Category: Olympic Biathlon Tickets

Winter Olympic biathlon champion Sturla Holm Laegreid failed to win Sunday’s men’s multiple start at the World Cup after an incident with his rifle at the Norwegian team accommodation in Lenzerheide Switzerland. According to a statement from the biathlon governing body IBU Laegreid accidentally fired a shot during dry shot training at the hotel.

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No one was injure. Swiss authorities are investigating the case to gather more information decide whether further steps should taken the IBU said.

I am deeply saddened this incident and deeply apologize to the entire biathlon community my teammates and the hotel owner for what happened. This highlights how crucial safety routines are for all biathlon athletes. Laegreid’s comments were quoted in the IBU statement.

The incident occurred on Friday, the biathlete told the Norwegian newspaper VG. He unintentionally used a full magazine during dry fire training. Usually an empty magazine is used. Laegreid finished third in the chase race on Saturday and left Lenzerheide early on Sunday. He is presently ranked third in the World Cup standings.

Winter Olympic Biathletes: Shooting Between Heartbeats

In 1767, the Norwegian frontier patrols were in the prime of their time. So they decided to put their two best skills — pistol shooting and cross-country skiing — to good use. The bored border patrol officers then created a competition to see who could shoot the straightest and ski the fastest. They called the game military patrol because well they were Norwegian border patrolmen. Today we call it a biathlon.

Military patrol debuted as a demonstration at the 1924 Winter Olympic and evolved into biathlon, becoming an official Winter Olympic sport in 1960. You can Read Winter Olympic Milano Cortina 2026: Lake Placid A Historic Hub

To win, athletes must cross-country ski up to 20 kilometers (12.4 miles) for men and 15 kilometers for women, with segments between shooting. The range features five targets, and you get just one shot at each.

You race for time, and are penalized for missing a goal either by directly adding time to your final score or by skiing an extra loop on the track. There are five different types of biathlon races, each with slightly different rules, but they all have something in common You have to ski as fast as you can, then shoot small targets from 160 feet away.

Cross-country skiing is difficult. During the race, the skier’s heart pumps, or beats at about 90 percent of the maximum permissible pace. It’s all about running like an Olympic race when you’re done you have to switch gears hit the shot steady. When your blood flows through your veins at that speed you can really see the effects.

 Sara Studebaker-Hall won the winter Olympic biathlon twice US as much as you can, and then trying to thread the needle.

From Norwegian Patrols to Olympic Glory: The Evolution of Biathlon

But it’s actually a step further than that, because any normal person would take a moment out of two to catch their breath before handling a super sharp object. Biathlon competitors don’t have that luxury.

 The best athletes in the world have 20 to 25 seconds on their belts, so you spend a lot of time training to get your heart rate up and shooting Studebaker-Hall explains.

Of course, Studebaker-Hall doesn’t want his heart rate to drop too much. If your heart is beating fast, he explains it’s pumping so fast that you can’t really notice it, and if it’s going the same way slowly, you’re not conscious of its vibration, he explains. But when you’re above normal, you’re hyper-aware of every blow. You feel the sound when you grip the rifle.

 You don’t want to dive down into that region he says. That’s one of the reasons you end up shooting so fast. That’s not to say the heart rate didn’t decrease at all. The few studies done on changes in heart rate during biathlon show that athletes slow their paces down to about 60 to 70 percent of their max, up to 90 percent during the race.

Most normal exercise is performe at 70-85 percent, for reference. Their heart rate drops slightly when shooting upright as opposed to lying on their stomach, but that’s still a huge drop from what happened in less than a minute. They are actively slowing their own pulse rate through breathing and concentration, not just letting their heart slow down.

The Heart Rate Challenge: Training and Adapting in winter Olympic Biathlon

You also can’t get your heart rate too high, because shooting is a mental game as well as a physical one. If your heart is going all out, you may not notice the sound but you may struggle to concentrate enough to make the right shot. So how do you hit a 1.6-inch-wide round target while breathing heavily from 160 feet away?

You breathe to the natural depth of your breath says Studebaker-Hall. It’s a natural pause point when you take the shot Although he’s focuse on his breathing he happens to using a technique that other shots seem to use unconsciously.

Researcher Harri Luchsinger, who studies human movement science at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, explains Elite rifle shooters are more sensitive to trigger initiation times at the beginning or end of the R-R interval. Of the few scientists, to examine the sport of biathlon from a scientific perspective.

The R-R interval  is the time between heartbeat peaks. You can actually hear this peak in your own heartbeat, which is precisely when the thunderstorm happened.  the pressure from your heart pumping blood into your arteries and the electrical peak of your heartbeat.

In other words, shooters are more accurate when they take a shot in the middle of a blow. I don’t think athletes fully intend to shoot at this part of the heartbeat, but this adaptation comes naturally over tens of thousands of iterations says Luchsinger.

Precision and Breathing: The Science Behind Accurate Biathlon Shooting

Shooting under each breath should help you time the shot for a burst in your heartbeat, as Luchsinger explains that your heart rate changes slightly with each breath. As you inhale, it beats faster and shortens the breath.

Studebaker-Hall says it has none of that in mind, contrary to Luchsinger’s suspicion. In fact, he says everyone always asks how he slows his heart rate to shoot, but it’s a little bit of a misguided question because on the athletic side we don’t think about it. I think about my breathing. He says just knows it feels like to sweet spot—the best he’s ever is subconscious.

It may seem like a crazy game to some of us, who wants to be a good skier, a good shot? But again, excelling in two different fields can be exciting. Biathlon is an amazing sport when it goes well says Studebaker-Hall. He remembers one race, in particular, at the Games in Sochi. While skiing his leg in the relay race, he entered the shooting range and felt it.

I hit all my targets and that moved me up a few places he says. The trick is to not panic. As soon as you let yourself become aware of the crowd and realize ‘oh my god I’m in the Winter Olympic that’s when it all stops.

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