Biathlon at the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympic Games will be contested from Feb. 10-23, with medals awarded in eleven different events.
Sochi in review
Sochi’s biggest biathlon story featured the coronation of one Norwegian athlete known to fans as “The King.” Amid the hype of younger competitors, the 40-year-old Ole Einar Bjoerndalen attacked Sochi’s biathlon course and set the new standard for winning at a winter Olympic Games in the process. Bjoerndalen won his twelfth Olympic medal in his first event when he won gold in the men’s 10km sprint.
Eleven days later, he won record-setting number thirteen, another gold, in the newly-added mixed relay event. Bjoerndalen would pass cross-country skier and fellow Norwegian, Bjorn Daehlie to become the winningest winter Olympian in history.
Another biathlon standout in Sochi was France’s Martin Fourcade. The tall, dark and handsome Frenchman remained humble after a Sochi performance that would land him two individual gold medals and a silver. That silver was nearly gold number three for Fourcade, but a photo finish in the men’s 15km mass start showed the ski tip of Norwegian Emil Hegle Svendsen crossing the line first.
In the women’s competition, another Olympian laid down tracks to begin her own historic domination in biathlon. Appearing in her second Olympic Games, Belarus’ Darya Domracheva became a star in Sochi when she won gold in three of the four women’s individual biathlon events. Domracheva’s run in Sochi is the first time a female biathlete had earned three gold medals in a single Olympic Games.
In the women’s 15km individual event, Domracheva finished a full 1 minute, 15 seconds ahead of silver medalist Selina Gasparin of Switzerland. It would stand as the largest margin of victory recorded in Sochi, but what’s impressive is that Domracheva incurred a penalty of 1 minute after missing a single target (out of 20) on the course, while Gasparin and bronze medalist, Belarusian teammate Nadezhda Skardino, were perfect with their rifles.
Competition format
Biathletes will compete across the following eleven events, with gold, silver and bronze medals awarded to the top three finishers, respectively, in each event:
- Men’s 20km individual
- Men’s 10km sprint
- Men’s 12.5km pursuit
- Men’s 15km mass start
- Men’s 4×7.5km relay
- Women’s 15km individual
- Women’s 7.5km sprint
- Women’s 10km pursuit
- Women’s 12.5km mass start
- Women’s 4x6km relay
- Mixed relay
Venue
Biathlon events will be held at the Alpensia Biathlon Centre during the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympic Games located in the PyeongChang Mountain Cluster. The ski resort area of Alpensia will also feature the rest of the Nordic Olympic sports including cross-country, ski jumping and Nordic combined. The sliding events of bobsled, luge and skeleton will also be found in Alpensia.
Athletes to watch
Men
Dominik Landertinger, Austria
Martin Fourcade, France 
Ole Einar Bjoerndalen, Norway Emil Hegle Svendsen, Norway 
Sergey Semenov, Ukraine
Women
Darya Domracheva, Belarus Tiril Eckhoff, France Marie Dorin Habert, France
Laura Dahlmeier, Germany
Hannah Dreissigacker, United States Susan Dunklee, United States