Shoot to Chill

The Syracuse Biathlon Club targets the European mainstay that pairs snow with shots

American sports fans tuning in to watch the Winter Olympics may be mesmerized by events that are unfamiliar to their eyes, but are much more common, even wildly popular, in the frozen terrain of Scandinavia, Russia or Switzerland. You don’t see much curling, luge or speed skating in the United States, except in small hotbeds in wintry or mountainous states.

The seemingly odd combination of cross-country skiing and marksmanship known as biathlon is one of those rarely seen sports in this country. But a small group of dedicated Central New Yorkers trains for it year-round and competes in tournaments during the winter, testing their stamina, endurance, athleticism and precision in carefully planned events on specially designed courses.

Biathlon, which requires athletes to ski between shooting ranges where they must fire at targets, originated in northern Europe with soldiers in snowy climates or hunters pursuing game on skis. It later evolved into a sport called patrol race before the term biathlon became common. The first Olympic biathlon competition was held in 1960. While it’s still a novelty in America, it is the most popular televised winter sporting event in Europe.

“Europeans are crazy about biathlon,” says Syracuse Biathlon Club president Kurt Donath. “They’ll have 30,000 people show up to watch a race and 20 million tune in on TV. In the Olympics the biathlon is the most international event. It has 33 countries participate.”

The small but passionate core of Central New York athletes who comprise the Syra cuse

Biathlon Club practices during the warmer seasons, running instead of skiing, then heads north when snow arrives. “Our winter races take place in Osceola at the Nordic Center in the Tug Hill,” Donath says. “We like to do it up there because they get a lot of snow early and it stays a long time. You usually have no problems with snow up in Osceola. We have a clinic in December, this year on the 18th. . We have two or three races during the winter season, club-sponsored races in different formats. Each of the other clubs in New York state sponsors races as well. During the winter we can typically have eight to 10 races that are sponsored by clubs.”

Clinics like the one on Dec. 18 are used to brush up on skills and to teach the sport to new participants, who are welcomed warmly by veteran members. “In summer, we encourage a new athlete to come and watch a race,” Donath explains. “We encourage them to come to one of our training days where we can spend time with them on equipment and safety procedures. On race days, summer and winter, we have a safety clinic that new athletes have to take before they actually go out on the course and use the rifle. Safety’s a real important concern with the biathlon.”

Donath, who ran and skied in college and high school, got into biathlon to help improve his fitness level. “Getting into shape with no objective makes it harder,” he says. “So one day I just happened to remember that as a kid I was always fascinated by the biathlon in the Winter Olympics when they would televise it. I was totally amazed by the sport. One day in 2002, I just googled biathlon and up came the Syracuse Biathlon Club.”

Donath’s curiosity led to him to a summer race at Pratt’s Falls County Park in Manlius. “I went out to the race and was really blown away by the whole experience,” he recalls. “It was very family-friendly, there was a wide age range of people participating. People were really friendly; when I asked questions they noticed that I was new to the sport. A couple folks took me aside and really explained how the sport worked and I was pretty impressed with how they ran the event. I did my first race that winter.”

Since the sport requires both a range for shooting and terrain suitable for skiing or running, facilities that meet both needs are rare. “Our summer events take place at Pratt’s Falls,” Donath explains. “We work very closely with Onondaga County Parks. We have a biathlon range at Pratt’s Falls where we move our targets in the summertime. {New athletes} can take a safety clinic to learn how to use the rifle, how to shoot. They can also combine it with some running. One of the keys with biathlon is you want to learn how to handle the rifle when your heart rate is really high. Think about somebody running a mile, then trying to thread a needle. It’s a lot like that.”

It’s important for the biathlete to get the right equipment and it can be pricey, but that’s where joining a club can lead you down the right trail. “To buy skis, you’d be looking for a place that sells skate ski equipment,” Donath says. “The best place to buy skis is at the Osceola Nordic Center north of Camden. It’s a bit of a hike, but you can’t find any place with better prices and you can try the equipment out before you buy it, which is a huge plus, especially when trying to pick out boots.” Skis can also be found at secondhand sporting goods vendors, ski shops and ski shows where the beginner can expect to spend $300 to $400 for skis, poles and a good pair of boots.

The biggest expense, though, is for a rifle, which goes for around $1,800 when outfitted with necessary attachments, but there are options to mitigate the expense. “The first place to look is with a local biathlon club,” Donath reveals. “Often they have rifles that people can rent, or know of people that are selling used rifles.”

