At first glance, there was little spectacular about American biathlon results at the Turin Olympics. The United States had failed yet again to win any medals, and none of its athletes even cracked the top five.

Look a little further, though, and biathlon enthusiasts saw some things that not only provided hope, but convinced them that, given the right resources, the Americans could stand on the podium at the Vancouver Games.

"This last weekend confirms that," U.S. Biathlon executive director Max Cobb said, referring to Tim Burke's silver and bronze at the season's first World Cup event, the first time an American biathlete has won two medals at one event.

Biathlon combines cross-country skiing with rifle marksmanship. It's wildly popular in Europe, where it is the top-rated winter sport on television. No surprise, then, that it's dominated by Europeans, the Norwegians, Germans and Russians in particular.

The Americans have been, at best, bit players in biathlon. Josh Thompson won three medals back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and the U.S. men won the silver at a World Cup relay in 1988.

But there have been no Olympic medals and, after Thompson's silver and bronze at World Cup events in 1992, no medals of any sort until last season.

In Turin, however, Jay Hakkinen, then 29, was 10th in the 20-kilometer race. He and his three teammates _ all in their early 20s _ were ninth in the relay. Considering biathletes don't peak until their late 20s or early 30s, American officials felt they could be on the verge of a watershed moment for the sport in the United States.

"If you looked at the age of the athletes in the result list, (the Americans) had some of the best results of anybody their age," Cobb said. "We really felt like they were in a position to move up if we could provide a healthy program."

A healthy program meant money, however. Lots of it.

The top countries can spend as much as $10 million a year on their teams. In the last quadrennium, the Americans were getting $250,000 a year from the U.S. Olympic Committee.

After Turin, U.S. Biathlon officials explained their vision to the USOC and asked for more funding.

The federation had already restructured itself, cutting its board in half and hiring Larry Pugh as chairman. For years, smaller federations had been run by volunteers who were long on love for the sport but short on the skill sets needed to make nonprofits competitive in the current marketplace. As former CEO of VF Corp. and chairman of the board at Colby College, Pugh had experience with both the corporate and nonprofit worlds.