The biathlon

The active tourism allows you not only to discover incredible places but also offers you curious options to enjoy your free time. The best thing you can do while you are on vacation or simply to start a new hobby in your life is related to extreme sports. There are sports for all tastes.

Biathlon is a combined sport in which cross-country skiing is combined with archery. Its origin is attributed to primitive hunters who pursued their prey using skis and a utensil to catch them. With the passage of time, it seems that the use of skis and weapons persisted, thanks to the warriors who defended their territories.

The prehistoric men already used skis and weapons. This is shown by the paintings found in which men are represented with bows and arrows moving on a type of skis, which date back to 3000 BC. Hunting with skis was practiced in northern Europe, northern Asia and North America. In China, hunting was practiced, but using horses instead of skis.

In the Middle Ages this practice continued and, little by little, came to be considered as a traditional competition and, finally, as a sport. Ski soldiers were an army corps in Scandinavia, but also existed in Russia, Germany, Austria and Switzerland until the end of the 19th century. This association of sport with the defense corps or army of a country has been maintained to this day, proof of this is that the majority of the competitors in the men's category of the World Cup belong to the Army of their respective nations.< /p>

In 1776, in Norway, the first competition with carbine and skis was organized. These competitions had a certain continuity from 1792 to 1818. In Germany, in 1902, the first military patrol competition took place, while in Norway, the first team competition was held in 1912. In the individual competition, ten shots were fired divided into two series (competition similar to the sprint event of the current World Cup, in the men's category).

The presence of biathlon in the Olympic Games took place, for the first time, in Chamonix, in 1924, where the patrol competition was a sport demonstration. With this same condition it was included in the programs of the 1928, 1936 and 1948 Olympic Games.

This sport had to wait until the 1960 Olympic Games, held in Squaw Valley (USA), to be included as such in the Olympic program. At the 44th session of the International Olympic Committee held in Rome, at the proposal of Sweden, it was decided that the first official Olympic competition would be held over 20 km in the men's category.

Before reaching this point, the first World Championships were held in Saalfelden (Austria) in which 25 athletes from seven countries participated over the same distance. In these first official competitions, biathlon was included within the UIPMB (International Union of Modern Pentathlon and Biathlon).

From 1960 to the present day, biathlon has undergone numerous and important transformations. The most important ones occurred in the 1977-1978 season, in which the caliber of the carbine was changed. Likewise, modern technology allowed the change in the target system and the new technique in cross-country skiing, the skating step or free technique, was used in all competitions, increasing the running speed of a determining form (until that moment, all competitions were contested in classical technique).

Currently, biathlon belongs to the IBU (International Biathlon Union), an organization that ensures the continuity and regulation of this sport in the world. The IBU emerged from the UIPMB and was founded in 1993, in London. Since then it has belonged to this establishment and 57 countries are represented.

Since the beginning of the Winter Olympic Games, biathlon is one of the sports that has undergone the greatest transformations. It was in 1992, in Albertville, when female participation was included. In recent seasons, two new competitions have been held: the pursuit and the mass start in the men's and women's categories.