Jack Gierhart: Pride of Team

It’s been three years since veteran Olympic sport leader Jack Gierhart found his way to U.S. Biathlon. Now entering his fourth season, Gierhart spoke with Heartbeat from the U.S. Biathlon headquarters in Soldier Hollow, outlining some of the innovative athlete support programs that have been implemented, discussing team culture, and sharing the story behind the new U.S. Biathlon logo released this month.

Gierhart was enthusiastic about the athlete-staff initiative on team culture. In episode one of Heartbeat this season, we spoke with Kelsey Dickinson and Chloe Levins about the team’s initiative to create a values-based, positive team culture. “I remember talking with Kelsey and Jake (Brown), and a couple of other athletes a year-and-a-half ago or so,” said Gierhart. “They were enthusiastic about trying to get this going.” Now the shared values program, driven by both athletes and staff, is firmly in place heading into the 2025-26 season.

He also highlighted some of the innovative high-performance programs implemented by U.S. Biathlon to support athletes. As an example, High Performance Director Lowell Bailey now works closely with Jim Becker, a masters biathlete himself, at Montana State University on a wide range of initiatives, from physiological biometric testing to 3D motion capture.

“We're really seeing quite an impact on the performance of our athletes,” he said.

Simple as it may seem on the surface, another priority area for U.S. Biathlon has been athlete wellness. “One of the areas we really started to focus on about a year and a half ago was how do we reduce athlete illness?” said Gierhart. “That's been the biggest impact on us!”

He outlined programs in place now through U.S. Biathlon’s partnership with University of Utah Health. Last January, U of U Health Athletic Trainer Annika Pasch joined the team to support overall athlete wellness on the grueling schedule athletes face during the winter season.

“This concept of minor illness prevention is incredibly important to us,” he added. “So we started to talk about how do we do that? How do we keep our athletes on the race course more frequently? And besides being able and having boots on the ground with the athletes that are able to monitor things in real time and react immediately, is really important.”

The atmosphere at the final pre-season dryland camp was exhilarating. There was a lot on the line with team trials. And final preparation before the team reassembles in Obertilliach, Austria for a final on-snow test before the World Cup and IBU Cup openers.

As he reflected back on the last three seasons, his look forward was one of pride. “The work that this team has done over the last three years – we have high goals. Everybody's working really hard. But whatever happens, I'm going to be incredibly proud of this team and our community of what we achieve.”

Listen in to Heartbeat, season six, episode two, for an insightful look into U.S. Biathlon with CEO Jack Gierhart.