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The opening of the BMW IBU World Championships Biathlon in Lenzerheide will mark another milestone in a campaign to recruit more women into coaching and officiating. U.S. Biathlon’s Sara Studebaker-Hall, an Olympic veteran, will serve at technical delegate for the prestigious event. Heartbeat spoke to Studebaker-Hall as she prepared for the Championships, which begin Feb. 12.
An impactful advocate for women in officiating, Studebaker-Hall has spent the last few years working her way up the officiating ladder, eventually becoming an IBU referee and passing her technical delegate exam. She made a big step a year ago by serving as a referee at the Hochfilzen IBU World Cup. This past December, she had her first TD assignment at the Junior Cup in Ridnau, Italy.
Serving as technical delegate at the World Championships is clearly a major assignment. Studebaker-Hall had been in Lenzerheide last summer for a workshop, and received the news of her prestigious assignment on her way back to the USA.
She was humbled by the role. “The IBU has a lot of female technical delegates at this point, and many who are more experienced than myself,” she said. “I'm very honored to fill this role.”
Thanks in part to Studebaker-Hall’s advocacy the past few years, there is a growing number of women in officiating in America. But her passion still runs deep. “Without the officials, without the volunteers, you can't do the sport,” she said. “It doesn't work. And so being part of that and making sure that the races go off according to the rules and according to what the athletes are expecting is is really gratifying.”
Studebaker-Hall goes into detail on her role at Lenzerheide, and the steps other can take to follow in her footsteps as a biathlon official. She also dives into the qualifying criteria for the 2026 Winter Games in Milan-Cortina.
