When not one shooter from the USA even came close to a medal in any of the Biathlon shooting events in this Winter Olympics.

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Couldn't agree more...I'm 36, and past my prime for such things. But the wife is yammering about having a kid next year. I decided that he (it has to be a he, right? What do you mean, my son is a girl?) will be a biathelete. I'm aiming for gold in 2018. Some of you with younger kids might want to get an earlier start.

Why is it, exactly, that we are so bad at the biathalon? We have people that can ski, and we have people that can shoot. Can't we put it all together? We do better in luge and bobsled (two perennial US also rans) than we do in the biathalon.

Maybe you should hope for a girl child! Seems the USA wimmen are beating the hell out of the USA men as far as medals are concerned...

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Both of my daughters shoot compition
one shoots Skeet and Trap the other shoots Sporting Clays and Trap
not world class but i couldn't be more pleased!
on a local leavel not many men can shoot with them much less beat them!

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Death Before Dishonor

The Wall Street Journal ran a story a week or so ago about the efforts the US has gone through to get some biathletes.

In essence to compete at the world level requires a child entering a dedicated, and probably government run, program for about 15 years to prepare. At that level it makes kung fu look easy.

jim dodd

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"if you are to busy to
hunt, you are too busy."

Hey, I'm just pleased that the !@#$%^&*! networks even carried the biathalon. Besides, I sympathize with those guys--I've huffed it up lots of snowy hills and then tried to settle down enough to get a shot off at game. It can be pretty tough even with a steady rest when your pulse is pounding--and an elk is way easier to hit at 200 yards then a freehand target the size of a quarter at 50. I still think we should be glad they covered the events--win or lose.

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"Don't let so much reality into your life that there's no room left for dreaming."

I tend to think of shooting sports as participatory rather than spectator events, but the coverage of the biathalon was great. When the three women leaders all got to the last shooting station together and stood shooting side by side with the little graphic showing hits and misses, that was as exiting as shooting gets. I started out just glacing at some athletes I didn't know, from countries I didn't care about, in a sport I knew nothing about, and it sucked me in. Coverage like that is great for shooting, I was glad to see it on national TV.

Rick

Distance is 50 meters, standing targets are 115mm and prone targets are 45mm.

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Ther reason is because most Americans like to sit on their fat-asses watching that uniquely American sport called football... and encouraging young people to do the same. Scandanavians promote X-C skiing and shooting from birth... how can we even begin to compete with that?

Brad Amundson

I had hoped Magdalena Forsberg would do better but, bronze are not bad either.

We should do the all American thing and create our own version. How about full on racing snowmobiles and big bore rifles? Tell 'em to quit messin around with them pissy little rifles, and skis. Let's make it interesting.

Kimmo...

Two bronze medals is wonderful.

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375hnh...

Yeah...right...

That would rank right up there with synchronized swimming and half-pipe snowboarding and professional wrestling...

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375,
Great idea-
How about turret mounts on a Sno-cross racer.
I have this "idea" about what is going to happen in the next generation of kids. I am 32 and have 3 kids, ages 7,5,and 3. I work 40 to 45 hours a week to support them and my wife. She is going back to school this fall to get a teaching certificate to go with her BS, so that she can teach and add income to our cause. My mom didn't have to work when I was growing up. She was home with us all summer- so my 2 brothers and I all learned to barefoot ski by 12, race motorcycles, snow ski, sno cross was our version of being pulled down the road using a waterski rope and our Kawasaki 440 Intruder- on our snowskis, 100 mph runs were the norm. Anyway, in this wonderful world of economic growth (ha), I can see why kids are having such a hard time growing up. Both parents are so determined in their careers to "make ends meet" that some kid shoots up the school and his parents never see it coming. Then everyone but us- who all know better- blames guns and shitty movies, and bad influences from Tommy down the street. And I really don't see it getting any better. I don't know for sure- but have seen clips where other countries take kids and train them just for certain sports,etc. The kids move away from home and grow up doing nothing but training. The only way kids train here are by Mom or Dad spending time with them and PAYING for trainers. I would love nothing more than to have one of my kids decide they want to do something like this- but my 50k a year won't pay for a whole lot more than monthly bills and family vacations, let alone paying a specialzed trainer. I may be way off base with all of this, but I do know- I am dedicated to raising my kids to know what is right and wrong, and that guns don't kill people- people kill people. Spend more time with your kids- cause when they grow up- its too late..............

I just came back from the Olympics, including watching the biathlon relay, and it was pretty darn cool. Wouldn't call it much of a spectator sport, however. We had a heck of a time just figuring out what was going on.

I think the basic problem we have in this country is that there just isn't any organized sports outside of the schools. We spend a friggen fortune on 10 kids out of 1,000 to play basketbal, and let the rest of them flounder. Unless they do the karate thing or the swimming thing, they are left out by age 12. We essentially draw our athletes from the failed football players......

I live in a town of 50,000 in the snow belt, and there is one lousy hockey rink. Not a single out door field is flooded for a skating rink. No long track ice rinks, no cross-country trails. How are we supposed to incubate olympic class athletes? On the weekends only?

If kids want to participate in a winter sport at a high level, they need to be able to participate during the week, close to home, and that means facilities. Same goes for fat-ass parents, too ;-). Without ski trails, shooting ranges, and skating rinks, nothing is going to change.

Seems to me that especially the Northern shooting ranges should embrace this biathlon thing. Instead, the push seems to be to pull from the ski population, and turn them into shooters.

JMO, Dutch.

Things could be worse!
Being Greek I always try to follow the Greek Olympians. I was surprised when I went to the event to see a Greek Biathlete start the race. We never even saw this guy finish although we cheered him pretty loudly when he would occasionally pass. We were speculating that he was either taking smoke breaks, had opened a burger joint on the other side of the course, or had found some Scandinavian cuties that he was making time with somewhere in Park City!

JohnTheGreek