Aiming for Anthloz — Darcie Morton

For any young aspiring athlete who grows up in Australia, there is usually the dream of one day getting the chance to race for Australia at an Olympics. Australian World Cup athlete Darcie Morton is putting everything into making this dream her reality. So, when a chance came for her to train at the 2026 Winter Olympics Games venue in Antholz, Italy, and with Finland’s World Cup team on a joint three-week preparatory camp with Poland, Latvia and Greenland, Darcie jumped at the opportunity.  

Darcie targeted this camp as an opportunity to train on the Olympic games shooting range and competition track, and undertake training at high intensity, high altitude and under pressure with Finland’s World Cup Women’s team, who is ranked top ten in the World.  With an altitude of 1700m, Antholz is the highest of the World Cup ranges. Due to this, other top biathlon nations including Germany and Italy are also training here in Antholz for the athletes to learn how to handle the elevation, the complexities of the Olympic range, and like Darcie, to ‘feel the Antholz Biathlon passion’.

The first week of the camp has involved daily complex shooting sessions with Finland and Poland with a focus of shooting with both high pulse and with speed. This was combined with a high volume of endurance training sessions made up of skate and classic rollerskiing and hiking up the Stalle and Furcia Passes in the Dolomite Mountains that border Italy and Austria.  The 2^nd and 3^rd weeks of the camp will include more high intensity sessions, both at and above threshold, as well as several test races. This type of training will help prepare Darcie for the Loop One Biathlon Rollerski Festival in Munich city. This Festival is an invitational event based on athlete’s points and ranking on World Cup and IBU Cup. Darcie, along with teammate Phoenix Sparke, are the sole Australians invited to participate. 

Loop One will consist of 60 of the top athletes in the World contesting a Super Sprint on a 1.7km loop around the Olympic festival park in central Munich.  Four heats of 15 athletes shooting Prone, Prone, Standing, Standing over the 8.5km course will be conducted with the top three progressing automatically through to the final. Loop One serves as a launch for the upcoming 2025/26 IBU World Cup season which begins in Östersund, Sweden, on 29 November 2025.

Darcie was provided this opportunity through the collaborated support of a handful of local Victorian businesses/companies based both near her childhood home of Marlo, and her Australian training base of Mt Hotham. These businesses include Hotham Resort Management, Zirkys, The General, Snow Monkey, Orbost Home Hardware, Gunsport Trading and XTM.  In turn, the support of European businesses, BEME Sport, Fischer, Leki and Kinetixx all contributed to making this Antholz camp possible, as well as contributing to essential support during Darcie's representation of Australia on the World Cup circuit in 2025/26, which in turn act as the season’s 2026 Olympic Qualifying races. A huge thanks goes out to all these businesses for their incredible support.

#ForzaTeamAUS

David, Sandy, Brett, Libby, Kat, Kate, Mark & Murray