Biathlon

So this morning while I was on the treadmill and then eating breakfast, I was watching the Men's 4 x 7.5km relay in the biathlon. For those of you who don't know what the biathlon is, it combines two very closely related activities: cross-country skiing and shooting a rifle. The competitors in this particular relay completed 3 2.5km laps each. In between laps, the competitor stops at a shooting range and takes a .22 rifle off his back and has to hit 4 (after the first lap) and 5 (after the second lap) silver-dollar-sized targets 60 yards away. They have 3 spare bullets per lap, but if they end up missing any targets, then they have to do a penalty loop, which I think takes 30-45 seconds. Essentially, the shooting is just as important, if not more, than the cross-country skiing because a couple misses mean that you have to reload your rifle, losing valuable time.

The US team (who has never finished higher than 6th) was leading after the first leg, when our leadoff man, Jay Hakkinen, got out to a shockingly fast start. We ended up finishing 9th because of our lack of shooting accuracy. The second guy (Tim Burke) had to use all 6 spare bullets, the third guy (Lowell Bailey) had to use 4 spares, and the fourth guy (Jeremy Teela) had to use 4 spares, including 3 on the final with a costly miss. And Teela's in the damn US Army, for Christ's sake. You would think that a country with the right to bear arms would be able to put up a better showing in an event like this. We can't find some military marksmen who we can teach to cross-country ski? Instead, looking at the teams in front of us, we got our asses handed to us by:

1. Germany - Even without much of a military presence over the past 60 years, they still have damn good precision and efficiency.
2. Russia - I would have expected them to do well when it was the USSR, since I'm sure they had some sort of national biathlon training school where future Olympians were hand-picked by age 5 and all they did year-round was train for the biathlon. No medal meant no more living.
3. France - Yes, the very same France whose military hasn't fired a gun since the Battle of Waterloo.
4. Sweden - Do they even have guns in Sweden? I know they have hot chicks, safe cars, meatballs, and national health care that mocks the rest of the world, but guns? I don't think so.
5. Norway - Under the strict and unforgiving tutelage of Thor, the marriage of fjords and riflery has been a strong one.
6. Czech Republic - We got beat by Bohemians.
7. Ukraine - That guy on the subway in Seinfeld was right: Ukraine is not weak. I guess I was fooled by the fact that it's been every country's bitch for the last 650 years (even Poland--ouch).
8. Italy - Being half Dego myself, I can't really see anything wrong with the Italians finishing in front of the Americans. I'm just surprised the rifles and ski poles didn't fall out of their olive-oil-soaked hands.