Dear U.S. Biathlon Community,
The past several months have been an important and challenging period for U.S. Biathlon. After extensive discussion, negotiation, and engagement across our community, we decided not to pursue the proposed Strategic Alliance with U.S. Ski & Snowboard.
This experience, the work it prompted, and what we learned from it, will be important to our future.
First, we want to recognize the extraordinary level of engagement from across the biathlon community. Athletes, coaches, officials, clubs, volunteers, donors, parents, and members invested significant time and energy to understand the proposal, raise concerns, challenge assumptions, offer ideas, and advocate for the future of our sport. We heard you.
We also heard something equally important: a deep passion for U.S. Biathlon and a desire from many of you to play a greater role in building its future. We want to harness that energy.
We explored the alliance because we believe U.S. Biathlon must continue to think differently and ambitiously about how we achieve our goals. We have made significant progress over the past several years. Our athletes, coaches, and staff have elevated our performance internationally. Our clubs, volunteers, officials, and local leaders continue to sustain and grow the sport at home. And our trustees, donors, partners, and Board have provided resources that have allowed us to invest more deeply in our athletes and programs.
We should be proud of that progress. But if we want sustainable competitive excellence and a thriving domestic sport for the long term, we need to take another significant step forward.
The alliance ultimately was not the right path. But the process taught us a great deal.
It also exposed some disconnect with parts of our community that we need to address. At times, the intensity of the past several months did not bring out the best in many of us. Strong disagreements became personal, trust was strained, and we did not always communicate or listen as well as we could have; we acknowledge that some did not feel heard. We all care deeply about this sport, but caring about the same thing does not mean we will always agree on how to get there.
As leaders, we accept responsibility for the direction we pursued and for learning from the process. We believe leadership requires challenging the status quo and exploring opportunities that could significantly advance our mission. It also requires listening, adjusting when circumstances change, acknowledging when we can do things better, and applying what we learn.
That is the Growth Mindset our athletes, coaches, and staff defined as one of our fundamental values, and that we as an organization and leaders need to live by as well.
There is a great deal from this experience that should make us optimistic. The working groups and community discussions generated ideas, relationships, and energy that might not otherwise have emerged. They reinforced the opportunity for deeper collaboration with the broader Nordic community and highlighted the expertise, commitment, and capacity that already exist within U.S. Biathlon.
Now we need to turn that energy into action.
One of our priorities will be creating a stronger and more structured role for our clubs, coaches, officials, volunteers, athletes, and other members of the community in building and managing the sport. But this cannot simply be another initiative designed by the Board and staff and handed to the community.
We want to build it with you, and we will need members of the community to take real ownership of it.
Our role will be to engage, listen, provide staff support and financial resources, and help create the structure that allows people across the country to contribute effectively. The community's role will be to help lead it: bringing expertise, ideas, relationships, energy, and accountability to the work of growing biathlon in the United States. We believe that shared ownership can become one of the lasting positive outcomes of the past several months.
We also need to confront our resource challenges together. USOPC funding has become increasingly focused on near-term performance, sponsorship remains difficult for a sport of our size and international footprint, and while we have successfully grown philanthropic support, that support remains concentrated among a relatively small number of generous donors.
We need new ideas, broader participation, stronger partnerships, and creative approaches to generating the resources required for both competitive excellence and long-term growth. Encouragingly, even in the past several days, members of our community have stepped forward asking how they can help. We intend to take them up on that offer.
The past several months have challenged us, but they do not define us. What matters now is what we do with the experience.
Our values are Respect, Grit, and Growth Mindset. They matter most when things are difficult. Respect asks us to listen and recognize that people who disagree can still share the same goals. Grit asks us to keep working when the path becomes difficult. Growth Mindset asks us to learn, adapt, and become better.
We are not going back to where we were before this process began. We know more today. More people are engaged. New ideas and opportunities have emerged. And we have a clearer understanding of both the challenges ahead and the extraordinary resources that exist within our own community to address them.
And we are not standing still. In the coming weeks, we will create opportunities for community input and feedback and begin working with those who have expressed an interest in helping to define an action plan for the next generation of volunteer engagement within U.S. Biathlon. We want the community to help shape what that looks like, take meaningful ownership of the work, and help lead it forward, with the commitment of staff, Board support, and resources behind it. We will share more about these input opportunities shortly. We also have a board meeting on October 9 at Soldier Hollow where there will be an opportunity for the community to connect with the Board.
Our path forward may be different than the one we contemplated several months ago, but our ambition has not changed. We believe deeply in the potential of U.S. Biathlon and in our ability to build an organization and a sport capable of sustained international excellence and long-term growth at home.
There is important work ahead, and we are moving forward. We look forward to doing that work together.
Thank you for your passion, your candor, your commitment, and everything you do for U.S. Biathlon.
With gratitude and determination,
Bob Hall
Chair, Board of Directors
Jack Gierhart
President & CEO
U.S. Biathlon
Governance requires process.
