Biathlon and Triathlon
Biathlon and triathlon are multisport endurance races. Biathlon combines cross-country skiing and target shooting; triathlon combines swimming, bicycling, and running.
Biathlon
In biathlon a competitor skis a loop with a .22-caliber rifle harnessed on his or her back, pausing to shoot at ranges along the loop. At each shooting range the competitor must switch from the exertion of skiing to the concentration of target shooting. Thus, biathlon requires athletes to master the physical and mental demands of two conflicting disciplines. Athletes need physical strength and stamina to ski a course that can be as long as 20 kilometers for the individual event, yet athletes need great self-control to quiet the body and concentrate the mind to fire with accuracy at the shooting range.
ORIGINS
The origins of biathlon may be revealed in rock carvings in Norway that date from 2000 BCE and show two hunters on skis stalking animals. Biathlon, like many other activities we now regard as sport, may have evolved from activities our ancestors performed to survive—in this case, travel across deep snow and hunt for food.
Modern biathlon has military origins in Scandinavia, where the climate and terrain required troops to be trained and equipped for combat in winter conditions. The earliest recorded biathlon event occurred in 1767 between “ski-runner companies” who guarded the border between Sweden and Norway.The first international biathlon competition was held as a demonstration event at the 1924 Winter Olympics in Chamonix, France, and was continued at the Winter Olympics of 1928, 1936, and 1948. Biathlon was dropped from the Olympic program after 1948 in response to antimilitary sentiment that followedWorldWar II. Biathlon again became an Olympic event for men in 1960.Women’s biathlon events were added at the 1992 winter Olympics in Albertville, France.
The Union Internationale de Pentathlon Moderne et Biathlon (UIPMB) was founded in 1948 to promote the development of modern pentathlon and biathlon as Olympic events. (In modern pentathlon contestants compete in a 300-meter freestyle swim, a 4,000-meter cross-country run, a 5,000-meter equestrian steeplechase, fencing, and target shooting at 25 meters.) The UIPMB instituted annual World Championships for biathlon in 1957, and biathlon was added as an individual event for male athletes at the Winter Olympics in Squaw Valley, California, in 1960. In 1966 the biathlon relay was introduced at the World Biathlon Championships and added to the Olympic program in 1968. The first Women’s World Championships were held in Chamonix, France, in 1984.
EVENTS
Biathlon has three race events—individual, sprint, and relay. Each event has different distances, rules, and penalties. Competitors ski a set number of loops of the course depending on the event, making four stops to shoot.The five metal targets at each stop are 50 meters away. The targets can be reset mechanically after each shooting bout and can be set for prone or standing positions. A hit is registered immediately by a white plate that flips up to cover the black target. For prone shooting the hit must strike a circle 45 millimeters in diameter in the center of the target. A standing shot can hit anywhere in the 115-millimeter diameter circle. Competitors who miss shots must ski penalty loops, which add to the overall time and lower a competitor’s score.
Range time is the time required for a competitor to enter the firing range, unsling the rifle, shoot five rounds, resling the rifle, and exit the range. Crosscountry skiing requires intense physical effort; while competitors are on the course, their heart rates increase to 170–190 beats per minute. Thus, when they approach each shooting range, competitors must reduce skiing speed to slow their breathing in preparation for shooting.World-class range times average 30–40 seconds for the prone position and 25–30 seconds for the standing position.
The individual competition demands more endurance during skiing and greater body control at the range than do the shorter distances of the other events. In the individual competition men ski a total of 20 kilometers, and women ski 15 kilometers.The athletes start at one-minute intervals and ski five loops ranging from 2.5 kilometers to 5 kilometers, shooting five shots at each of four stages for a total of twenty shots. A oneminute penalty is levied for every missed shot and is added to the competitor’s ski time at the end of the race for a total of twenty possible penalty minutes if all shots were missed. The winner is the competitor who had the lowest combined ski time and penalty minutes.
In sprint competition men ski a total of 10 kilometers, and women ski 7.5 kilometers, starting at oneminute intervals. Athletes ski one loop, shoot five rounds in the prone position, ski a 150-meter penalty loop for each missed shot, and then ski another loop. They then shoot five rounds in the standing position, ski a 150-meter penalty for each shot missed, and ski a final loop to the finish. Thus, they ski a total of three loops ranging from 1.75 kilometers to 3.75 kilometers and shoot two shooting stages for a total of ten shots. All penalties are skied during the race; thus, penalty time (about thirty seconds for each penalty) is already included in the time when athletes cross the finish line.
In the relay competition all teams start simultaneously in a mass start and ski the same course. Both men’s and women’s courses are 4 57.5 kilometers, that is, each member of a four-person team skis a 7.5-kilometer leg of the race. Each leg is skied in the same way as the sprint race except that racers can use “extra rounds” at the range. Each competitor has eight bullets with which to hit five targets at both the prone stage and standing stage. When racers ski into the range they place three extra rounds from their magazines into a small cup before they begin shooting. They then attempt to hit all five targets with five shots. If they miss any, they then load rounds from the cup and shoot until they have hit all five targets or used up all three extra rounds, whichever comes first. If, after shooting all eight rounds, the competitors still have not hit all five targets, they must ski a penalty loop for each missed target.
