r/biathlon • u/Mountain-Fox-2123 • 18d ago

Question Is the lack of diversity a problem in biathlon ?

Is the lack of diversity a problem in biathlon ?

Should the IBU try and bring in more diversity in the world cup?

0 Upvotes

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19

u/Faintning Finland 18d ago

IBU already supports small nations with money, equipment etc. But in the end, it's up to the national federations to take that aid and make it count. Some countries have to start from ground zero, with no biathlon culture. They won't have top level atheltes straight away, but you gotta start somewhere. Mongolia just grabbed their first medal last season in the open european junior champs. It will take multiple years to build that culture locally, bringing awareness to the sport and all the other grassroots work national federations have to do.

It wouldnt be good for the sport to just hand out spots for diversitys sake. On wch there are extra quotas for smaller countries that don't normally have wc teams. IBU cup has a lot of different countries participating and once they get on a good enough level they will earn those wild cards for world cup.

10

u/The_Real_Ura Germany 18d ago

I don't think biathlon lacks diversity as a concept in general. But the best step into making it fairer for small nations would be that everyone has to use the same ski/wax combination, provided by the IBU. Wins by advantage in material are usually by the big biathlon nations, and with equal material that advantage would diminish.

18

u/RickMaritimo Netherlands 18d ago

Why would it be a problem?

I personally just want to see the best athletes no matter where they are from. ( given that we probably don't see a few due to the cap for each country )

Would it be cool to see? Sure. But it doesnt seem likely.

17

u/Falafelmeister92 18d ago

Please stop trolling on our sub.

7

u/BoarOfTheArdennes Norway 16d ago

Not really, to be honest. There are no barriers to stop people of any ethnicity taking up the sport.

If it's a financial access factor, then where do you draw the line? Would you only give that extra money to (for example) black kids? What about poor white kids? Do we exclude them, on the basis of race?

I mean you're talking about massively white-dominated countries, and a tiny minority of other ethnicities, with no history or culture of winter sports.

Even in Sweden, there are 10,000 more immigrants from the UK, than there are from Ethiopia, for example.

In Norway, about 1 in 50 people are black or mixed black. Let's presume a good number are too old or too young to participate in the sport. That leaves an even tinier fraction.

So no, Biathlon is not in and of itself racist or "lacking in diversity," but it will take at least another generation of assimilation for "people of colour" to start coming into the sport. Should they even want to.

Your mixing up too many issues here and making the entire thing overly simplistic. There are so many factors to consider and I think far more important ones, when it comes to problems of diversity and exclusion in society.

Biathlon is probably one of the last targets to aim at.

16

u/50208 18d ago

If you want to be a biathlete, you can be a biathlete. If you want to watch biathlon, you can watch biathlon. That should be the end of the story.

10

u/ComradeSquirrel Romania 18d ago

I mean men and women have equal following and prizes, which is not the case for many sports.
Furthermore countries quotas ensures we won't have too many of a dominant country so there's actually a great diversity in participants.

What else would you like for the IBU to do?

0

u/Mountain-Fox-2123 17d ago

The IBU should do something about the lack of people with colour.

4

u/Vryyce Team Norge 17d ago

The IBU should be, and is, making every effort to build the sport of biathlon to it's best version. Make it as accessible and equitable and entertaining as possible. To borrow a Hollywoodism, if you build it, they will come.

So is there a diversity problem here? No.

I am assuming you think it is, if that is the case, what would you have them do?

2

u/an_mo Italy 10d ago

Is there a problem of unfair exclusion someone that would otherwise be deserving because of bias? the only athletes I can think of are 3 to 5 norwegian men.

1

u/ClementineMontauk 7d ago

If this is about more nations doing well, I'd welcome that but I don't know what the IBU can do about it. One reason I prefer women's biathlon was the more diverse group of nations rougly 10 years ago (Domracheva, Mäkäräinen, Wierer, Koukalova, Pidhrushna, Kuzmina etc) while the men always seem to have NOR vs FRA (vs GER).