00:33:03] You know, she just was down, in Park City to check in on the Canadian cross country team because she's now the CEO of Nordic Canada. so she was down there. She did not make it out to Soho, though, which was too bad, but she said it was even fun just to be back in Park City, because she spent a lot of summers there training as well. but yeah, maybe we'll both get to go back there as just parents and watch our children race there potentially someday.
Tom Kelly: [00:33:28] So wouldn't that be great huh?
Justin Wadsworth: [00:33:30] Yeah.
Tom Kelly: [00:33:31] In 2034, wild. Let's go back to the proudest moment thing. Is there a moment as a coach that you're most proud of this time moment as a coach that you're most proud of?
Justin Wadsworth: [00:33:44] yeah, you know, more recently, it's funny, you know, obviously I was fortunate enough to be coaching when we won the world Championships in Oslo in 2011, the team sprint with Alex Harvey and Devon Kershaw. I mean, to silence the Norwegian crowd at home. And colon doesn't get much better than that. But actually, I probably my proudest moment, was in Beijing and just qualifying three biathletes on the Canadian team for the mass start and putting athletes. You know, we had a fifth place there, and other, you know, top ten results. And to put three in the mass start, we were, I think the only non-French, Norwegian or Swedish team to do that. And for you know, really the athletes just came together at the right time. And we had a lot of energy in the team. So I was actually quite proud of my athletes there. the whole team. But the men especially who really rallied. And to put three in the mass start at the Olympics. I didn't think it was possible at the time, but they really, they really put it together at the right time. So that's the moment I'm most proud of.
Tom Kelly: [00:34:54] Oh, those are great memories. I'm kind of curious with your wife, Becky. Where does she keep her gold and silver medals?
Justin Wadsworth: [00:35:03] Probably somewhere in a drawer in a plastic bag. they're not displayed anywhere. occasionally she'll take them to an event. If somebody asks her to bring him. But they, you know, they just go in a drawer. And I think it's more the memories of training with the team and being on the road with the team. That is the real important part. It's funny. It's you wouldn't think it's that way. But the medals for her are just, Yeah, I special but they're, they're not anywhere prominent.
Tom Kelly: [00:35:32] I think that's actually the case Justin with most great champions. So not unusual. And then just the last one, I know you're new with the US team, but you spent time with Canada. Do you have a favorite stop on the IBU World Cup tour?
Justin Wadsworth: [00:35:48] I mean, Antholz, as we were talking about earlier, is a hard place to beat. It's just, you know, it's such a beautiful venue and you're in Italy and the food's great and the atmosphere is amazing. So I think, for World Cup, that's, that's probably my favorite stop on the IBU World Cup. But you know, Oberhof in the rain in the with the crowds and just the vibe that's going on. You got there's something that you gotta appreciate about that. So you know, I embrace it when we're there. I you know, make sure my rain jackets really, ready to go for that weekend. And it's a fun venue always. But you know, biathlon the almost every stop is, can be, you know, the world championships, Czech Republic were out outrageous. Ruhpolding is amazing. I mean, the whole World Cup in biathlon is pretty special. But Antholz is, you know, we all like sun and hard pack tracks and good food and sun, you know, just the whole vibe there. So it's beautiful.
Tom Kelly: [00:36:49] And what you get in Oberhof is quite different than that. But it's its own thing, right?
Justin Wadsworth: [00:36:53] It's its own thing. And you gotta really appreciate the biathlon fans in Germany because they keep the sport moving for sure.
Tom Kelly: [00:36:59] Yeah they do. Justin Wadsworth, thank you for joining us and all the best to you in your new endeavor with U.S. Biathlon.
Justin Wadsworth: [00:37:06] Thanks, Tom. Great to see you.