Why you should root for biathlon, the Winter Olympics’ weirdest sport

This might come as a shock, but I am a huge nerd. I read history books for news stories, I follow four Supreme Court podcasts and I watch weird sports on YouTube.

Your average nerd watches baseball, the sport that comes with a statistical manual. I say why kill when you can overkill. And the weirdest winter sport of all gets its moment in the snow this month at the Winter Olympics: biathlon, whose slogan could be “Nerdier Than Curling.”

In Europe, biathlon is the most-watched winter sport on television. In the U.S., it is obscure. Everywhere, it is impossible and fascinating. I may well be the only biathlon fan in all of North Carolina.

You should join me.

What is biathlon?

First, the basics. Biathlon combines the diametrically opposed disciplines of cross-country skiing and riflery. Athletes ski a lap, stop and shoot targets, then repeat for a total of 7 to 20 km and 10 or 20 shots. Hearts bursting out of their chests, athletes must hit a target the size of a grapefruit while standing, or the size of a golf ball from their belly, 50 meters away — the length of an Olympic pool. The faster you ski, the harder it becomes to shoot. Even more impossible is paralympic biathlon, some of whose athletes are blind.

OK, skeleton it ain’t. But biathlon is the most suspenseful of the endurance sports. U.S. Biathlon Association CEO Max Cobb pointed out in an interview that it's “very dramatic and captivating and all the things we love about sport, very hard to predict.”

In addition, I would argue, biathlon is approachable, pragmatic and educational. Let’s take each in turn.

As with presidential candidates, we like our athletes to combine star power with a certain aw-shucks manner — Olympians! They're just like us!

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Curling appeals in part because it looks just so darn easy, like shuffleboard on ice. Though we know curlers probably have hamstrings of steel under their relaxed-fit pants, they look like they’re about to saunter down to the pub.

That’s not the case for biathletes, who resemble buff, bodysuited ironing boards. Biathlon (and cross-country skiing) are approachable in a different way: They are the only disciplines whose athletes make their sport look as hard as it actually is. When biathletes cross the finish line they fall to their sides on the snow — heaving, spitting, dripping snot and saliva.

The myth is that biathletes shoot between heartbeats lest the hemidemisemiquaver shake their aim; in reality, according to The New York Times Magazine, their hearts are beating too fast for that. The television producers put a microphone at the shooting range so you can hear them pant. If curlers send the message, It’s easy, you can do this too, biathletes say, It’s hard for you, it’s hard for us.

That effort has the virtue of seeming comparatively productive. Biathlon is the most useful winter sport ... if you need to hunt a moose or attack an enemy on the frozen tundra, at least. Olympic biathlon was once called “Military Patrol,” and Finnish soldiers on skis (temporarily) fended off Soviets in the 1930s despite being outnumbered 10 to 1, according to the U.S. Biathlon Association’s website.

Finally, it exercises the brain. The easiest free way for an American to watch World Cup biathlon are international YouTube uploads that double as an opportunity to practice one’s French, German, Russian or Norwegian listening comprehension.

After many hours of French YouTube, I have developed strong feelings about athletes whose names require hunting down Microsoft Word’s “insert symbol” menu. Will Johannes Thingnes Bø regain his previously jaw-dropping form, or be vanquished by sharpshooting teammate Sturla Holm Lægrid? Will breakout star Elvira Öberg beat her big sister, 2018 gold medalist Hannah?

You will note that none of those names is American. Mon amour for biathlon defies not only personal logic (I hate being cold), but the patriotic fervor that typically characterizes Olympic coverage.

In the U.S., we’re used to being the world’s superpower both politically and athletically. We assume we will rack up the most medals and break the most records. Biathlon is the only winter Olympic sport in which the U.S. has not medaled at all. U.S. biathletes are, frankly, not the world’s very best.

How could they be, given the lack of resources compared to Europe? Sweden has public biathlon high schools, whereas most American biathletes don’t start shooting until after college. The big biathlon countries travel with tractor-trailers toting ski prep technology; “we have a Ford cargo van,” Cobb said.

Tugging at my heartstrings

U.S. biathlon is an endurance sport off the track as well. European biathletes often get government salaries plus corporate sponsorship. The very top American biathletes — eight, currently — get travel and training expenses covered plus stipends of $2,000 per month. “It’s not the kind of thing where you’re banking your future from your sports performance,” Cobb said. Until they consistently perform on the World Cup circuit, aspiring American biathletes train on essentially a work-study basis, living the life of a “starving athlete,” Cobb said.

That tugs at my heartstrings. As much as we love stars, we love the underdog. I cheer for the Öberg sisters but also for Paul Schommer, 29, a Midwesterner with a behind-the-scenes YouTube channel, who recently posted a personal-best ninth place.

The instinct points to what keeps me hooked on biathlon. It’s not just the spectacular physical skill, the focus, the psychological control or the suspense when the athlete with the best time comes in for the last shoot. It's the extraordinary dedication of all the athletes who may never win a medal and keep going anyway. By the effort and sacrifice it takes to be not quite the very best, by these athletes' ability to define success in their own way, a way that doesn’t require a Wheaties box.

Those are lessons for armchair Winter Olympians, too. I watch Schommer gasp for air and think about all the times that life is a slog and we have to just keep going. Life is an endurance sport punctuated by moments that snap us to attention, when we must be on target. We muster the focus, we hit or miss, and through exhilaration or despair, we slog on.

This Saturday, at 4 a.m. Eastern, Olympic biathlon begins. No one except Chinese athletes has raced on the track, which is cold, high and windy. That “makes everything more unpredictable,” Cobb said. Anything could happen. An American could even win. From under my afghan with a pair of tabby cats, I’ll be rooting for the biathletes, and for us all.

Danielle Dreilinger is a North Carolina storytelling reporter and author of the book The Secret History of Home Economics. Team Tabby's best event is Greco-Roman wrestling. Email her at ddreilinger@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on The Fayetteville Observer: Biathlon is the nerdiest Winter Olympics sport and you should watch it