Minnesotans Luci Anderson, Margie Freed to make Olympic debuts in ‘drama-filled’ sport

Luci Anderson likens the crowd at a German biathlon meet to the kind one might find at a NASCAR race stateside.

They’re both wildly passionate fan bases clinging to sports in which the outcome can be determined in a split second. Many of those fans have little-to-no direct connection to or involvement in the sport themselves.

It’s “so drama-filled,” Anderson said, with spectators exclaiming in glee or sympathy at every turn.

“You never know who’s gonna win until the last shooting [stage], so there’s always underdogs coming up,” she told the Minnesota Star Tribune by phone Jan. 22. “Anybody can win.”

Anderson, a native of Golden Valley, will make her Olympic debut at the 2026 Winter Games on the U.S. biathlon team less than two full years after picking up the sport.

Biathlon combines cross-country skiing and rifle target shooting across various course lengths and competition styles. It became an Olympic men’s sport in 1960; the women’s competition was added in 1992.

Germany is one of the top-performing countries in the sport at the Games, holding 54 total medals, one behind Norway, which leads with 55.

This year’s Olympic biathlon events begin Sunday, Feb. 8, and are being held at the Antholz-Anterselva Biathlon Arena in Rasen-Antholz, Italy.

Also representing the U.S. alongside Anderson will be her friend and fellow Minnesotan Margie Freed, who’s making her Olympic debut, too.

The pair skied together for Loppet Nordic Racing (LNR) based out of Theodore Wirth Park growing up. They then both competed at colleges in the Northeast, overlapping for one year while competing there. Freed, 28, competed for the University of Vermont; Anderson, 25, skied at the University of New Hampshire.

“We’ve just had a lot of fun together,” said Freed, an Apple Valley native. “It’s fun to have a fellow Minnesotan out here. Obviously, there’s a lot of Minnesotan winter athletes on the circuit, but having one that’s right there with me is pretty awesome.”

Anderson knew about biathlon growing up thanks to a family connection.

But Anderson didn’t become interested in biathlon until she graduated college and wasn’t yet ready to “go into the real world.” She started attending training camps in summer 2024 to learn the sport.

Freed’s foray into biathlon was similar.

She attended a talent identification camp for U.S. Biathlon in college at the suggestion of her dad but didn’t leave with a desire to start competing.

While skiing professionally in Vermont post-grad, though, teammates encouraged her to give the sport another try.

“It was all kind of a bit, honestly, to be like, ‘Oh yeah, I’ve done biathlon,’” Freed said. “Just say I’d done it. It ended up going well.”

But they’re well-versed in the skiing side.

Anderson has been skiing nearly her whole life. She started with the Minnesota Youth Ski League before transitioning to LNR around age 13 and taking a more serious focus.

Her older sister used to ski competitively, and her younger brother still does.

“The family are really into it, but they are super chill,” said Piotr Bednarski, director of Loppet Sport. “They are really relaxed. They’re into the training, they train a lot, but nobody gets too worried about results.”

Bednarski went so far as to call Anderson’s family her “biggest strength” as a young competitor trying out a new sport because of the attitude they bring.

Freed was already an endurance athlete running cross-country and track. She also played soccer.

Once she joined LNR, Bednarski helped Freed establish a training regimen to build the extra strength required in cross-country skiing.

Biathlon brought a new layer for Freed to work on.

“I was really good at the endurance side of things,” Freed said. “Doing mental endurance was really hard. That mental challenge of just having focus for a long time and working on that was — is still the hardest part of biathlon for me."

Both anecdotally and by results, Freed and Anderson have markedly improved in their short time devoted to biathlon.

It was “a real milestone,” said Bednarski, who coached biathlon for 20 years before taking his post with LNR. He said it’s a “long road” for biathletes to reach the top of the sport and that both Freed and Anderson have “a lot of high-level years ahead of them.”

While Freed acknowledged her shooting acumen still has a ways to go compared with top biathletes, she has seen “a huge improvement” after dedicating extra time to that side of the sport in summer 2025.

Freed had her best finish (31st) of the 2025-26 World Cup cycle in Nove Mesto, Czech Republic, on Jan. 25.

“The thing about biathlon is anyone can kind of get lucky,” she said. “Obviously, they’re not getting lucky, because they’re trying really hard and everything, but anyone can kind of do really well on any given day.”

Anderson said she also began to establish muscle memory in her rifle shooting this past summer. She trains exclusively for shooting about 300 hours a year, she said, on top of about 650 hours of ski training.

She finished just outside the top 20 in a different 7.5-kilometer sprint Jan. 8 at a World Cup event in Oberhof, Germany.

Growing up doing cross-country skiing, Anderson said she often heard the phrase, “One of you in this room is gonna be the next Jessie Diggins,” while at ski camps.

She never thought it was going to be her until she picked up biathlon.

“I’m excited because you never know what can happen,” Anderson said. “Literally any of these young women doing cross-country skiing in Minnesota, it could be anybody. You can always dream.”