“It’s nice to be the New Zealand guy,” says biathlete Campbell Wright. “I’m from a weird country… Not a weird country, but a weird biathlon country.”
In reality, the 19-year-old is even more unusual than that. In the men’s 20km individual race on Tuesday 8 February, he was the only competitor among 92 from the Southern Hemisphere. And the youngest.
“It’s nice, to be honest,” said Wright. “Because I’m not actually a big threat to anyone, lots of the big countries can cheer for me and tell me my splits. I’m no one’s enemy.”
At least, not yet.
Wright finished 32nd in the 20km race at the Olympic Winter Games Beijing 2022. But biathletes tend to peak in their late 20s and early 30s. Given his age, Wright is hot property.
He is only the second teen ever to win World Cup points.
“In the entire world there is not another Campbell Wright. I speak to a lot of coaches from big national federations and they’re all jealous of him,” his coach Luca Bormolini told 1News in December.
And Campbell is mighty pleased with that 32nd spot.
“Of course I can’t compete for a medal because I’m still young in the sport of biathlon but I’m really happy with how I went,” he said.
“Being from New Zealand and being 19, I should come last at these races… but I turned it on. I don’t know how but I turned it on.”
Wright said he would take confidence from his 20km result when he competed in the 10km sprint on Saturday 12 February.
But he was unable to repeat his long-distance feat, finishing 75th.
“Today was a hard day for me, I’m not going to lie.
“I figured I’d roll the dice a little bit because if you roll the dice, there’s a chance you can do a really good race.
“I didn’t have the legs and I blew up big time on my last lap and then missed two targets. I tried my hardest but it didn’t really pay off today.
“When the races get shorter, you can go a bit closer to your limit for the duration of the race so you ride the line a bit closer to the red zone and today I went over. I was definitely aware that I went over it in my last lap.”
Working as a barista at home
That knowledge of the red zone will come with time. On Tuesday, it was ably demonstrated by France’s Quentin Fillot Maillet who won gold, Anton Smolski of Belarus who took silver, and bronze medallist Johannes Boe of Norway.
The podium was an apt demonstration of European dominance in biathlon. The 10km sprint was another European clean sweep.
Accordingly, Wright has a base in Livigno in Italy. During New Zealand winters, he trains at Snow Farm near Wanaka, and, perhaps to prove his teenage credentials, works as a barista.
He was close to becoming even more of a citizen of the world, having been courted by the United States of America, his parents’ birth country.
Wright has stated his preference for competing for New Zealand. But he had feared not qualifying for Beijing 2022 due to the New Zealand Olympic Committee’s high qualifying standards.
He has now become his nation’s second-ever Olympic biathlete, following in the tracks of Sarah Murphy at Vancouver 2010.
He joins Zoi Sadowski Synnott and Nico Porteous as Kiwi Olympic Winter Games heroes.
Sadowski Synnott won gold in the snowboard slopestyle at Beijing 2022, while Porteous took bronze in the freestyle skiing men’s halfpipe at PyeongChang 2018. He will compete in the same event in Beijing on Thursday 17 February.
Wright said the 20km race represented his second-best shooting performance ever (18 out of 20).
With each miss incurring a one-minute penalty, this was key to Wright’s success.
“It’s definitely something that takes a long, long time to shoot when your heart rate is up around 190bpm,” he told Stuff.
“It’s quite a lot like golf, in that if you are not absolutely 100 per cent present when you are shooting it is not going to end well. It is pretty big in the mental aspect, as well as the physical.”