In 2006 Australia will be sending a team of athletes to Torino to compete at the highest level possible for winter sports. In summer Olympic sports, especially swimming, athletics, and track cycling, Australia does its bit by our boys and girls through the support of the AIS and corporate fundraising.
But when it comes to winter sports, we’re all citizens of a morally bankrupt system than stifles for no good reason the ambitions of our athletes. Australian biathletes will be compete in the most difficult Alpine sport of them all:
Biathlon is a Winter Olympic sport that combines the two opposing disciplines of cross-country skiing and precision target shooting. Often compared to running 100 metres and then trying to thread a needle, or going from a rabbit to a rock in a matter of seconds, Biathlon combines the physical endurance required for cross country skiing with the mental poise needed to shoot accurately over 50 metres – while the clock is still running.
The current National Parks rules discriminate against kids wanting to excel at this incredible sport, as the NSW & ACT Biathlon Association point out:
In Australia the sport of Biathlon has not been able to grow due to the exclusion of firearms from our snow fields which are all contained in National Parks. This is especially the case in NSW. Victoria is the only state where Biathlon has existed for any length of time, around 20 years. For this reason, all our Australian Olympic athletes have come from Victoria and in fact, from a small region of Victoria near Mt Hotham where the only approved snow bound shooting range in Australia currently exists.
Luckily some enterprising engineers have started devising laser biathlon systems, and the Australian Biathlon Association have begun organising a Summer Biathlon programme, more suited to the Australian climate:
Summer Biathlon, for which there is now a World Championships, mimics conventional Biathlon but replaces the skiing component with running, rollerskiingtroller-blading, cycling or wheelchair racing.
These developments are good, especially in the case of mountain bike biathlon. Personally I can’t think of anything more enjoyable than blasting up and down fire trails, with a .22 bolt-action rimfire rifle, in pursuit of targets and against the clock. For the sake of sporting glory we need to get behind our Olympians (especially when the red flag is up and the firing range is live). Our National Parks have to be able to accomodate the needs of firearms users and sporting shooters, for the sake of the kids.
I must check out the possibility of mounting a fifty calibre machine gun on the Chinese made bicycle Liam, but I might need trainer wheels for the belt fed ammunition boxes though. Gee, that could be applicable in the world outside sport, couldn’t it?
Typical Greenie national parks zealots not content with killing people in bushfires but try to stop Olympic glory as well.
A machine gun? Sacrilege Peter, biathlon is a precision sport. If you’ve got a lot of fifty-cal ammunition sitting around, though, I could highly recommend the Barrett 82A1. You can put a hole through an engine block at over a kilometre away.
Now that’s sport!
your knowledge of shooting shows you are a dum dum
what’s with all this biathlon palaver? bring Ultimate Fighting into the Olympics!!
Who’s engine block Liam?
The firepower was secondary, my idea is to utilise the recoil and fool my competitors by going backwards up hills without pedalling!
Naturally if the competitors come too close…(That’s my new theoretical method of going from the Green Zone to the Bagdhad Airport BTW)
(Think I’ll stick to the old 303 for small bore competitions.)
As far as I’m concerned .303 is a medium bore, Peter, and most of those old rifles would be far too heavy to ski or cycle with. Small-bore rifles are usually .17, .22 or .222, and for Olympic competition also include compressed-air pieces, like air pistols.
Still, you may have a point. The Imperial Japanese Army’s capture of Singapore in 1942 depended heavily on bicycle troops. Perhaps Michael Duffy was right in suspecting city bicycle riders of antisocial tendencies: can you imagine a revolution of cycle couriers with SLRs and sawn-offs?
To a 0.5 inch RWDB like me Liam, 0.303 is small bore.
All that .17, .22, .222 is stuff to fit in a derringer. (Pretty long derringer for .222 I’ll concede)
Tried a .357 on a roo once long ago, couldn’t hit shit off a shovel at one metre, obviously I hadn’t perfected the art of pistol shooting. Roo went away shaking its head,— probably deafened it though and ruined its chances for reproduction.
I like this one on a tombstone:
Here lies Les Moore
Three slugs from a 44
No Les
No Moore.
I can think of a few athletes I’d like to get behind. Im really good at going from rabbit to rock in a few seconds too.