The 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea are right around the corner! That means it's time to watch sports you might not have seen in four years. To help you feel at least a little more informed—either to impress your friends or fake your way through a conversation with an actual expert—SI will be providing rookie's guides to each of the 15 sports. These will be published daily, Monday through Friday, from December 4-22. No Olympic sport fits better within the seminal action scene of a James Bond movie than biathlon, which blends two brutally simple disciplines into a thrilling race format that makes for one of the most unique spectator experiences of the Winter Games. The one drawback? It’s unlike any race the common American sports fan may be familiar with, so the rules take some getting used to. With a few minutes of prep work, you too can live and die with the drama in all 12 biathlon events on the Olympic schedule.Biathlon is the combination of two sports, cross-country skiing and shooting, into one race. Athletes are rewarded for their power and endurance as racers and their composure and accuracy as marksmen. In PyeongChang, a total of 230 athletes will qualify, with a quota of spots awarded to competing nations based on the men’s and women’s IBU World Cup Nations Cup final standings at the end of the 2016-17 season. The U.S. will be sending five men and five women; the highest-ranking nations receive six spots each.In all formats, athletes race around a closed course, stopping at set intervals to hit five targets 50 meters away. For every target missed, the athlete takes on either a distance penalty (one lap around a 150 meter loop, branched off from the larger race course) or a time penalty (one minute added onto his or her total time), depending on the format.

Why is it worth my time?

The drama of biathlon as a spectator sport is centered around the shooting range, where the anxiety-inducing knowledge that each missed shot physically lengthens the course for the competitor keeps the crowd on edge. And while cross-country skiing and shooting on their own are difficult enough to master individually, they are uniquely difficult to combine. Go to your local golf course and try to sprint from the tee to the green on the longest hole and then get enough control of your breathing and your body to drain five consecutive eight-foot putts. (Note: Maybe double-check your membership agreement before trying this experiment out.) The best biathletes have a preternatural feel for their own heart rate and stamina, going from maximum cardiovascular exertion to complete internal stillness in a matter of seconds, as they coast into position for the shooting portion of the race.And if you are by chance going to PyeongChang, it’s definitely worth dropping by the Alpensia Biathlon Center to take a race in firsthand. The cheers from the stadium seating at every on-target shot from one of the home country’s biathletes are pretty cool:What are the different formats? There are five race formats at the Olympics that hand out a total of 12 gold medals: five each for men’s and women’s events, and two more in mixed events. A quick primer on each format. The Individual (20km for men, 15 for women) format works like a staggered time trial, where competitors (89 men and 85 women in Sochi) start in 30-second intervals and compete for the best finish time. They go through four rounds of shooting in which they must hit five targets with five bullets, alternating between a prone position and a standing one each round. The Sprint (10km for men, 7.5 for women) features an identical format but exactly half the distance and shooting obligations as the individual format.In the Pursuit format (12.5km for men, 10 km for women), biathletes begin the race separated by their order and time intervals of finish in the sprint, and the first racer to cross the finish line wins. The stakes are particularly high because only the top finishers qualify for the Mass Start.

In the Mass Start (15km for men, 12.5km for women), all contestants start the event at the same time. For congestion reasons, only the 30 fastest racers from the sprint get to participate in the Mass Start.There are also Men’s, Women’s and Mixed Relay events, in which four biathletes—women first, then the men—complete the same course. The Single Mixed Relay, held between teams of one male and one female biathlete that complete two laps in total instead of four, is new to the 2018 Games.

What kind of guns are those?

Those are .22 caliber small-bore rifles, painted in country colors, and the biathletes have to ski the entire race with them strapped to their backs. This makes for some of the gentler celebratory embraces at the finish line you’ll see in PyeongChang.

Who are the favorites?

