Biathlon: Coolest Olympic Sport Biathlon, unfortunately, doesn’t sound like it is a cool sport. It doesn’t involve sequen-bedazzled skaters doing triple axles while wearing short skirts like Men’s figure skating does - and it doesn’t involve lazy stoners flipping themselves in crazy ways like Olympic Halfpipe does - but it does have something that no other sport has. It has guns.
Biathlon has guns.
In Biathlon they ski around a course and shoot targets (they have 4 to shoot at at each station - two standing, two prone). If they miss a target, they have to do a “penalty lap” around a little oval off to the side of the shooting area. The targets are incredibly small, and the athletes are incredibly accurate: the winners often go the entire race without missing a single target.
I want to see a Summer Olympics Biathlon - with handguns
I want to see a Summer Olympics Biathlon - with runners and handguns. To make it even more difficult - the target would be on a track so that they would be constantly moving - and the runners hand to turn and shoot them on the run. Sure, it would be a difficult thing to do - but if you make a Gold medal in that category and some country will devote a lot of resources to being the top “run and gun” country in the world. (Kind of like South Korea and Short track speedskating)
Eliminate the “no shooting each other” rule
The only problem with Biathlon is the lack of threat from competitors. They should have some special qualifying round (like a blindfolded shooting round or something) where the winner of that round gets a special designation. A “License to kill” if you will. This person, when they are headed towards the finish line - had the ability to use his rifle for more than target practice - and can down the guy in front of him if he needs to. 
I think that would make the games much more interesting than they currently are - with everyone toting guns but nobody shooting them. It also would not cause the anarchy that giving everyone the ability to shoot whenever they want too would. Maybe they could use paintball to try to cut down on fatalities, I don’t know. These are issues for the IOC to work out.
technorati tags: Biathlon, Olympics, Torino, violence, shooting
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