Biathlon features one of the strangest skill combinations in sports: high level of cardiovascular fitness, top-tier cross country skiing ability, a proficiency at firing a gun and, most important, the ability to cool your engines momentarily so you can steady your hands before pulling the trigger.
And that’s especially true when you’re skiing in a biathlon atop 10,400-foot Tennessee Pass between Minturn and Leadville.
But instead of .22-caliber rifles with live ammunition, Sunday’s Leadville Nordic Paintball Biathlon, just as the name implies, skiers will use safer firearms. Like a traditional biathlon, competitors ski to a shooting station and try to hit a series of targets from 25 feet. In this case, five paintball guns will await skiers as they come from a wooded loop adjacent to the Tennessee Pass Nordic Center and Cookhouse.
One lap requires shooting at the five targets from a prone position, and the second lap entails shooting from standing position. For every shot you make, time is deducted from your final race time (15 seconds per target hit in the 5-kilometer race, 30 seconds per hit in the 10k). There’s also a 1k version for children.
The event is low key and non-Olympic in stature, but it will probably at least match the 60-person field it had last year, said race director Karl Remsen. Several Olympic-style biathlons are held at Snow Mountain Ranch in Tabernash, but the third annual Leadville paintball event is the only one of its kind in Colorado.
“It’s an awesome event, a lot of fun,” said Roxanne Hall, who coached several junior skiers in last year’s event and won the women’s division at the inaugural event in 2008.
Organized by the Leadville Nordic Club, the event is a fundraiser that will help send Leadville teen Cody Vincent to the Junior Olympics from March 7-14 in Presque Isle, Maine. Entry fees are $15 for the longer races, $5 for the kids’ race.
“I wanted to put on an event that was more than just your typical ‘go out and ski for two hours’ kind of race,” said Remsen, Leadville nordic director and nordic coach for the Lake County High School ski team. “I think it’s a great end-of-the-season race because, especially for middle school kids, because it’s something different.”
Hall, who along with her husband, Ty, and a partner own the Tennessee Cookhouse and Nordic Center, competed in biathlon at the Junior Olympic level as a teenager.
“It’s very much like a real biathlon,” she said. “It’s really hard to hit the target when you’re coming and you’re really tired and breathing hard. But that’s what makes it fun. The kids absolutely love it.”
