Biathlon Trivia
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7correct to beat the crowd
48 free Biathlon trivia questions with answers — sports quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This biathlon trivia quiz covers the sport that pairs cross-country skiing with rifle marksmanship. The rules questions test what every viewer wonders about: how far away the targets are, how big they get when you stand up, what a miss costs in each format, why the rifle must weigh at least 3.5 kilograms and why nobody wears ear protection. The history questions run from Norwegian military skiing contests and Olympic military patrol to the switch from army rifles to .22 rimfire and the arrival of women's events at Albertville in 1992. The second half is about the people: Ole Einar Bjørndalen's clean sweep at Salt Lake City, Martin Fourcade's seven crystal globes, Magdalena Neuner retiring at 25, Darya Domracheva's Sochi treble, Laura Dahlmeier's five golds at one championship and Johannes Thingnes Bø's 16-win season. Difficulty runs from easy to expert and is shown on every question. Every answer was checked against a reference page and each question carries its citation. Try our Winter Olympics and skiing quizzes next.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Biathlon combines cross-country skiing with which other discipline?
Rifle shooting
Rifle shooting: each missed target costs extra skiing or added time, so racers have only seconds to calm a pounding pulse before they fire.
Q 02Biathlon grew out of which older team sport, an Olympic event in 1924?
Military patrol
Military patrol: four-man army teams skied about 25 km carrying rifles and packs, and it came back to the Games three more times as a demonstration event.
Q 03How far away are the targets on a biathlon range?
50 metres
50 metres: until 1978 the targets stood at 150 metres, and the earliest championships made athletes shoot from as far as 250.
Q 04How many targets must a biathlete hit in each shooting bout?
Five
Five: the number matches the rifle's magazine, which holds five rounds, so in most races there is exactly one bullet for each target.
Q 05In which shooting position must a biathlete hit the smaller target zone, 45 mm rather than 115 mm?
Prone
Prone: lying down, the hit zone is less than half as wide as when standing, yet the black disc the athlete aims at is the same size in both positions.
Q 06What calibre of ammunition is used in biathlon?
.22 long rifle
.22 long rifle: the small rimfire round is capped at a muzzle velocity of 360 metres a second and is usually subsonic, which is why biathletes shoot without ear protection.
Q 07In most biathlon races, what does each missed target cost the athlete?
A 150-metre penalty loop
A 150-metre penalty loop: a miss means more skiing, not a stopped clock, so two misses send a racer round an extra 300 metres before rejoining the course.
Q 08What colour bib does the overall World Cup leader wear in a biathlon race?
Yellow
Yellow: the leader of each race discipline wears red instead, and an athlete who heads both standings gets one bib that combines the two colours.
Q 09Which biathlon race, the sport's oldest, adds a minute to the clock for every missed target?
Individual
Individual: it is also the longest solo race, 20 km for men and 15 km for women, with four visits to the range and so twenty chances to lose a minute.
Q 10Which biathlon race is 10 km for men, with two shoots?
Sprint
Sprint: racers set off one by one, half a minute apart, so they are racing the clock rather than the skiers around them.
Q 11In which biathlon format do athletes start at intervals based on their time gaps from a previous race?
Pursuit
Pursuit: the winner of the earlier race goes first and everyone else chases at their own time gap, so whoever crosses the line first has won.
Q 12Which World Cup biathlon race is open only to the 30 best-ranked athletes?
Mass start
Mass start: the field of 30 matches the 30 lanes on the range, where each racer takes the lane of their own bib number at the first shoot.
Q 13What extra help does a relay biathlete get on the range?
Three spare rounds
Three spare rounds: they can't go in the magazine, so each is loaded by hand, one at a time, to finish off any targets still standing.
Q 21How do visually impaired athletes aim their rifles in Paralympic biathlon?
By listening to a rising tone
By listening to a rising tone: the pitch climbs as the rifle swings toward the centre of the target, so the athlete can shoot by ear.
Q 22Biathlon joined the Olympic programme in 1960 at the Winter Games hosted by which American resort?
Squaw Valley
Squaw Valley: Sweden's Klas Lestander took that first gold with only the 15th-fastest skiing time, because he hit all 20 of his targets.
Q 23Women's biathlon made its Olympic debut in 1992 at the Games held in which French town?
Albertville
Q 14How is a biathlon mixed relay team made up?
Two women and two men
Two women and two men: for years the women always skied the first two legs, but since 2018 either pair may open the race.
Q 15Which biathlon event is raced by mixed-sex pairs?
Single mixed relay
Single mixed relay: one woman and one man each race two legs, swapping over straight after shooting rather than skiing another lap first.
Q 16Which technique do almost all biathletes use to get around the course?
Skate skiing
Skate skiing: the rules permit every cross-country technique, so the classic stride would be perfectly legal, yet almost the whole field chooses to skate.
Q 17What do biathletes call the pre-race practice shots at paper targets, used to adjust their sights?
Zeroing
Zeroing: before the start each racer fires at paper targets while a coach with a spotting scope reports where the shots land, so the sights can be corrected.
Q 18How does a hit show on a biathlon target?
A white paddle covers the black target
A white paddle covers the black target: on mechanical ranges the bullet's own impact flips it over, so athlete and crowd both see the result at once.
Q 19Which Norse god, revered as both ski god and hunting god, is cited as part of biathlon's roots?
Ullr
Ullr, god of skiers and hunters, suits a sport born from ski troops: by the 18th century Norwegian regiments were holding contests that included shooting at a mark while skiing at full speed.
Q 20What is biathlon called in Norwegian?
Skiskyting
Skiskyting means simply 'ski shooting'; the similar-sounding skifeltskyting is a different sport, a ski race with large-calibre rifles fired over unknown distances.
Albertville: women had been holding their own world championships since 1984, yet their Olympic start came 32 years after the men's.
Q 24Which country won the first six Olympic men's biathlon relays, from 1968 to 1988?
Soviet Union
Soviet Union: the run ended only when the country did; by the next Games, in 1992, the USSR had dissolved and the relay went to a newly reunified Germany.
Q 25Which German gunmaker's straight-pull Fortner rifle is the standard choice of top biathletes?
Anschütz
Anschütz: gunsmith Peter Fortner dreamed up the fast straight-pull action in 1984 over beers with Olympic champion Peter Angerer, and it has ruled the sport since the late 1980s.
Q 26What trophy goes to the winner of biathlon's overall World Cup each season?
A crystal globe
A crystal globe: the overall winner gets the big one, and smaller globes go to the season's best in each race format, so one athlete can carry home several.
Q 27Which South Tyrol valley venue, a regular World Cup stop, staged the biathlon at the 2026 Winter Olympics?
Antholz
Antholz: its range lies about 1,600 metres up, usually the highest on the World Cup circuit, so the 2026 Olympic races were run higher than any regular round of the season.
Q 28With which other sport did biathlon share a governing body from 1953 until the 1990s?
Modern pentathlon
Modern pentathlon: the two sports shared one union until biathlon's branch founded its own federation in 1993 and broke away completely in 1998.
Q 29Which skier did Ole Einar Bjørndalen overtake in 2009 for the most World Cup wins in history?
Ingemar Stenmark
Ingemar Stenmark's 86 alpine wins had stood since he retired in 1989; no alpine skier passed them until Mikaela Shiffrin in 2023, fourteen years after the biathlete did.
Q 30At which Winter Olympics did Ole Einar Bjørndalen win all four men's biathlon events?
Salt Lake City 2002
Salt Lake City 2002: he had rehearsed the sweep a year earlier, winning all three races at the Olympic test event on the same tracks.