on January 21, 2007. At the World Championships in Antholz, Italy, Burke placed 7th in the individual competition. He eventually finished a very respectable 25th in the overall World Cup standings. The 2007–08 season was a disappointment as Burke suffered from health problems again and failed to improve on the previous year, finishing 29th in the overall World Cup. However, Burke finished that year on a high note as in the second-last race of the season, a pursuit at Holmenkollen, Oslo, Norway he became the first ever US biathlete to have the best scratch time in a World Cup competition; though as he entered the pursuit from a meager 45th place, he still only finished 7th. In the last race, a mass start, he placed 8th despite four penalty loops. These were his best finishes that year. 2009–10 World Cup season The first half of the 2009–10 Biathlon World Cup season marked Burke's breakthrough to the absolute elite of biathlon. In an individual 20 km competition at Östersund, Sweden, the opener of the 2009–10 World Cup season, Burke became the second ever US biathlete to finish 2nd in a Biathlon World Cup competition. (Josh Thompson had been the first.) Burke continued to produce solid results in the following competitions, consistently finishing in the top 20. This solidity – combined with the absence of Norwegian World Cup leader Emil Hegle Svendsen from the third competition weekend at Pokljuka, Slovenia and the disastrous 103rd place of Austria's Christoph Sumann in the Pokljuka sprint – meant that on December 20, 2009 Burke, despite never winning a World Cup race, became the first ever US biathlete to capture the overall World Cup lead. Burke initially held that position for just one competition, as he only finished 19th in a 10 km sprint at Oberhof, Germany in adverse weather conditions. The winner, Evgeny Ustyugov of Russia, in turn captured the World Cup leader's yellow bib for the first time in his career. However, Burke recaptured the lead in the very next race (the first mass start of the season) by matching his career-best 2nd-place finish. Burke then entered a slump with a season-worst 31st place the next weekend in a sprint at Ruhpolding. His bad form continued at Antholz, Italy, as he finished 29th in the 20 km individual competition and 21st in the sprint. 2010 Winter Olympics At the 2010 Vancouver Winter Games, Burke