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Norwegian School of Sports Science

How Do You Make a Top-10 Biathlete a Medalist? Find 12 Seconds, Somewhere

Biathlon is a notoriously variable sport: besides skiing, there’s the shooting aspect which can ruin a race in a matter of seconds. Sometimes an athlete like Lowell Bailey wins a World Championship for the first time after 15 seasons competing; sometimes the most reliable guy in the sport, Martin Fourcade, finishes 46th. It’s a wild world. Norwegian PhD student Øyvind Skattebo set out to quantify just how variable the sport is, and what amount of improvement...