Luckily for you, the novice biathlon fan, your first exposure to the sport doubles as a coronation for the sport’s G.O.A.T. Norway’s Ole Einar Bjoerndalen is the most decorated Winter Olympian ever with 13 total medals, including eight golds. He will be competing in his seventh Games in PyeonChang, trying to add to his record count at age 44. Bjoerndalen rarely misses his mark and has brought an unprecedented level of training to the sport’s highest level, even for his native Norway, which has historically dominated the sport. Frenchman Martin Fourcade grew up watching Bjoerndalen and is now out to equal him, needing just two Games to earn more medals than any other French Winter Olympian. Germany and Russia also have fielded strong teams in recent Olympic cycles.Is the U.S. any good? Not yet! No American biathlete has ever medaled at the Olympics, and Team USA came away from the 2014 Games in Sochi without a single individual top-10 finish. This cycle’s best hope is 31-year-old Susan Dunklee, who earned a silver medal in the mass start at the 2017 world championships, becoming the first American woman ever to medal at that level. Lowell Bailey, the first athlete to qualify for the 2018 U.S. Olympic Team in any sport, also took gold in the 20-kilometer individual race at this year’s worlds. But in terms of the sport’s developmental infrastructure, the U.S. lags far behind northern European nations like Norway and Russia that are perennial contenders. Team USA’s inclination to find good skiers who can be taught to shoot over a period of several years is a slow-burning process that to date hasn’t done enough to make up the gap between them and the elite nations, whose children grow up on skis.Russian athletes won 22 Olympic medals at the 2014 Winter Games, but after an unprecedented ruling by the International Olympic Committee, they will not take home any at the upcoming 2018 Olympic Games. The IOC ruled on Tuesday that the Russian Federation will be barred from the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang. Russia hosted the last Winter Games in Sochi in 2014, an event where they finished fourth in the medal race. But a massive doping scandal swallowed the Russians and many speculated that a harsh punishment could keep them out of the games. On Tuesday, that punishment came down. Russia will not be allowed to participate, fly its flag, play its anthem or send athletes to the next Winter Games. The ruling is devastating for athletes of the nation, and some of the sports like hockey, which already won’t see NHL players on its international rosters. There appears to be an avenue for Russian athletes to compete in the games under the Olympic banner if they petition and have a rigorous, clean drug testing history, but the New York Times said some sports Russians had previous dominated like biathlon and cross-country skiing could be wiped out altogether. The punishment stems from a massive, state-run doping ring the Russian government carried out. In an elaborate overnight operation at the 2014 Sochi Games, a team assembled by Russia’s sports ministry tampered with more than 100 urine samples to conceal evidence of top athletes’ steroid use throughout the course of competition. More than two dozen Russian athletes have been disqualified from the Sochi standings as a result, and Olympic officials are still sorting through the tainted results and rescinding medals. Though some were skeptical that the IOC would issue such a harsh punishment, at appears that the decision was pretty easy for the committee to make. Russia is not welcome at the 2018 Winter Olympics: the flag, national anthem and team uniforms along with their top sport officials have all been banned by the International Olympic Committee. But many of their athletes, if proven to be free of performance enhancing drugs, will be allowed to compete in South Korea wearing OAR uniforms, a new acronym for Olympic Athlete from Russia. That compromise — along with a $15 million (U.S.) fine to “build the capacity and integrity of the global anti-doping system” — is how the IOC decided to punish Russia for its state-run doping program that undermined the results from the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, Russia, and the 2012 Summer Games in London. IOC president Thomas Bach announced the decision from Lausanne, Switzerland, on Tuesday following a meeting where the executive board was handed yet more evidence that Russia spent years systemically manipulating the anti-doping system and reporting positive samples as negative ones. This latest report, by Samuel Schmid, the former president of Switzerland, “clearly lays out an unprecedented attack on the integrity of the Olympic Games and sport,” Bach said. Athlete reaction to the IOC’s solution was mixed.Some wanted a full ban while others thought this hit the mark by punishing those responsible for the doping scheme and leaving the door open for athletes who are clean to compete at February’s Pyeonchang Games. But the overwhelming reaction was one of surprise that the IOC had gone so far.I did not have that much faith in the IOC so I’m really happy that they proved me wrong,” said Canadian biathlete Rosanna Crawford. Russia’s massive scheme to dope its athletes and cover it up was first brought to light by a German journalist in December 2014 — 10 months after the Sochi Olympics.

