Olympic Biathlon is Good Zombie Training

Yesterday, as G and I were watching the Olympic coverage on NBC, it occurred to me that the Biathlon is the single most zombie-conscious sport in the games. Think about it. It focuses on two main events - cross-country skiing and shooting. Skiing directly relates to endurance, stamina, and cardio. If you can ski 10 km faster than anyone else, then you can most certainly outrun a zombie. Hell, you can probably even outrun an entire horde with that kind of endurance. The shooting speaks for itself. I mean, these people have to hit five tiny targets practically dead center in order to get credit for the hit. What better practice is there for hitting a zombie in the head with a bullet under tense pressure?

Sure, there are other Olympic events that might be considered useful training when the zombie apocalypse hits. All sports deal with cardio and physical fitness to some degree, but the Biathlon is the only one that also champions shooting a rifle at a tiny bulls-eye both laying down and standing up. There's just nothing else that can top that. Consider this - if you put every single Olympic athlete in a field (minus the snow, even) and gave them a hunting rifle, then let loose a thousand hungry zombies, who would be the most likely to survive? Speed skaters might have the leg power to run pretty far, but then again, if they are short track skaters, they might not have the endurance to go the distance against never-tiring zombies. The majority of figure skaters are pretty short, especially the women, so what are their chances of making it to the front of the pack? Not great, unfortunately.

The distance cross-country skiers are the most likely to get ahead of the group and find shelter, but as far as defense is concerned, it's the Biathlon competitors who have specifically trained to shoot those small targets quickly and with such precision. As long as they had the ammo and the distance, they could easily take out more than a dozen zombies each in a matter of seconds. Therefore, the Olympic gold medalist in the Biathlon is probably one of the safest people in the world when it comes to the zombie apocalypse.

Unfortunately, this news does not bode well for the United States, who has never once won an Olympic medal in Biathlon. It's the only winter sport that the USA has never won a medal in. (Prior to yesterday that was also true of the Nordic combined, but Spillane came through with a silver medal, breaking the record for US Nordic Combined competition.) Does this mean that America will be the least prepared when it comes to the Undead? It's a reality we will hopefully never have to face.