I noticed recently that the New York Tri club has a pair of biathlons coming up consisting of a run/bike/run format. Can anyone explain to me if/how this is different from a duathlon or why they might have chosen to call the races biathlons? Just curious.
Doesn’t the biathlon involve guns?
I don’t know about this … my multisport gear budget is shot already.
The difference is that in the US you can use semi-automatic riffles. God bless America.
In the UK, they use cars too…
Long ago, run/bike/run WAS called biathlon. Then the winter biathlon folks got all up-in-arms about it. And, since they have the guns, the multi-sport people capitulated, and thus the term “duathlon” was born (and that’s a term I’ve NEVER been able to get used to).
I suppose I’m splitting hairs here but there are 56 other member nations besides the US in the International Biathlon Union. They all use semi-automatic rifles. God bless them all.
The difference is that in the US you can use semi-automatic riffles. God bless America.
I sponsor a few juniors who compete in biathlons in the winter & they are scary fast. One of the guys is so fast he pretty much misses every shot, takes his penalties & still wins.
My 1st run/bike/run event in 1986 was a “Biathlon”. A few years later the term Biathlon as it relates to run/bike/run events faded away. It is my understanding that the biathletes (Guys with guns) said to the duathletes (Guys without guns) “This is our sport” & the Du guys said OK. Duathletes are faster than Biathletes but still can’t outrun a bullet.
In a former life, I was a pretty decent pistol shooter. I went to USOTC in Colorado Springs to work with the head coach as part of a program to develop Olympic shooters. We were picked up at the airport by the OTC along with some mountain bikers and when we got the Training Center to check in they asked for our disciplines so we could check in with our organizations. I said ‘USA Shooting’ and one of the other guys says ‘USA Cycling’. She looks at the other dude, looks at my metal carrying case with the big lock on it and says to the MTBer, “sorry, I don’t want to keep the guy holding the gun waiting” lol
Long ago, run/bike/run WAS called biathlon. Then the winter biathlon folks got all up-in-arms about it. And, since they have the guns, the multi-sport people capitulated, and thus the term “duathlon” was born (and that’s a term I’ve NEVER been able to get used to).
Are bolt-action and semi automatic the same thing?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolt_action
In a former life I was just as much a know-it-all.
I don’t live in the US, so I don’t know that much about guns.
This is real nostalgia.
Biathlon was an established IOC sanctioned Olympic (winter) event with all the trimmings. Practised in many, primarily northern, countries, as JohnInRI points out.
Bike run events, featuring hydrophobic cyclists and runners, emerge and fairly informally dub the sport biathlon. Their second choice was the National Football League.
After a minor controversy the clumsy “duathlon” was born.
I always thought biathlon was R/B/R in as little clothing as possible - something that could land you in the county jail if a cop looked at you wrong. Biathletes couldn’t swim for shit, but they sure loved to run around in funny speedos. Duathlon is a lot tamer these days. Sigh.
As one who started out in Biathlon, I’ll give a little history.
Biathlon is derived from a military sport, so yes, carrying guns and everything was part of the deal. Biathlon was actually first, before the run-bike-run sport became popular, so having that sport take it’s name confused the governing bodies. The ski-shoot-ski sport is known as “Winter Biathlon”, the run-shoot-run format is known as “Summer Biathlon”, and the run-bike-run, which has nothing to do with guns is “Duathlon”.
For the record, the rifles they use are BOLT ACTION. Which means the operator has to manually pull the bolt back to eject the spent casing and reload a new one into the chamber. With Bolt Action, only one trigger pull/bullet can be fired before the gun must be reloaded from it’s magazine. This differs from SEMI AUTOMATIC which the operator can pull the trigger/shoot repeatedly until the gun is out of bullets. (By the way, FULL AUTOMATIC means that you can hold the trigger down and the gun cycles until the trigger is released.)
One sort of cool thing on some of the expensive rifles (which are just 22 caliber), is that there is a special charging handle. For those familiar with Bolt Action rifles, instead of swinging the charging arm over the top, back, forward, and then back down, all you have to do is slide it back with your thumb. It’s very quick, very nice.
BTW, the targets you have to shoot are about the size of the bottom of your coffee mug and are at 25 meters away. This is extremely difficult. If you can hit five of those after doing a 5K, then you are an excellent shooter. Usually the time bonus for each target is 30 seconds, or 2.5 minutes, so that can be alot of time to gain by being able to shoot straight while tired and out of breath.
Duathlon isn’t an Olympic event, though the use of Nordic skiing is an interesting comparison. About 20 years ago cross country skiing was classic skiing, since that time freestyle(as in skate skiing, not downhill) has spawned and gained acceptance and is just as popular as classic.
Will duathlon have the big arms of the IOC open up and accept it someday? For the sake of the sport you have to hope so. THough I get the feeling few are pushing to have duathlon as a summer olympic sport. Summer olympics already contains soo many more events, it would be a tough sell unless they created the “multi-sport” category which would have issues as well.
Thanks for the history & lesson.
wouldnt the word biathlon infer that both events are sports? is riflery a sport? i know cycling and running are.
I’d say marksmanship is more of a skill than a sport, but then that opens up the whole debate about jocks vs. athletes and subjects like bowling, baseball, golf, curling, archery and darts.
Is Tiger Woods considered an athlete? He just whacks a ball and walks in the grass.
It’s an open debate that is always discussed ad nauseum.
As a competitive Biathlete let me clarify that the targets are 50 meters away. I’d have a better shoot record if they were only 25 meter away. Also for the prone position (lying down) you have to hit the center of the target (about the size of a 50 cent piece).
If you live in an area where they hold either Winter or Summer Biathlon events feel free to drop in on a race. Most Biathlon Clubs have loaner rifles that you can borrow for the race. They also have mandatory rifle safety training. There is also target practice before the race for people that want it. There has never been a firearm related injury in the history of the sport and we like to keep it that way.
If you wonder what type of people do Biathlon, our club is made up of engineers, doctors, lawyers, teachers and other professionals. Many biathletes skied XC in HS or college, others such as myself have a running background and moved over to winter.
If you have any questions please pm me.
It’s been a few years, I forgot about the actual distance and prone setup. I was just trying to visualize where they placed the targets at the range to remember the distance. Had two choices, the 25 and the 50. I knew it wasn’t the 100.
i like biathlon, i have spent some time XC skiing and shooting rifles but live in dc so its off the activity list for now. its obviously hard to hit a quarter 50 feet away while panting and wearing skiis. i was just poking fun at the sport name issue.
as for golf being a sport, i think they gave that up when they let that guy use a cart b/c he was handicapt.
One sort of cool thing on some of the expensive rifles (which are just 22 caliber), is that there is a special charging handle. For those familiar with Bolt Action rifles, instead of swinging the charging arm over the top, back, forward, and then back down, all you have to do is slide it back with your thumb. It’s very quick, very nice. More rifle trivia. The first version of the Canadian Ross Rifle had a bolt that just slide back and forth instead of having to pull it up before sliding it back and having to push it back down. It was supposed to increase firing rate, but they got really mucked up in the trenches and the bolts tended to fly back upon firing. Since the Germans were already inflicting enough casualties upon the Canadian troops, the armory went back to the original type design for the second version of the rifle.