Other more detailed and damming investigations followed, including a report by Canadian law professor Richard McLaren, appointed by the World Anti-Doping Agency, which found the scheme covered 30 sports and tainted Russian results between 2012 and 2015. Throughout those revelations, the IOC twisted itself into knots trying to find a way to appease an outraged sporting community while still keeping Russia happy and its athletes competing. At last summer’s Rio Olympics — their first chance to make a strong statement — they dumped the problem into the laps of the individual sport federations to decide which Russian athletes could compete. Hundreds of Russian athletes landed in Rio waving their national flag and they won 56 medals.“After all the softball approaches the IOC has had up until this point, it’s nice that they’re actually showing some willingness to stand up for fairness,” said Tristan Walker, part of Canada’s luge relay team that finished fourth in Sochi behind a Russian team that won silver.“There’s a long way to go for the Olympics to come back to what the Olympics should be about and that’s the world coming together and celebrating differences and competition.”Russian President Vladimir Putin has previously said it would be humiliating for his country to compete without its national symbols and Russia could refuse this offer and boycott the Games. But, assuming it stands, it will be up to a pre-Games testing panel to decide which Russian athletes will be allowed to compete based on criteria that includes anti-doping measures. Biathlon, a challenging mix of cross-country skiing and shooting, is a huge sport in Russia with a deep pool of athletes, so Crawford expects to find a full contingent of Russians, in the OAR uniform, on the start line in Pyeongchang.“There are athletes who are cheating from many different countries but when it’s a state-sponsored thing it’s just so much more mind blowing,” she said.“The (Russian athletes) probably have no choice if they want to or not, either they dope and compete or they don’t dope and they don’t get to follow their dreams.”IOC member and Swiss lawyer Denis Oswald has been verifying the evidence in McLaren’s report to bring cases against individual Russian athletes and, so far, 25 athletes from Sochi have been disqualified, banned from the Olympics for life, and 11 medals stripped. It’s easy to see the effect cheating athletes have when the medal table turns into a game of musical chairs but the trickle down effect is far greater than that. In Canada, sport funding is often based on top-six or top-eight finishes and an athlete could miss their chance at a podium shot by being left out of the final with a cheating athlete ahead of them. And, in some biathlon races, even a top-60 means getting another race at the Olympics, Crawford said. The Canadian men’s biathlon relay team was seventh in Sochi — one more spot would have meant a big boost in funding — and there’s still a Russian team with the gold medal. The women’s relay, which Crawford was part of, has already moved to seventh after the Russian team was stripped of their silver medal for a doping violation. She hasn’t gone back to do the math in all five of her Olympic events in Sochi or her many World Cup results.“That would just be like torturing yourself.”And her bigger concern beyond the results is that doping by anyone just adds to public cynicism around sport.“So many people believe that nobody is clean in sport . . . if one person is cheating then everyone must be cheating, so that’s really a bummer, too,” she said.“But I love biathlon. I don’t do it for the money, I don’t do it for the fame, I do it because I love this sport so much. I believe everybody should be doing it clean and working as hard as we do,” she said, from Austria, where she’s preparing to compete in the second World Cup of the season.“It will be interesting to be on the shooting range tomorrow morning and see the Russian athletes.”Laura Dahlmeier’s stunning 2017 performance may well be the prelude to multiple victories at PyeongChang 2018. The German world number one was in a class of her own throughout the year, becoming the first female biathlete to win five gold medals at the IBU World Championships and claiming the overall IBU World Cup title.“It’s important to go back to a place where you’ve had a good feeling,” said Dahlmeier, speaking in March 2017 at the Alpensia Biathlon Centre, where she laid down a marker for PyeongChang 2018 by winning the sprint and the pursuit without missing a single shot.The German’s two victories tightened her grip on the IBU World Cup and she made the large crystal globe hers a week later, recording her tenth victory of the season in the pursuit in Kontiolahti (FIN). Dahlmeier also pocketed small crystal globes for the individual and the pursuit, completing a treble that marked her out as her country’s successor to the great Magdalena Neuner, who retired in 2012 after claiming a third overall World Cup title. The German tasted yet more success at the 2017 IBU World Championships in Hochfilzen (AUT), becoming the first biathlete to win five golds at a single worlds. Victorious in the mixed relay, pursuit, women’s relay, individual and mass start races, she was only denied a clean sweep by Gabriela Koukalova of the Czech Republic, who beat her to the line in the sprint.Having won five medals in Oslo-Holmenkollen a year before – a haul that included her maiden individual gold, in the pursuit – Dahlmeier is now the proud owner of 13 world championship medals in total, seven of them gold.“It hasn’t sunk in yet,” she said after collecting her mass start gold in Hochfilzen. “It’s like a dream come true. I try to give my best in every race. The world championships were really great. It’s amazing to win five golds and a silver and it’s also the 11th medal in a row. I wasn’t expecting it.”Born in Garmisch-Partenkirchen on 22 August 1993, the petite Dahlmeier is blessed with exceptional stamina. She took up cross-country skiing at the age of seven, dividing her time with Alpine skiing over the next two years before deciding to devote herself exclusively to biathlon.Dahlmeier scored a number of significant wins in her teenage years, not least at the European Youth Olympic Winter Festival in Liberec (CZE) in 2011, where she won gold in all three races on the card (10km individual, 6km sprint and the mixed relay). She left school that year and joined the national customs service club, which allowed her to focus all her energies on biathlon. The German was 19 when she made her IBU World Cup debut in the 2012/13 season. That same winter, she won three medals at the Junior World Championships in Obertilliach (AUT), in the individual, sprint, and relay events. Her first taste of the Olympics was at Sochi 2014, which she described as a “brilliant” experience, recording a best performance of 13th in the individual.

