Mark Burnham, the Nordic center manager at Soldier Hollow, says that about half of the guests who take a winter biathlon clinic already cross-country ski and want to try shooting. The others are first-time skiers, or are still fairly new to the sport.
At a former Olympic site in Utah, a first-timer finds that the sport requires serenity as well as speed.
Until recently, I didn’t know much about this niche sport. But then I covered the Winter Games in Beijing last year and discovered that it was hardly obscure. If the media center at the cross-country skiing race venue hummed with journalists, the biathlon media center felt more like a presidential campaign hub two weeks before the election.
All this led me to Soldier Hollow, 50 miles southeast of Salt Lake City, a site built for the 2002 Olympics. Here, amid a backdrop of rounded peaks topped with meringue-like dollops of snow, 22.5 kilometers of meticulously groomed trails roll across meadows and gentle hills. During the winter, Soldier Hollow offers private biathlon clinics that combine shooting and skiing , and in the summer, daily sessions at the shooting range only .
As the first half of the group took their places on the mat, the Bubble Wrap-like pops of shots began, followed by a faint smell of gunpowder. A rabbit bravely ran alongside the range before darting away. Shooting was “a little nerve-racking, but slightly easier than I expected,” said Celia Pietsch, 33, who, like me, was a first-time gun handler. She hit four out of five targets during the round.
I asked Broadhead if hunters who take Soldier Hollow’s biathlon clinics have an advantage and was surprised when he answered that many of them struggle at first. That’s because the triggers on the types of hunting rifles sold in the United States are typically harder to pull than those on biathlon rifles, he said, so hunters often need to learn a little more finesse. Picture driving a Ferrari the way you would handle a Toyota Highlander, without easing off the controls.
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