Photo By Maj. Leslie Reed | Oregon Army National Guard Sgt. McKinley Keener, a squad leader with 224th Engineer...... read more read more
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JERICHO, Vt. -- While shooting and cross-country skiing may seem like an odd pairing to the general public, it’s less of an oddity to those who wear a military uniform. Testing speed, endurance and the ability to effectively engage a target, along with fatigue; seems like a likely challenge a Soldier could face in combat today. And with the 2021 Army release of its “Regaining Arctic Dominance” strategy, which stresses an increase in “the Army’s ability to operate in extreme cold-weather, mountainous, and high-altitude environments,” the National Guard’s biathlon program seems timelier than ever.
If you’re not familiar with what exactly a biathlon is, you’re not the only one. It can be easily confused with other events like triathlons, heptathlons and decathlons. However, what sets a biathlon apart from other multi-discipline sports is that it’s a winter event. As its name indicates, the biathlon is made up of two events coupled together: cross-country skiing and shooting.
“If the fundamentals of combat are audacity, momentum and to close in and destroy the enemy, those things are much easier to do on skis than
running through deep snow,” said Capt. Kyle Roe, an Oregon
biathlete and troop commander with 1st Squadron, 82nd Cavalry Regiment. “Being a biathlete is like being a Soldier, you have a set of skills that you continue to refine and improve over time. Both require you to shoot, both require you to be physical fit, and both require you to synthesize and put those things together for one product.”
Each race starts with cross-country skiing and with each lap, participants stop at a range adjacent to the course to fire their .22 caliber rifles, which they carry on their backs for the entirety of the race. Participants fire from both the prone and standing position during each race. The longer the race distance, the more times they stop to fire their rifles at established targets.
Biathlete Capt. Jared Hoffer, an operations officer with 1st Battalion, 186th Infantry expresses “the better shape you’re in the easier it will be,” when it comes to shooting.
“It’s taking a second to adjust and mentally send that message to your body, you need to calm down, and then it allows you to start the recovery process to steady the rifle and engage the target. The same basic fundamentals of marksmanship are there, we are just doing it after skiing more than 2-kilometers and trying to go as fast as we can.”
Failure to engage any of the five targets results in a distance penalty, with each participant skiing an additional 150-meter loop for each missed shot.
The biathlon doesn’t play favorites with competitors and requires them to be equally skilled at both disciplines. “That’s what so great about this sport, you pay for your deficiencies. Which goes along with being a Soldier too. You can spend all your time being a phenomenal skier but ultimately the penalty that you incur for neglecting that second domain of the race will usually prove too costly… you can’t get away with ignoring one entire facet of the sport itself,” conveys Roe.
Competitors must have “the ability to skate ski and shoot at a very high level. It’s not a ski-athon and it’s not a shoot-athlon, it’s a biathlon,” said Lt. Col. Rocky Kumlin, the team’s coach and coordination.
“And when you can combine both, it’s a lot of fun -- and when you don’t, it gets frustrating. It takes both aspects.”
First demonstrated at the 1928 Winter Olympics as the military ski patrol, it wasn’t until 1960 that the sport debuted for men and only in 1992 when the women’s biathlon event was added.
The first Chief of the National Guard Bureau (CNGB) Biathlon Nationals were held at the Camp Ethan Allen Training Site in Jericho, Vermont in 1975, the same location that hosted this year’s competition.
The Oregon Army Guard’s biathlon program has evolved over the years as well. Team coach and coordinator, Lt. Col. Rocky Kumlin, first joined the program in 2007. Kumlin joined the team just as it was transitioning from “showing up with sweatpants and whatever they had” to gaining more support and being able to obtain “race uniforms, skis, poles and new rifles.” A lot has changed over the last 14-years,” he recalls.
The team’s newest convert, Maj. Kristy Harrison, who has previous experience competing in triathlons, remembers wanting to join the team for years. She got serious this winter, going out and renting skis, and
headed up to the mountain on her own.
“I went up to Mount Hood and I got in the parking lot and fell about three times, put the skis back in my car and took my dog for a hike,” she laughs, remembering her first attempt with the sport. “Okay this is not something I’m going to do on my own, I need somebody to show me how to do this.”
Harrison, who started as a kid downhill skiing made the transition to snowboarding, before taking up cross-country skiing in 2022. In her debut race while at the CNGB event, she drew the short stick.
“The first race I was dead last,” she said. To clarify, she started last out of her group of novice competitors. But she definitely didn’t finish last, setting herself up for a 3rd place finish in the women’s pursuit race on the second day of competition.
Capt. Roe also extended Oregon’s tradition of making the All-Guard team, being one of the top 15 overall male finishers, following Lt. Col. Kumlin’s top 15 finish in 2022. Individuals on the All-Guard team, consisting of the top 15 male and top five female competitors, can be selected to represent the National Guard or even the United States in different competitions across the world. Developmental team and World Class Athlete Program opportunities also exist for those top skiers on the All-Guard team.
The chance to race with top notch people including “a two-time Olympian is pretty awesome and inspiring,” says Kumlin, referencing Col. Robert Duncan Douglass, a Utah Guard biathlete who competed in the 1992 and 1994 Winter Olympics, and in the CNGB event.
When late spring and summer comes, biathletes turn to other forms of cross training such as road biking, rowing, strength training, and hiking in
addition to their regular Army Combat Fitness Test training regime. Roe says he also incorporates chasing his two daughters around and training for half and full marathons, “as long as you’re active and developing leg strength and endurance, those things put you in place to be successful when the snow starts falling again.”
Kumlin recommends taking a skate ski lesson and giving it a shot. “The weather is another consideration,” he says “for some people it can be a complete downer skiing in negative 26-degree weather. We don’t just ski when its sunny outside. There are lots of extremes and some people just don’t want to deal with that.”
“Just do it, if you’re at all interested. Let’s suffer together” adds Harrison.
This year’s CNGB competition, held at the Camp Ethan Allen Training Site in Jericho, Vermont, over Feb. 17-22, featured teams from more than 26 states and territories. The upcoming 2024 CNGB competition will be held at the Soldier Hollow Nordic Center near Midway, Utah before rotating to Camp Ripley, near Little Falls, Minnesota in 2025.
| Date Taken: | 04.01.2023 |
| Date Posted: | 04.01.2023 18:45 |
| Story ID: | 441763 |
| Location: | JERICHO, VERMONT, US |
| Web Views: | 258 |
| Downloads: | 1 |
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