New participants often bring some experience with similar sports to biathlon. “We tend to find people,” Donath explains, “because it involves shooting, who are involved in shooting sports and have some running experience say, ‘Wow, this could be interesting.’ Or we get people that have cross-country skiing experience and they’ve seen the biathlon on the Olympics and they’re interested, so we do get a mix of people.”

Summer biathlon is more popular in lesssnowy parts of the country, but it helps with conditioning and keeps skills sharp even for those who do ski in winter. “The summer season is more like a cross-country running race,” Donath says. “You run to the range, you pick up the rifle and you shoot. In the winter, it’s cross-country skiing where you carry the rifle and then you shoot. It’s kind of impractical in the summer because the  running motion would jerk the rifle around too much on your back and you’d probably wind up knocking yourself out.”

The Aim Game

When the ground is white, athletes can compete in five different kinds of biathlon events, the most common being the sprint. “It’s a 10-kilometer race overall,” Donath explains. “Athletes will go off at 30- or 60-second intervals. The athlete will ski a loop and take five shots at targets lying down in what we call the prone position. Then we ski another loop, take five shots standing up, then ski another loop to finish the race. For every shot that you miss, you ski a 150-meter penalty loop. The whole race is based on time.”

Racers compete on cross-country skate skis. “They’re a little bit shorter than classic skis and we wax them like downhill skis,” Donath explains. “The way that you propel yourself across the snow is to turn the edge of your skis into the snow and then push off; it’s exactly like skating.”

The bolt-action rifles carried in biathlon must weigh a minimum of 7.7 pounds. “It’s a .22 caliber rifle,” Donath says. “We shoot at a distance of 50 meters. It’s like shooting at a golf ball halfway down a football field. There are two size targets we shoot at. In the prone position, we shoot at a target about the size of a golf ball; the standing target is like shooting at a target the size of a coffee mug. It’s black when you see it, then when you hit it, a white panel will flip up in front of it.”

A range official oversees each event, while monitors watch the lanes, count targets hit, keep the times and monitor completion of penalty loops. “One of the keys to a successful race is volunteer support,” Donath says. “It does take a number of people to run these races. There are people who are members of the club who have either done the biathlon in the past or are just interested in it and they help out a lot.”

One of those is Carl Snow, a member since the late 1980s. “I don’t compete anymore,” Snow says. “I’ve got too many replacement parts in my body. So I work at officiating. My wife {Henri} and I are both level two officials, which means we can work on any of the events in the United States. We have worked on international events up at Lake Placid a couple different times.”

The club counts on support from members’ relatives or anyone who is willing to spend time on the courses helping out with officiating. “We have to have people,” Snow says. “So we wind up getting fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, anybody that has been around the events or knows anything about them. We just try to tell them what we need and try to oversee the whole thing. I keep track myself of everything I can.”

With only 20 to 25 members, the Syracuse Biathlon Club includes both men and women, and ages of members range from teens to athletes in their 70s. “Our primary mission is to increase the exposure of biathlon in the United States as well as to develop athletes to move on to higher level competition,” explains Donath, club president for nine years. “We’ll have people who were on the Polish national team and the Czechoslovakian national team and people who were on the U.S. Olympic team competing in these races. So it’s a great opportunity for younger athletes to get exposed to some of these senior-level athletes.”

Those interested in joining should start by reviewing the club’s website, syracusebiathlon.com, where details and an application are available. Dues are $10 year with a maximum of $40 per family. “You need to have somewhere to start honing your talents,” Snow emphasizes. “Ones that have the most promise wind up wanting to go on to summer camps with roller skis, winter camps with higher-level coaches, where they can get more training at a higher level.”

Former president Pete Indick wants to see the club recruit teenage athletes, who are called juniors. “My interest is getting juniors involved in the sport, experiencing it,” he says. “We have competitive seniors, in their 20s and 30s, and then still competitive master skiers. We’ve had summer races where we’ve had people in their 60s and 70s compete. So it’s the whole range.”

Currently, the majority of local biathletes are men. “We’ve had some really strong women in the past,” Indick says. “Right now we have a couple of junior women. I don’t know if it’s the firearm aspect of the sport that makes women shy away from it a little bit, but once they do try it and realize the rifles we use are not powerful guns, they really seem to enjoy it and gravitate toward it. The women’s division can be very competitive. The numbers may not be high compared to men, but the competition is definitely there.”

More new members tend to sign up after watching the world’s best biathletes compete on television. “The last Olympics had a lot of really good coverage of the biathlon and we noticed more people showing up to our races to try it out.” Donath recalls. “We think it’s related to the Olympic coverage.”