Competition format for biathlon
U.S. biathlete Jeremy Teela at the 2002 Winter Olympics.
Individual
The 20 km Individual race (15 km for women) is the oldest biathlon event. The biathlete shoots four times at any shooting station, in the order of prone, standing, prone, standing, totalling 20 targets. For each missed target a fixed penalty time, usually one minute, is added to the skiing time of the biathlete. Competitors’ starts are staggered, normally by 30 seconds.
Sprint
The sprint is 10 km for men and 7.5 km for women. The biathlete shoots twice at any shooting station, once prone and once standing, for a total of 10 shots. For each miss, a penalty loop of 150 m must be skied before the race can be continued. As in the Individual competition, the biathletes start in intervals.
Pursuit
In a Pursuit, biathletes’ starts are separated by their time differences from a previous race,[1] most commonly a Sprint. The contestant crossing the finish line first is the winner. The distance is 12.5 km for men and 10 km for women, there are four shooting bouts (two prone, two standing, in that order), and each miss means a penalty loop of 150 m. To prevent awkward and/or dangerous crowding in the skiing track, and undercapacity at the shooting range, World Cup Pursuits are held with only the 60 top ranking biathletes after the preceding race. The biathletes shoot at the station in the position they arrived (Arrive at the station in 5th place, you shoot at station five.) for all shooting bouts.
Mass start
In the Mass start, all biathletes start at the same time and the first across the finish line wins. In this 15 km (12.5 km for women) competition, there are four bouts of shooting (two prone, two standing, in that order) with the first shooting stage being at the station your bib is assigned (Bib #10 shoots at Station #10 regardless of position in race.) with rest of the shooting stages being at the station in the position they arrived (Arrive at the station in 5th place, you shoot at station five.). As in Sprint races, competitors must ski one 150 m penalty loop for each miss. Here again, to avoid unwanted congestion, World Cup Mass starts are held with only the 30 top ranking athletes on the start line (half that of the Pursuit since here all contestants start simultaneously).
Relay
The Relay teams consist of four biathletes, who each ski 7.5 km (men) or 6 km (women), with two shooting rounds; one prone, one standing. For every round of five targets there are eight bullets available, though the last three can only be loaded one at a time from trays at the shooting range. If after eight bullets there are still misses, one 150 m penalty loop must be taken for each miss. The first-leg participants start all at the same time, and as in cross-country skiing relays, every athlete of a team must touch the team’s next-leg participant to perform a valid changeover. On the first shooting stage of the first leg, the participant must shoot in the station of their assigned bib number (Bib #10 shoots at Station #10 regardless of position in race.), then for the remainder of the relay, the relay team shoots at the station in the position they arrived (Arrive at the station in 5th place, you shoot at station five.).
Mixed relay
The most recent addition to the number of biathlon competition variants, the Mixed relay, is similar to the ordinary Relay but for the composition of the teams, each of which consists of two women and two men. Legs 1 and 2 are done by the women, legs 3 and 4 by the men. The legs are 6 km, as in the ordinary women’s Relay competition.
Team (obsolete)
A team consists of four biathletes, but unlike the case of the Relay competition, all team members start at the same time. Two athletes must shoot in the prone shooting round, the other two in the standing round. In case of a miss, the two non-shooting biathletes must ski a penalty loop of 150 m. The skiers must enter the shooting area together, and must also finish within 15 seconds of each other, otherwise a time penalty of 1 minute is added to the total time. Since 2004, this race format has been obsolete at the World Cup level.
Notes
- ^ To be precise; the Pursuit competition start intervals are determined by common rounding to the nearest whole second of the biathletes’ time differences from the previous race—the amount of time each biathlete lagged after the winner to the finish line.
This guide is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.
