Zina Kocher

Zina Kocher (born December 5, 1982, in Red Deer, Alberta) is a Canadian cross-country skier and former biathlete.

[1][2] Kocher started out competing as a cross-country skier, and was introduced to the sport of biathlon at the 1998 Alberta Winter Games.

[2][3] In the opening race of the 2006-07 season, a 15 km individual competition in Östersund, Sweden, Kocher finished third, becoming the first Canadian biathlete to make the podium in a top-level international event since Myriam Bédard ten years earlier.

[2] Kocher retired from biathlon competition in March 2016, and by January 2017 she had enrolled as a student of massage therapy at Mount Royal University.

She subsequently decided to switch to part-time studies and return to competition as a cross-country skier with the aim of being selected for the 2018 Winter Olympics, partly in memory of Richard Boruta, her former biathlon coach, who had been killed in a climbing accident in August 2017.