It's not a miracle

Most Americans have never seen biathlon, the combination of cross-country skiing and shooting that over the past 20 years has become Europe's most popular winter sport.

It's logical, then, that most Americans don't know the first thing about biathlon. Or if they do, they maybe know just one thing, which is easy to remember because Americans like winners and this one thing is so confounding:

The United States of America has never won an Olympic medal in biathlon.

Never.

Not ever.

Which is why the silver medal that 27-year-oldTim Burke of Paul Smiths, N.Y., won Thursday at the season-opening biathlon World Cup event in Ostersund, Sweden, a 20-kilometer individual event, is so significant.

That silver didn't come at an Olympics. But the Olympics sure are coming up. And Burke's second marked the best finish for an American at a World Cup since 1992. It also ties for the best finish by an American, ever.

The American men closed last season with success -- Jeremy Teela grabbing third at a World Cup event in Vancouver, that third coming just weeks after the four-man U.S. team finished a strong fifth in the relay at a World Cup stop in Germany.

Now comes the new season, and it kicks off with Burke in second place on the podium, about which Max Cobb, US Biathlon's executive director, said,  "In my heart, I have to say this is the best American finish ever."

He also said, "To me, Tim's result today shows that nothing is impossible."

As has been observed repeatedly in this space, the U.S. team can not possibly hope to win the overall medals count at the Winter Olympics unless it gets podium finishes in both cross-country and biathlon.

Burke's second shows that the American biathlon effort may -- repeat, may -- be on the verge of making history in Vancouver.

Why the American success as the Vancouver Games approach?

A lot of things are coming together, and all by design.

For one, the American athletes are older. As in other endurance sports (like the marathon), it takes until one's late 20s or early 30s to peak.

The U.S. program has invested since the 2006 Torino Games in first-rate coaches, including head coach Per Nilsson and high-performance director Bernd Eisenbichler. Nilsson said Thursday in a telephone interview, "You don't see [success] in one year. It takes time. We had to have long-term thinking."

That takes resource. The USOC has quadrupled its support to biathlon. Plus, as Cobb pointed out, the federation's main sponsor, TD Bank, has been "fully" supportive since 2005.

That's belief without evidence, and that takes vision -- which has come in large measure from Cobb and from the chairman of the US Biathlon board, Larry Pugh, who declared at his first board meeting, in May 2006, "We are here for one reason and one reason only and that is to support the athletes."

To put them in position, that is, to win medals.

Which means that someone like Burke has literally put in years of conditioning and then has had the experience of being in pressure situations and failing and failing and failing before figuring out, finally, how to handle that pressure.

To treat it like just another day at the office. Just go out there and do what you can do -- and with the confidence of a winner.

Burke missed just one shot Thursday, and at that by maybe a millimeter.

"I was really relaxed and to me it just felt like another training day out there," he said. "That was the difference for me. I was able to keep my composure on the range."

No one can say that because Tim Burke finished second Thursday it's now a dead-bang guarantee that he's going to do so, or even go one better, in Vancouver.

Even so, confidence breeds confidence. And nothing is impossible.

"I know I can do it," Burke said. Because, and before Thursday he couldn't say this but when he lines up on the start line in Vancouver he sure can, "I've done it before."