Vancouver 2010 : The biathlon

The biathlon is a sport which assembles the cross-country skiing and the raffle shooting.
The aim of this sport is cross the finish line before the other sport competitors or has the best time if the departure is on the same line.

To begin, the cross-country skiing is the principal event of the biathlon. The skiers, to move forward, use different technical like the alternative step, the double pushing or the ice-skating step.

Then, where the biathletes are finishing one trip, they are one session of raffle shooting. They put down theirs ski poles and they take their raffle. For shot, the athletes have a raffle weighting 3.5 kg. The aim is to shoot down 5 targets the most quickly but without make a mistake. These targets are at 50 m, and they measure 45 mm, when the biathletes are lying down, or 112 mm, when the biathletes are stand up. The difference between the increasing of the pulse in cross-country skiing and the shot where they must be very calm and precise make this event very difficult.

When the objective is missed, the target stays in black, whereas, when the target stays white, the athletes are shooting on the target. The skiers are penalty strokes when they miss the target:

- If it’s a sprint, a pursuit or a mass start the biathlete have one trip of 150 m more the total distance for each mistake.

- If it’s an individual race, the skiers have one minute of penalty.

- If it’s a relay, the athletes have 3 pickaxes for each relay runner and if they lose all of their pickaxes, they have trips of penalty.

|Events |Sprint |Pursuit |Mass Start |Individual race |Relay |
|Man Distance |10 km |12.5 km |15 km |20 km |4x7.5 km |
|Woman Distance |7.5 km |10 km