Biathlon: the story of Australia’s Darcie Morton
The pace of life for Australia’s Darcie Morton, 24, does not match that of other biathletes on the world circuit. With 21 World Cup starts to her name, the native of Melbourne (Australia) is back in the snow when she returns home at the end of the European winter season. A country where biathlon is not very well developed, with only one stadium ever built.
This is how she came to the Old Continent, mainly to Obertilliach (Austria) to perfect her preparation, visiting other training sites as opportunities arose.
For Nordic Magazine, Darcie Morton agreed to write about her daily life, her future goals, her best memories and the history of Australian biathlon in the World Cup.
The highly confidential situation of biathlon in Australia
“Hi! My name is Darcie Morton and I am currently the sole athlete representing Australia on the World Cup circuit and the #1 female Biathlete in Australia. Biathlon in Australia is not very well known. We don’t have the facilities, teams, sponsors and culture of Biathlon like Europeans do. This means that as an Australian Biathlete I have a slightly different training schedule and lifestyle that I must follow. In the European summer months, we have our winter so I am back on snow from mid-June to August. This obviously depends on the snow conditions which are becoming more and more scarce due to the warming temperatures in the last years. We only have snow at altitudes above ~1400m in the states of NSW and Victoria, so I usually base up at Mt Hotham which is home to Australia’s one and only Biathlon range.”
“It’s funny that even during winter the temperature will stay around 0 to +7 on the mountain and will not usually drop below -3 degrees Celsius. We even had some days of 15 degrees Celius in the last year. In turn, when you drive down the mountain it feels like European autumn weather again (between 10-20 degrees Celsius). So, I can just drive 45min down the mountain and still get in all my ‘summer’ training (rollerskiing, biking, running, kayaking etc). Although, I mostly like to do this long distance ‘off snow’ training back at my home which is only 2.5 hours from the mountains, right on the southeast coast of Victoria. Throughout the winter I will also travel between NSW and Victoria to the other mountains; Falls Creek and Perisher, to compete in some XC ski races.”
A long training period in Europe to kick-start preparations for the 2026 Olympics
“Normally, I would travel over to Europe in October and return in March, but because the Winter Olympic Games in 2026 are quickly approaching I wanted to spend more time in Europe to prepare, as this is one of my major goals in the next 2 years. So I ended up flying overseas early September and will stay here until April for some spring skiing after the season is complete.”
“This year I’m really lucky to have some great support from multiple different federations and the IBU to train with different teams at different stadiums. I’m really grateful for this opportunity as normally I have to do the majority of my training alone in Australia, due to the long distances that athletes live from one-another and our very small team and resource availability. Overall, Obertilliach, Austria will remain my ‘home away from home’ and I am very lucky to be sponsored by Biathlon Obertilliach and have such good support from one of my coaches Joe Obererlacher, who lives there.”
“To give you an idea about what I’ve been up to I’ll give you a quick rundown! I arrived in Munich early September and spent a week in Obertilliach before flying to Norway. Here I spent 2 weeks training with my friend Ukaleq Slettemark at her place, and also competed in the Norwegian Rollerski Championships while I was there. It was so nice to experience Norway in the autumn and catch up with old friends, I really enjoyed this trip.”
“I then travelled back to Obertilliach and had an intensive training camp with the Austrian B team. I hadn’t met most of the athletes in this team and they welcomed me so openly, it was a really nice high hour week. I spent the next period in another intensive camp at Antholz, Italy with the Finnish and Latvian teams. This was quite a tough camp because Antholz is at such a high altitude, we had 4 intensity sessions in 5 days, including a test race and it rained half the time we were there, which was slightly less fun. After a short weekend stopover in Innsbruck to see a friend I returned to Obertilliach. For this week, I had planned to just train alone with my sister and my Dad, but a Swiss and Estonian team were training there at the same time, so I joined a test race with them and some other training sessions here and there.”
“A lot of teams are really inclusive and open when it comes to joint training sessions”Darcie Morton at Nordic Magazine
“I think that’s the great thing about our ‘Biathlon family’, that it is a bit of a small international sport, so everyone is very friendly, and a lot of the teams are really inclusive and open when it comes to joint training sessions. Now, I am currently in Livigno with the whole Austrian team for 10 days before I head to Idre to join my own National team which is having a training camp with the Latvian National team for the rest of November, leading into the IBU and World Cup races. So, a very busy preparation block, but with the season approaching fast, I am getting excited to start chasing my goals again and get back on snow!”
His objectives for the coming season
“My goals for this season are : 1) Obtain my first World Cup (WC) points (top 40); 2) Achieve a top 10 result on IBU Cup; 3) Drop my average IBU Qualifying Points (IBU QP) to 70 or below; 4) Shoot clean in a Sprint or Individual on WC or IBU Cup; 5) Consistently quality onto the Pursuit in WC (top 60). All the ‘short term’ goals above are centred around my main goal of qualifying for the 2026 Milano-Cortina Winter Olympic Games.”
His best memories of competition
“My best competition memory would be a tied between my sprint and mass start races at the 2024 Obertilliach IBU Cup. In the sprint I got my PB on IBU with a 12th place, shooting 0,1, +1.32min behind the winner. I remember my skiing just felt amazing this day and with one less miss I would have been pushing into the top 6, which was a crazy thought for me at the time.”
“The mass start was also really special because I don’t often get to race this type of race and it’s always so exciting because you know your place the whole race, so you are constantly fighting with the athletes around you. It was made even better because I had my best shooting of the season with 0,1,0,0. Especially to shoot zero on the last standing was really amazing for me, and it made the skiing part even more exciting. These races were the last of the season 2023/2024 so it was such a big motivator to end on a high and at my ‘home base’ was just a bonus.”
His predecessors in the history of Australian biathlon
“Australia has a surprisingly long history of World Cup athletes starting in 1987 with Lindsay Bridgford (22 WC starts) and Andrew Paul (44 WC starts). Between 1990-1992 we had around 7 Australian’s competing intermittently on WC. Stand outs being Sanda Paintin-Paul (23 WC starts, debut 1991-1994) and Kerryn Rim (25 WC starts, debut 1993-1998), who were Australia’s first female Olympians, with their debuts at the 1992 Albertville Winter Olympics.”
“Paintin-Paul went on to compete in the 1994 Olympic Games and her career high light was 8th on World Cup. Rim competed in 3 Winter Olympics and her best result was 8th in 1994 Winter Olympics, 15km distance event. My father, Cameron Morton (49 WC starts, debut 1993-2006) was also one of Australia’s Olympians, competing in the 2006 Torino Winter Olympics and alongside Kerryn Rim and Mark Raymond (WC debut 2002-2009) on WC.”
“Alexei Almoukov (WC debut 2009-2014) was arguably one of Australia’s best male athletes. He is a 2 time Olympian with his debut at Vancouver 2010 at 19 years old. His career best result were 33rd in the 20km Individual at Sochi 2012/2013 WC and 44th in the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics. My brother Damon Morton also competed on WC in 2015, but retired in 2017 after being diagnosed with an autoimmune disease. Before this he accomplished some of Australia’s best results on Junior IBU Cup and World Youth Junior Championships with 11th place at Presque Isles 2014 YWCH and 7th at Lenzerheide Junior IBU Cup 2015. Jillian Colebourn who was a past team mate of mine, also competed on WC from 2019-2021.”
- Mount Hotham: results of the Australian championships sprint
- Mount Hotham: all the individual short course results from the Australian Championships
- The Italian summer of Australian biathlete Jillian Colebourn
