Are You Watching The Biathlon At The Olympics?

I got to watching some of the non-prime time Olympic coverage the other day and NBC happened to be showing the biathlon. If you don’t know exactly what it is, biathlon is the sport that combines skiing and shooting. It was kind of cool to watch.

The competition consists of a race in which contestants ski around a cross-country trail and have to stop several times to shoot at five targets with their rifle—some while standing and some while in the always-popular prone position. The contestant with the shortest total time wins.

Cross country skiing and rifle shooting have always seemed like an odd combination for an Olympic sport to me, but I did a little research and found out the biathlon got its start as an alternative training practice for the Norwegian military, called Military Patrol. Makes sense, I guess.

But seeing as the biathlon isn’t one of the big crowd favorites like alpine skiing or figure skating, there must be a few ways to make the sport more popular here in the states.

Instead of cross-country skiing, let’s have biathletes ride snowmobiles or four-wheelers. This would add a little speed—and maybe some crashes, too!

And, instead of merely shooting at targets, maybe we could replace the standard-issue biathlon rifles with paintball rifles and have the contestants shoot at each other. The last biathlete with a clean uniform to finish is the winner!

Or, maybe we could require the biathletes to chug a beer (sponsor tie-in!) before each round of the rifle shooting events. Then, the only thing missing would be for each biathlete to yell, “Here—hold my beer!” before they grab their rifle!