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St. Paul Pioneer Press
Brian Olsen set out six years ago to make the Olympic biathlon team, and to the surprise of everyone but himself, he did it.
Brian Olsen was 16 years old when he decided he would make the 2006 Olympic biathlon team. That he did isn't as remarkable as how he did it. The guy might be better at coordinating resources than he is at his sport.
And he's very good at his sport.
The kid from Bloomington earned a spot on the U.S. team early last month at the Olympic Trials. He qualified despite training on his own for an entire year. His support team was composed of friends and family recruited to record split times, wax skis and videotape the four races — among other things.
"It was a big volunteer party," his mother, Peggy, said with a chuckle. "He eats between 5,000 and 6,000 calories a day, like any endurance athlete, and it was my job to cook."
Brian's father, Bob, also was there to help in Kent Park, Maine. So was Brian's sister, Kate, who works for an Internet company and doubles as Brian's publicist. Aside from being Olsen's biggest supporters, they're part of his elaborate and constantly evolving plan to become the world's greatest biathlete.
The plan has included several schools, creative financing and an ability to sleep just about anywhere. It also has involved a lot of travel, taking him to Sweden and Norway, where he lived on his own for the first time at the age of 16, as well as Maine, Vermont and Utah.
Now Olsen is in Turin, Italy, where he likely will compete on the first day in the 20-kilometer individual race.
Just as he anticipated.
"When he was 15 and a half, he wrote down on a piece of paper that he would make the Olympic team in 2006," said Peggy, a social worker who lives in Highland Park with her husband. "As a parent I thought, that's wonderful, but I didn't think it would happen. He just persevered."
Olsen said that at 22, he is "right on track" to being the world's best biathlete, taking into account his own success and that most of the world's best peak between the ages of 28 and 32.
He was a sophomore cross country skier at Bloomington Jefferson when a teammate introduced him to his biathlon coach. Olsen had never fired a gun, and in his own estimation, he was not an elite skier, but when he experienced the two together, he was hooked.
"I was mesmerized by the process of shooting," he said last week in an e-mail from Germany, where he was training. "It was both so complex, because of how much training it would take to improve, and yet so simple because of how the whole process comes together for a second of complete focus on the target."
He was 16 when he won a U.S. Youth National Championship in 2000 while training with Minnesota Biathlon. He promptly moved to Norway to train at an elite center called Geillo. He was there for 10 months.
"I realized that though I was the American champion, I had a long way to go in order to reach the level of my peers in Europe," he said.
He also learned to take care of himself by living alone in an apartment for the first time.
When he returned, he won four U.S. Junior National Championships and qualified for the World Junior Championships.
"Those were the first steps in a long journey to where I am today," he said.
But when Olsen turned 21, he was pushed into the senior division. He failed to earn a spot on the national team and had to train on his own. Accustomed to making ends meet any way he can, he was undaunted.
Olsen took a year off from the University of Vermont and trained in Maine and Utah, sleeping on friends' floors and returning the favor by cooking their meals; his Web site, frozenbullet.com, includes some of his recipes. Sometimes he slept in his Ford Explorer, which he left out East when he moved to Utah to train in the higher altitudes he'll experience in Turin.
To fund his training, he saved birthday and Christmas money, and he made a deal with his parents to use the money they had set aside for his college education. He also got a grant from the Maine Winter Sports Center, where he was able to stay for free while training there.
In Utah without a car, he rode his bike to the training site in Heber City, site of the 2002 Nordic events — six miles each way.
"Seeing the remaining Olympic logos kept me motivated during hard training workouts," he said.
Because he had been cut from the National Development Team in the spring, "making the Olympic team made all of the work I have done on my own extremely gratifying."
Yet he has more work to do. Olsen calls himself "the fifth man on this five-man team," but sees these Games as a step toward his ultimate goal.
"When I was 17," he said, "having returned from World Junior Championships, I sat down and plotted my way to the Olympic Games and a medal. Last season, I missed making the World Championship Team, which was one of the steps along that path. Making this Olympic team puts me right back on track, though.
"Having now raced on the World Cup against the best has made me understand that there are still thousands of hours and bullets to shoot before I make it to the top."
John Shipley can be reached at
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