Tim Burke: Development for the Future
If the recent U.S. Biathlon Trials event at Mt. Itasca Winter Sports Center is any indicator, athlete development is on the upswing. Record numbers of athletes were on hand seeking to qualify for major youth and junior events. In this episode of Heartbeat, U.S. Biathlon’s Director of Athlete Development Tim Burke, talks about sustained competitive excellence as the objective of U.S. Biathlon’s strategic plan and the progress that’s being made. Burke, a longtime athlete who won silver at the World Championships in 2013, is part of a strong athletic program at U.S. Biathlon. He works alongside Director of Sport Development John Farra and a longtime biathlete now managing high-performance, Lowell Bailey. The three all have roots growing up in Lake Placid and competing at the highest level. Now Burke is finding gratification in helping nurture the next generation to success. At Mt. Itasca in late December, 80 athletes showed up to race – a bump of 45% from previous years. Notably, too, the field included a record 31 women - a big focus for U.S. Biathlon. The trials offered athletes an opportunity to vie for spots on a wide range of international teams, most notably the Youth Olympic Games in South Korea and the IBU’s Youth and Junior World Championships in Estonia. This episode of Heartbeat takes you into the heart of athlete development, representing the next generation of biathletes who will represent Team USA in the coming years. Tim, how do you describe your role with U.S. Biathlon? My title is the director of athlete development. However, we're a very small organization, so titles are one thing, but all of us do a little bit of everything. I work very closely with Lowell in high performance and with John Farra in sport development. But my main role is kind of working in the middle of the U.S. Biathlon pipeline – really focusing on those athletes in the middle of our pipeline who are coming up, ensuring that they have the opportunities and what they need to succeed in this part of their career so they can make a smooth transition into the senior circuit. How does your role fit into U.S. Biathlon’s strategic plan? Our plan of sustained competitive excellence. So what does that mean? That means taking us from an organization that has occasionally had some success for sure, that we're all very proud of, but we want to have that more consistently. And to have that more consistently, we need to be more professional. We need more athletes in our pipeline, and ultimately, we need to be able to field teams on the World Cup, at World Championships, at the Olympics, where we can field a full team of athletes who are capable of stepping onto that podium. If we can do that, we will finally win that elusive Olympic medal. But it all starts at the bottom. It all starts with grassroots. It all starts at our clubs. It all starts down there building those numbers so that we have the athletes, enough athletes coming through our pipeline that can rise to the top. What differences do you see in athlete development today versus a few years ago? One of the biggest differences right now, as compared to when I came through the pipeline, is we're seeing a lot more of these crossover nordic athletes transitioning into biathlon. And it's not only true for our country, but it's true for others as well. You've seen other countries have a lot of success, like Sweden, like Germany, like Slovenia right now. And we want to be a part of that, and we have been a part of that. If you look at our national team right now, if you look at the World Cup that just happened this morning, many of those athletes racing for us, racing in that US uniform, are athletes that came over from cross country at a pretty late age. A lot of them came after they finished college. You know, they were successful collegiate skiers and they wanted to try something different. And we tried to provide those opportunities for them in biathlon. And that's one thing that we a
