Specifically, I find it amazing that an American has never won gold in Olympic Biathlon. Given that gold medals have been won by Americans in cross country skiing, and given that rifle marksmanship is a widely practiced American discipline, you would think that Olympic Biathlon would have as many Americans winning gold as Scandinavians or Russians.
Maybe the caliber has something to do with it. .22LR seems rather wimpy as a test of skill and stamina in biathlon. Maybe if the rifle caliber standard was changed to .308 Winchester or .30-06 Springfield the Americans would get serious. .300 Remington Ultra Magnum seems popular with a lot of young guys around here, and nobody sights rifles at 50 yards around here either. I sight my hunting rifles in at 200 yards, and even my .25 cal PCP air rifle is sighted in at 60 yards. 50 yards/meters with a rifle firearm is BS as far as marksmanship goes. The closest range that the sights adjust to on an old Swedish mauser is 300 meters, from the late 19th century/early 20th century, because my brother had one. Given that Biathlon is rooted in military ski competition, what in the world are biathlon athletes doing shooting .22LR rifles at 50 meters??? No military in the world shoots .22LR sighted at 50 meters. Part of the skill would be to handle a heavy recoiling military caliber just as was originally intended. These days, it would be more realistic to dump 30 rounds into a target in 15 seconds with an AR-15, and the target would be timed to 15 seconds where it pops up then pops down at the end of 15 seconds. On top of that, the contestants would have to hump about a half-dozen magazines loaded with 30 rounds of ammo each around the race course. That would be a better test of stamina and marksmanship. It would be a lot more interesting as well.
At the very least, make the biathlon competitors go to classic 6.5x55mm Swedish Mauser bolt rifles and make the minimum target distance 300 meters because that is the minimum sighting distance of a Swedish Mauser. Additional targets should go out to 600 meters or so, because the rifles are designed for those distances. Wind reading comes into play and that is part of the biathlon skill set, just as it was for military training and biathlon was born in military ski competition and it should go back to its roots and get its cajones back into the competition.
.22LR and 50 meters is so outrageously wimpy that I suspect THAT is why Americans give it about zero interest in the Olympic Games. Let's put some cajones back into biathlon as the original military ski competition intended, and we might get a really interesting Olympic sport. Otherwise, the future of biathlon might as well use Daisy BB guns. The modern biathlon rifles look like some kind of Buck Rogers design, but it does not hide the fact they are wimpy .22LR rifles. No amount of hi-tech wizardry hides the fact they are worthless rifles for about any practical purpose a person might want a rifle for except for skiing in ski tight clothing with a Buck Rogers looking pea shooter.