Skiing Paintball?

At lunch the other day all my co-workers could talk about was how exciting skiercross was to watch in the Olympics. The speed, the crashes, the mayhem. I brought up how exciting the cross country biathlon was, pointing out it was the only winter sport in the Olympics where you get to ski with a gun.

That of course caught their attention, but only for a moment. Soon they were saying how they should ski with paintball guns and get points for shooting each other. Oh my.


Then again maybe these guys are onto something. I mean what we are really talking about is creating a sport that can capture a television audience, and if alpine skiing needed a boost, than how could Nordic ever hope to survive. But if you built upon our love of all things fast and our seeming fascination with shooting people we might have something on our hands.

Now I’m not sure I know how this might work, I need to set up a meeting with our Valley biathlon experts- Nat Lucy and Eli Walker, to brainstorm on this. But here is how it might work, think of it as a team event, the first wave head out in a mass start- skiing like mad to a wood line- at which time they hunker down and get ready to pick off the next group that comes through. It would create a whole new way to look at a hole shot, no longer would that be such a great spot! So it would sort of work like a relay, once the second wave makes it to the woods they ski on and set up so that the back line can move forward- we now have a whole new level of strategy and tactics.


It would be very fun to watch skiers max out their heart rate out of the starting gate and then, when they hit the woods try to hide despite breathing like Fat Albert at the top of a flight of stairs. It would also provide a new rub on the racing suits, I mean a really bright suit would not really be all that helpful- but then again everyone can’t be racing in camouflage, obviously there might be some logistics to figure out.

I am of course saying this in jest as I think biathlon is plenty exciting as it is, and so does most of Europe where biathlon is followed like NASCAR is here in the United States. For some reason, it just doesn’t resonate with many American fans, which is too bad as it is a really cool sport.

Originally printed in the Mountain Ear 2-26-2010