You might have reached for your remote when biathlon came on the TV coverage of the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea. Jesserin Tang reached for her notepad.
For the 18-year-old BCIT student, the Olympic biathlon competition presented a rare opportunity to watch and learn from the sport’s best athletes; it’s not like we have Biathlon Night in Canada on television every Saturday.
Tang has been part of a program to introduce and foster the sport to air cadets for three of the five years she’s been a member of the 777 Neptune squadron in Port Coquitlam.
Recently, Tang and another member of the squadron, 13-year-old Athena Cai, joined more than 80 other athletes at a provincial competition at Mt. Washington in Comox in hopes of achieving a spot on the B.C. national cadet biathlon team that will travel to Charlottetown, P.E.I., for the
national cadet championship March 5 to 10. They finished fifth.
Tang said she joined the biathlon program because she wanted to learn how to ski for free. Biathlon combines the disciplines of cross-country skiing with marksmanship as athletes have to pause several times around a kilometres-long course to fire a rifle at targets on a range. Competitors race against the clock or each other, and each missed target means added time or skiing a 150-metre penalty loop.
Tang said the sport is a fun way to test the capabilities she’s developed as part of the squadron’s range team for five years, and her fitness and emerging skills as a skier. But it’s far from easy.
“I didn’t expect it to be so hard,” she said. “You get tired when you’re skiing and you have to control your breathing when you reach the range.”
Tang’s coach, Lawrence Goh, said top biathletes are able to focus and slow their heartbeat after the physical exertion of skiing.
“You need a lot of time to learn that skill.”
Goh, who’s been guiding the biathlon program at 777 squadron for five years, said the sport is a natural fit for one of the aims of cadets – to promote physical fitness in youth aged 12 to 18 as they develop skills that might interest them in the sea, land and air activities of the Canadian Armed Forces.
But practising a sport in the temperate Lower Mainland that requires a good ground covering of snow in proximity to a shooting range comes with its own challenges. Goh’s team skis at Cypress Mountain and hones their shooting skills at the Port Coquitlam and District Hunting and Fishing Club. The two aspects are only able to come together on ventures to the Whistler Olympic Park.
In the meantime, Goh has his team work on their strength and endurance by running laps around the track at Percy Perry stadium in Coquitlam.
“You need stamina,” he said.
Tang admits she’s a long way from reaching the level of biathletes competing at the Winter Olympics. But being able to watch them on TV has at least given her an idea of how much she has to learn.
“I actually understand it a bit more and have a whole new appreciation for the sport,” she said.
Goh hopes the exposure that comes from the Games will attract newcomers to biathlon. Or at least reduce the glazed looks he gets when he tries to recruit cadets to his program.
“We have to explain what biathlon is to them,” he said.
