This fall, a new club will join the wide range of Dartmouth Outing Club activities: the Biathlon Club. Not to be confused with a triathlon, a biathlon combines cross-country skiing with accuracy rifle shooting.
In a typical biathlon, competitors will cross-country ski a certain distance, then stop and use rifles they have been carrying on their back to shoot at targets. If they hit the target, they resume skiing, but if they miss, a penalty distance is added to their ski route. Though uncommon at the collegiate level, the modern-day biathlon has been part of the Winter Olympics since 1960.
Biathlon Club leaders Steven Hadley ’21 and Nolan Sankey ’21 got the idea to start a biathlon club at Dartmouth while watching the 2018 PyeongChang Olympics, according to Sankey.
“We thought that it was a really cool event and would be a lot of fun to participate in,” Sankey said. “Looking at Dartmouth and our outdoor campus, we thought there could be a space for it here. Even though we really had no experience — Steven has some shooting experience [and] I had some cross-country skiing experience — we took it as a challenge to make it happen here at Dartmouth.”
This past spring, Hadley and Sankey began talking with the DOC to figure out how to get the club started, Sankey said. Working with DOC general manager Rory Gawler ’05 and program coordinator for student advising Andrew Crutchfield ’18, Sankey discovered that a biathlon club at the College existed about 15 years ago, but fizzled out due to lack of interest. However, much of the infrastructure for the sport still remains, including cross-country trails leading from the Oak Hill Cross Country Ski Center to the nearby Dartmouth shooting range and a set of biathlon rifles being stored in Safety and Security’s gun locker, according to Crutchfield.
Crutchfield added that the existing resources made the new club’s startup “immensely easier.”
“Because it’s a club that has existed in the past, it was easier to start than some other clubs that were brand new concepts, like the recently gained surf and snowboard clubs,” DOC president John Brady ’19 said.
Though the club has just restarted, Sankey said that there are already several dozen people interested. With no snow to practice cross-country skiing on, Sankey said he hopes to take the club to the shooting range one or two times in the fall. He is preparing for the winter season and working on partnering with the Nordic Ski Club. Biathlon Club is hoping to do maintenance on the original biathlon trails that have become overgrown, Sankey added.
“We want to be able to bring the two sports together as they were intended — to ski and then immediately go into shooting,” he said.
For the moment, however, club members will be doing separate ski and shooting practices.
“We look forward to a time when we can mend the two together for the full experience,” Sankey said.
Nine members of the Biathlon Club attended their first event on Oct. 6, in Craftsbury, Vermont, Sankey said. In place of skiing, the race consisted of running five one-kilometer laps with four shoots in between each lap.
Sankey added that before the race began, a group of Olympic and experienced biathletes led a shooting clinic.
“It was a good way to start off the Biathlon Club,” Sankey said. “The majority of us had never shot biathlon before, and a decent number of us had never shot before [at all]. I went into the competition hoping it would be fun and a great introduction for a lot of individuals, but we also had some fairly successful results.”
Gracie Durham ’21 said that while she signed up for the race “on a whim,” it turned out to be a “fun experience” for her.
“I had never shot before, so I ended up missing over half the shots and taking a lot of extra penalty laps,” Durham said. “Other than that, I had a really good time.”
Benjamin Alford ’22 placed in third place in the novice category.
“This was much bigger than any of the races I had been to before,” Alford said. “It was really fun being around that many people and there was a lot of energy. I’m excited to see where the club will go.”
The first Dartmouth Biathlon Club was created in 1980. The club competed in races in northeastern U.S. and a few club members even qualified to compete in the 1983 World Universiade competition in Sofia, Bulgaria. According to Crutchfield, the last time the club existed was around 15 years ago.
“If there’s a lot of interest in a club being formed or continuing, it will start and continue, but if the interest dies down or not many students are interested, it’s not necessarily worth continuing,” Crutchfield said. “We always keep in mind that, like the Biathlon Club right now, it can always be started up again if another student wants to start it up again.”
