What is Biathlon Part Two

Howdy all!

This post comes to you from a hotel hallway in Osrblie, Slovakia. Today was my first international race in 12 years, since World Juniors in 2010. This time with the US Biathlon Team instead of the US Ski Team and boy, is biathlon fun. And on that note, I want to expand on the What is Biathlon articles I have been posting here. In the last post I went over Biathlon basics, shooting positions/ranges, and types of races. You can catch up on those things here before diving further in on governing bodies and how to follow along.

Governing Bodies:

In the United States, the sport of Biathlon is governed by the United States Biathlon Association, or USBA. The association is the entity which sets all criteria for biathlon including international team selection, sanctioned race events, overseas support for international racing and much more. Biathlon could not exist in the US without its own National Governing Body (NGB) since biathlon is not under the umbrella of US Ski and Snowboard.

Internationally, the sport of Biathlon is governed by the International Biathlon Union, or IBU. The IBU is an enormous organization running many tiers of competition all over Europe and the world. Including the winter World Cup, the IBU cup (the feeding tier to the world cup), summer series, junior series, developmental camps and more. Biathlon is hugely popular outside the US and the IBU runs the show for any international event. International biathlon events include NASCAR sized crowds, champagne spraying on the podium, corporate sponsors and massive TV audiences - biathlon and the IBU are a scene we don’t see in the US for endurance sports.

How to follow the sport:

The best way to follow the sport of Biathlon in the United states is to check on the USBA website regularly. Unfortunately there is no system for viewing results, watching races or even knowing the domestic schedule in the US yet, but hopefully available in the not-so-distant future.

However, you can follow all IBU competitions easily! (competitions taking place mainly in Europe) The schedule for all tiers and event/athlete lookups are available on the IBU data center. This is where you can compare pretty much any piece of information possible about athletes and events, similar to football stats in the US, but for biathlon. More on those stats in the next post.

You can also view IBU World Cup races on Peacock TV and watch a great deal of racing on the IBU TV on YouTube. This is a great place to see what biathlon is all about and see the excitement of those races in Europe.