The World Competes

Comedians like to have a heyday with the biathlon. They don’t get the whole idea of combining guns and skiing. They seem to think that biathlon is something like the YouTube video below. What they don’t keep in mind is that biathlon debuted in the 1924 Olympics in Chamonix. It was only six years after World War I ended (to put that in perspective, the September 11th attacks were 9 years ago). Technology wasn’t reallly advanced back in those days. If I recall correctly, they used horse-drawn wagons to pick up dead bodies from the influenza epidemic just a few years prior. It was only four years after the first radio broadcast for entertainment (in Argentina).

Biathlon was actually a way of training for fighting in the Nordic countries. Soldiers there would have to be able to travel over the snow, and of course would have to know how to shoot. While they might be able to ride around in tanks now, the tanks were very primitive in 1924.

So I don’t get why comedians are so dismissive of the biathlon; however, I think that they would have a heyday with blind biathlon. I suppose the only reason we haven’t heard jokes about it is because most comedians don’t know about it. Blind people with guns? Sounds a little dangerous, right?

Probably not. The blind paralympians have guns, but they also have guides to make sure that they’re skiing in the right direction, and actually are pointing the guns at the target, rather than another skier, or someone in the stands watching. Furthermore, that wouldn’t win them any medals. I’m not sure what the penalty for shooting someone would be, but I’m guessing that it might lead to disqualification.

Blind biathlon may sound a little odd, but the biathletes actually use a special gun that will send the information about how close they are to their target with sound. So even though they cannot see the target, if they’re pointing at it correctly, they will hear a special tone. You can read more about the blind biathlon at Yahoo Sports.

On another slightly different note, Canada’s Brian McKeever, whom I have written about before, and was going to be the first Paralympic cross-country skier to ski in the able body Olympics (Canada eventually replaced him with somebody else), is one of the blind Biathletes. He won a gold medal in the 20 km race that took place on Monday. Good for him.