In Neuner’s ski tracks. A keen hiker and climber in her free time, Dahlmeier very quickly followed in the tracks of Neuner, the winner of two Olympic gold medals and 12 world championship golds before her retirement at the age of 25. The Garmisch-born biathlete scored her first World Cup win in February 2015, in the sprint at Nové Město na Moravě (CZE). Building on that success, she won races in all formats before becoming world No.1 at the age of 23, on the back of her outstanding 2016/17 season. Dahlmeier’s power on skis and her accuracy with the rifle make her the perfect anchor in relay races, proved throughout that glorious campaign. Even when she began her leg with a deficit to make up or missed a shot, she always managed to overtake her rivals, ensuring that her team went unbeaten all season. The German also knows when to conserve her energy and chose to sit out the World Cup meet on home snow in Oberhof in early January 2017. That deserved breather did not stop her from winning the crystal globe for the individual, an event in which she went unbeaten all winter. Laura Dahlmeier was unable to compete in the first part of the 2017-2018 World Cup in Östersund because of a cold. But that just gave her more time to get into her stride, starting with a relay victory in Hochfllzen, again skiing the final leg, followed by all the steps of the podium at Le Grand-Bornand (France) from 14 to 16 December, just before the start of the Olympic year: second in the sprint, first in the pursuit and third in the mass start. A build-up leading straight to the Olympic biathlon stadium in Alpensia as of 10 February, where she is set to be one of the stars of these 2018 Winter Games. She will have a chance in all six of her events, and if she shows the same form in the Republic of Korea that she did in 2017, she will be unbeatable.

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