On completion of his or her leg of the relay, in a tag zone each skier touches the next teammate, who then starts out on the course. The winning team is the one whose last competitor crosses the finish line first.
At the 2002Winter Olympics at Salt Lake City, Utah, Ole Einar Bjorndalen of Norway won the 10- kilometer men’s sprint, the 12.5-kilometer men’s pursuit event, and the 20-kilometer men’s event; Norway won the 4 5 7.5-kilometer men’s event; Kati Wilhelm of Germany won the 7.5-kilometer women’s sprint; Olga Pyleva of Russia won the 10-kilometer women’s pursuit; Andrea Henkel of Germany won the 15-kilometer women’s event; and Germany won the 457.5-kilometer team event.
Triathlon
The best-known triathlon is the Hawaii Ironman Triathlon (HIT), which consists of a 3.9-kilometer swim, a 180-kilometer bicycle race, and a 42-kilometer marathon run. As is true in the majority of triathlons, a competitor completes the events sequentially with only brief stops or slowdowns (known as “transitions”) to change equipment and clothes.These transitions count against the competitor’s total race time. Thus, because minutes or only seconds can separate competitors, many triathletes train for the transitions as well as for the three sports of the triathlon.
Most competitions among triathletes occur at shorter distances than those in other ironman contests. Still, all triathlons are endurance events taking nearly an hour to complete for the best athletes in even the shortest races. Several distances exist. For example, as the name implies, a half-ironman (or long course) triathlon usually involves a swim of about 2 kilometers, a bicycle race of 88 to 95 kilometers, and a run of 15 to 21 kilometers. About three-quarters of triathlons in recent years have occurred at the popular international distance. These triathlons involve a 1.5-kilometer swim, a 40-kilometer bike race, and a 10-kilometer run. Finally, the misnamed sprint-distance triathlon ranges about 400 meters for the swim, 15–32 kilometers for the bicycle race, and 3.2 kilometers for the run.
Considering that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has been inclined to remove sports from the games and only reluctantly to add new sports, the quick rise of triathlon in the Olympics is remarkable. The sport moved from a first formal event in the mid- 1970s to a full-fledged Olympic event in just more than twenty-five years.
At the 2004 Olympics in Athens, Kate Allen of Austria won the women’s triathlon; Hamish Carter of New Zealand won the men’s triathlon. New Zealand won first overall, followed by Austria, Australia, Switzerland, and the United States.
ORIGINS
Triathlon emerged in California during the early 1970s. However, as International Triathlon Union President Les McDonald noted, triathlon is no longer the sport practiced by carefree California kids of the 1970s and 1980s. Early multisport athletes were, indeed, carefree young men who sought to combine some common elements of their lifestyle into a single race event. Those men might be amused at the current high-tech sport that focuses on every aspect of triathlon with a single concern—to increase the speed at which triathletes can complete an event. They also might be agog at their sport’s compiling a 134-page rulebook.
PRACTICE
The initial multisport event was only a variant of a common beach occurrence. One boy in the water says to another, “I’ll race you to the refreshment stand.” The two boys quickly are off, first swimming to the shore and then running to the food vendor, perhaps eventually racing home on their bikes. Slight formalization of that common occurrence produced an early multisport —and quintessentially amateur—event. Now triathlon is moving along the path toward incorporation into the dominant sport culture. Triathlon appeared in the 2000 Olympics, only eleven years after the formation of an international governing body. A professional tour allows both men and women to compete in triathlons at various distances throughout the world. Corporations sponsor popular triathlons and triathletes. One can see testimony to the intimate involvement of triathlon and commerce at Nike-town in Chicago: A store in the chain of the international sporting goods giant closes in the evening at 8:07:45—Mark Allen’s record time for the HIT. Allen was triathlon world champion six times.
Perspectives
Residual components of earlier sports culture are visible in triathlon in several aspects. One residual component is visible among the many triathletes who never join their national governing boards but instead pay a one-day licensing fee to participate in events sanctioned by the bureaucracy. Another residual derives from triathlon as a somewhat expensive and time-consuming pursuit. As such, it is mostly an activity of the middle class (and probably the upper middle class at that).
Triathlon, generalist by nature, is also nurturant to athletes such as the elderly and the physically challenged. Thus, for example, older competitors (in their seventies) have been among the featured triathletes. In 1989 Dick Hoyt completed the grueling HIT with his son Rick (who had cerebral palsy) in tow (literally, during the swim). Rick rode in a specially constructed “basket” on the bike race and a racing wheelchair on the run.
Despite the relative youth of triathlon, the emergence of mountain bike and ultraendurance (e.g., doubleironman) triathlons may reflect a nostalgic search for authenticity in the sport. Many triathletes believe that the raison d’etre of triathlon is the personal struggle to overcome the myriad sources of self-doubt. It emphasizes fortitude and dedication that place the greatest premium on individual effort.The increasing technological orientation, bureaucratization, and commercialization of triathlon detract from that emphasis.
GOVERNING BODY
In terms of bureaucracy, the International Triathlon Union (ITU, www.triathlon.org) has a membership that includes nearly 120 national governing boards for triathlon, representing 2 million or more affiliated triathletes worldwide. In some cases national governing boards further differentiate into regional bureaucracies.
Michaela Czech and Bonnie Dyer-Bennet
Categories: Sports-Mixed