Darcie Morton raced at both World Cup and IBU Cups in Trimester 1 during December in a bid to qualify for a Wild Card quota start at the Beijing Winter Olympics.

Darcie finished the last IBU international season in 2020/21 ranked as Australia’s No. 1 athlete and decided to stay in Europe rather than come back to AUS, to train and focus on Olympic qualification. Supported by Australian National University (ANU) where she is studying Medical Science, Darcie was able to make significant improvements over the summer with her shooting accuracy and shooting speed. She also improved her fitness through working with Austrian coach Joe Obererlacher.

“It was really great to spend a summer training in Europe. I was able to hike, bike ride, roller-ski on long long roads and use the tracks at the shooting Range to roller-ski and shoot. It’s just not possible to train to such high levels in AUS, as we just don’t have the facilities.”            

After her first race of the season, where Darcie continued to maintain her No 1 ranking, she unfortunately fell ill, broke a pole and her rifle stock, impacting on her next set of racing.

By IBU Cup No 3 in Obertilliach (AUT), Darcie was able to achieve solid performances in both the 15km Individual placing 55^th / 116 and 61^st in the 7.5km Sprint to maintain her direct qualification to World Cup and keep her Beijing Olympic dream alive.

With less than one month remaining until the selection period ends Darcie will be aiming to further reduce her qualification points below 100 along with a number of Nations including Slovenia, Greenland, Belgium, Moldova, Latvia, Estonia, Great Britain and Romania for one of 9 Wild Card starts that are available to nations outside the top 20 in World Cup rankings.

Darcie will head to Orsblie in Slovakia to contest IBU Cup 4 early in January aiming to achieve a top 30 result which is most likely necessary to deliver sub-100 IBU ranking points