1960 Winter Olympics / Biathlon

Biathlon at the 1960 Winter Olympics
information
venue	Tahoma
Competition venue	McKinney Creek Stadium
Nations	9
Athletes	30 (30 )
date	February 21, 1960
decisions	1
← St. Moritz 1948 Innsbruck 1964 →

A biathlon competition was held for the first time at the VIII Olympic Games in Squaw Valley in 1960 . After the military patrol run was on the program as a demonstration competition with different rules at previous winter games , there was now a discipline, the competition over 20 km. Like today, the individual competition was shot four times, but with large-caliber weapons . The distance to the targets gradually decreased from one shooting to the next and was between 200 meters at the beginning and 100 meters at the end. Missed shots were punished with two penalty minutes.

There were hardly any spectators, v. a. Officials, supervisors and journalists. The sport was controversial as an Olympic competition in the 1960s and the members of the IOC only voted with a narrow majority in the following year for biathlon to remain in the program of the Winter Games. But even in 1964 the situation improved only slightly.

Medal table

space	country				total
1	Sweden	1	-	-	1
2	Finland	-	1	-	1
3	Soviet Union	-	-	1	1

Single 20 km

space	country	athlete	Running time (h)	error	Total time (h)
1	SWE	Klas Lestander	1: 33: 21.6	00	1: 33: 21.6
2	FIN	Antti Tyrväinen	1: 29: 27.7	02	1: 33: 27.7
3	URS	Alexander Privalov	1: 28.54.2	03	1: 34: 54.2
4th	URS	Vladimir Melanin	1: 27: 42.4	04th	1: 35: 42.4
5	URS	Valentin Pschenitsyn	1: 30: 45.8	03	1: 36: 45.8
6th	URS	Dmitri Sokolov	1: 28: 16.7	05	1: 38: 16.7
7th	NOR	Ola Wærhaug	1: 36: 35.8	01	1: 38: 35.8
8th	FIN	Martti Meinilä	1: 29: 17.0	05	1: 39: 17.0
9	EUA	Cuno Werner	1: 29: 33.8	06th	1: 41: 33.8
10	NOR	Henry Hermansen	1: 34: 20.1	04th	1: 42: 20.1
11	NOR	Jon Istad	1: 36: 53.5	04th	1: 44: 53.5
12	SWE	Days Lundin	1: 33: 56.3	06th	1: 45: 56.3
13	EUA	Herbert Kirchner	1: 38: 35.6	04th	1: 46: 35.6
14th	United States	John Burritt	1: 36: 36.8	05	1: 46: 36.8
15th	FIN	Eero Laine	1: 33: 28.3	07th	1: 47: 28.3
16	SWE	Sven Agge	1: 30: 21.7	09	1: 48: 21.7
17th	EUA	Horst Nickel	1: 32: 28.9	08th	1: 48: 28.9
18th	FIN	Pentti Taskinen	1: 36: 29.7	07th	1: 50: 29.7
19th	SWE	Adolf Wiklund	1: 30: 07.8	12	1: 54: 07.8
20th	EUA	Kurt Hinze	1: 36: 36.5	09	1: 54: 36.5
21st	United States	Richard Mize	1: 33: 56.2	11	1: 55: 56.2
22nd	FRA	René Mercier	1: 26: 13.2	15th	1: 56: 13.2
23	United States	Gustav Hanson	1: 40: 06.2	09	1: 58: 06.2
24	United States	Larry Damon	1: 33: 38.2	13	1: 59: 38.2
25th	FRA	Victor Arbez	1: 25: 58.4	16	2: 01: 58.4
26th	HUN	Pál Sajgó	1: 34: 27.3	14th	2: 02: 27.3
27	FRA	Gilbert Mercier	1: 29: 16.6	17th	2: 03: 16.6
28	FRA	Paul Romand	1: 28: 48.4	18th	2: 04: 48.4
29	GBR	John Moore	1: 40: 50.8	14th	2: 08: 50.8
30th	GBR	Norman Shutt	1: 45: 36.5	13	2: 11: 36.5

Date: February 21, 1960, 8:00 a.m.

The height difference between the highest and the lowest point was 240 m. The four shooting ranges were after 6.5, 9.5, 12.5 and 15 km. At the first stand a target with 25 cm from 200 m, then one with 30 cm from 250 m, one with 20 cm from 150 m and one with 30 cm from 100 m had to be hit. The first three shoots were allowed to be performed lying down or standing up, with all participants doing this lying down. The last was to be done standing. It is the then leading Priwalow negotiated six penalty minutes, which he was overtaken by Lestander and Tyrväinen. Just one less miss and he would have won gold. As a result, the Soviets, after their superiority at last year's World Cup, suffered a disappointment, even though they offered the best team performance.

Lestander said he was in good shape and had also made progress as a shooter in the past few months, so he entered the race with optimism. There are better runners than him, but what good is it to rush off on the cross-country ski run if a shooting error results in a 2-minute time penalty. This tactic was also endorsed by silver winner Tyrväinen, who admitted that he was too quick to shoot; better he should have hesitated a few seconds, because then no shot would have missed.

Web links

• Biathlon at the 1960 Winter Olympics in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )
• Official report of the 1960 Winter Olympics (PDF; 18.4 MB)
• February 21, 1960 - Biathlon becomes an Olympic discipline for the first time on wdr.de/stichtag, accessed on March 21, 2017

Individual evidence

1. ↑ February 21, 1960 - Biathlon becomes an Olympic discipline for the first time on wdr.de/stichtag. Retrieved March 21, 2017
2. ↑ The development is described in great detail and with a lot of information in the Wikipedia article 1964 .
3. ↑ "The Swede Klas Lestander winner in biathlon". In: Sport Zürich, February 22, 1960, p. 7.
4. ^ "Lestander on his biathlon victory". In: Sport Zürich, February 24, 1960, p. 4.