biathlon rifles

[Bill Poole]

http://www.torino2006.org/bin/OlympicGa ... agebig.jpg

OK, what's this?



I think the grip is a lever to operate the mechanism

Poole

[Nicole Hamilton]

Most likely, it's a Krico 360 S2, a biathlon rifle described as having a pistol grip cocking mechanism. Unfortunately, I can't find a picture of one anywhere on the web to confirm that's what it is. It's not mentioned anywhere on the manufacturer's website, so I assume it's out of production.

[David Levene]

I believe that is Andrea Henkel, in which case it is a Suhler rifle.

One of the top male Biathletes, Sven Fischer, also uses a Suhler.

Good luck with finding any information about them.

[Ted]

So has anyone out there tried this event? How difficult was it to hit the targets after the ski part compared to standing? I would like to try it once.

[Tony C.]

Ted, I hope you are a good skier if you want to try biathlon, its a speed event, you could miss most of the target and still won if you can ski fast enough, the target is about the same size of 50M bull, so the shooting part wasn't that hard, the hard part is to ski fast and slow down your heart rate when going into shooting position.
Some years ago, a friend of mine who is an excellent small bore rifle shooter and do a bit of cross country ski in the winter decide to try it out just for fun, he was shock when seconds into the race every body just ski past him as if he's standing still, he shot OK, but old rifle shooting habit die hard and took far too long to fire a shot, plus he fell down when skiing down a slope, so he end up dead last, never to try it again.
Its much easier to train a good skier into a biathlete than to train a rifle shooter into one.
Good luck.

[Rob]

You can try Summer Biathlon if theres one near you. We run instead of ski and leave our rifles at the shooting range. In the Pa,NJ,NY area theres about 15 events this year. Many of the clubs have Marlin biathlon rifles for anyone to use. New competitors must go through a saftey course, but other than that, come on out. Some people run 5 minute miles and some walk as fast as they can. Everyone has fun. The Cherry Ridge Range in Vernon NJ has a biathlon event with a family of bears on the course! Its amazing how a family of bears live near an active NRA club.

[HBP]

The German Fischer, who won the mens 10km biathlon yesterday in Torino was using a rifle similar to this. He had a different grip to the photo shown above (kept his thumb high and on the same side as his forefinger), but he also just pivoted the grip slightly forward after each shot. No obvious bolt catch on the side of the rifle.

It all looked quite fluid, his trigger finger barely left the trigger, simply "fire", short push with the heel of the hand, "fire", etc.