Watching the biathlon events, I was curious about the "difficulty" of their targets. Looking it up, they shoot .22 LR rifles, both prone position and standing, at steel targets. Both are at 50 meter (55 yd) range. The prone targets are 45 mm diameter (1.77 inch) and the standing are 115 mm (4.52 in). This is 3.1 and 7.9 MOA. If the prone targets were on a FT course, the prone would be a 35 Troyer "hard" shot.
Now, these guys are carrying rifles, and ski trekking at race speed. I think I hear them say that the competitors hit about 80% of their shots, with standing results a little less. And the wind looked ferocious. I am impressed!
I was in the US army in Alaska in 67-68. I spent a year at the US Modern Winter Biathlon Training Center at Forth Richardson (no longer there). We used Remington 700's on a sporter stock chambered in .223. non optical sights. It is a grueling sport and the shooting is difficult because you have to bring your heart rate down to about 50 from a high of over 180 as you come into the range. We were young (21-22) and VERY fit. I think our targets were about as you describe. In those days I remember the targets being a glass disk in competition. The sport has moved to much better rifles for sure.
You can get a feel for how tough it is by taking a 10M Air rifle Target and shooting a 10M air rifle with diopter sights (fancy peep sight) anywhere in the black bull standing (offhand)...but first you need to do say, 80 situps, 30 pushups, and 20 burpees. You can even do it untimed! Then repeat ?
The shot is usually taken in between heartbeats. It would take far to long to get your heartbeat rate to drop.
The origins of Olympic Biathlon is found in the USA ski sport called Military Patrol done with .30 cal rifles typically at 100yd ranges. It is a shame we don't have more young crack shooters that also are also good cross country skiers.
shootski
(I'm not Polish)
I know there is a summer biathlon event but you do not carry the rifle around. You just run around a course and shoot at the rifle range where you keep the rifle.
If you were using a knock down field target, the equivalent distance to kill zone ratio for standing is 1.5" circle at 19 yards. For prone, it is 1.5" circle at 49 yards. Both are relatively easy when there is no wind and a person is well rested. It is very difficult when you factor in a heavy breathing and aching muscles.
Guess a lot of training is required to get very good at it.
When I was in Alaska we did exactly what you say in summer. We had a central range and kept the rifles in a fixture on the shooting line. We ran Olympic distance biathlon race on foot once a week as part of our training. That was a total of 12.4 miles or 20K. Two big loops that came through the range and one more smaller loop. We ran the two large loops twice and the short loop once.We ran in the forest up and down hills just like a winter biathlon race. Each miss added one minute to your trail time. We also ran/hiked long slow distance days (40 K). interval days, 200 meter hill "sprints"(X 10)days. that was mornings. Afternoons we might play soccer or volley ball on "easy" days. We began each morning with a 3 )mile warm up jog. We did a little resistance training but not much. Our coach was a Swedish guy named Sven Johanson (or sen). He had been an Olympian in XC skiing. We were billeted at Headquarters US Army Alaska in summer and moved to our winter training cite at Independence Mines in the mountains above the Matanuska (SP?)Valley where we lived in the old mine bunkhouse. We had our own cooks and ate like kings. We had a rifle range there and had two rifle coaches, a couple of US Army NCO's. We were seriously out classed by the Europeans. We had no depth in our ranks. Only about 10 guys at the training center at any one time. I was the worst of them and did not last very long there. One year. I was glad to go back to my regular unit. Sven was not a great coach by today's standards. His philosophy was "train till injured then rest". I have to say though that I was the fittest I had ever been in my young life. My heart rate recovery was very fast.
