Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics: Everything you need to know about Team USA's Deedra Irwin

Deedra Irwin made Team USA history with a best ever individual Olympic Winter Games finish in the biathlon. 

Newcomer Irwin, of Wisconsin, was consistent on the slopes and on the range to earn a seventh-place finish in the women’s 15km individual event in what is her first ever Games.

“I had a good game plan, and I was able to execute it,” the Team US biathlete said afterwards. “Everything came together. I had no idea how I was doing, and I was just in my zone, and it worked — what the heck!”

And Irwin's Beijing 2022 journey isn’t over yet...

Irwin hadn’t even tried biathlon until 2017. 

“No-one in my family ever Nordic skied before,” she told Wisconsin Life. “We’re more the football and wrestling family, you know, typical Green Bay.”

She took up Nordic Skiing and joined the Ashweubenon Nordic Ski team as a sophomore at Pulaski High School to supplement her passion for running. 

She then competed with Michigan Technical University’s Nordic ski team. 

However, it wasn’t until she was spotted at a talent identification camp at Lake Placid, New York, that her biathlon journey got underway.

Her friend and teammate Joanne Reid then offered her some encouragement, which is when she became a Vermont National Guard biathlete.

In the women’s 15km individual event, Irwin was fifth at the 9km mark, and not even a miss in the last session at the range could deny her a barnstorming finale.

She recovered well to hit her last two targets and then finished strongly to secure her passage in the US history books.

Irwin finished just 1.01.4 behind Germany gold medallist Denise Herrmann with a time of 45.14.1.

“To be able to hit those last two [targets], I was just really happy that I was able to keep the focus and concentrate,”