Bates College SCARAB Honors Theses Capstone Projects 5-2021 On Brass and Snow: An Athlete's History of the Sport of Biathlon Brad William Ravenelle Bates College, bravenel@bates.edu Follow this and additional works at: https://scarab.edu/honorstheses Recommended Citation Ravenelle, Brad William, "On Brass and Snow: An Athlete's History of the Sport of Biathlon" (2021).edu/honorstheses/372 This Open Access is brought to you for free and open access by the Capstone Projects at SCARAB. It has been accepted for inclusion in Honors Theses by an authorized administrator of SCARAB. For more information, please contact batesscarab@bates. 1 On Brass and Snow: An Athlete’s History of the Sport of Biathlon An Honors Thesis Presented to The Faculty of the Department of History Bates College In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Arts By Brad Ravenelle Lewiston, Maine May 5, 2021 2 Acknowledgments: I would like to thank all of the family, friends, and advisors who assisted me in this project, everything from the technical side of research and writing to supporting me through the last 14 months of this process.
All of this assistance was invaluable. I would also like to extend a huge thank you to all of those who were willing to participate in surveys and interviews; without all of you, this project would have been impossible. 3 Table of Contents: Introduction 1. Post-Historicism, A Review and Adaptation ----------------------------------------------------------5 3.
Development of Postmodernism------------------------------------------------------------------------ 7 4. Biathlon as the Timeline-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 12 5. Outline----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 15 Chapter 1: What is Biathlon? 1. What is Biathlon? --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 16 2.
The Physical Requirements----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 21 4. Governance----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 27 Chapter 2: The History of Biathlon 1. Early Biathlon History----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 29 3. The Birth of the IBU------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 35 4.
The Development of Biathlon in the United States-------------------------------------------------- 36 Chapter 3: Structural Post-Historicism and Biathlon 1. Structural Post-Historicism----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 41 2. American Culture and Sporting Development------------------------------------------------------- 42 3. The Development of Military Athletics--------------------------------------------------------------- 45 4.
Political Change Via the Olympic Movement------------------------------------------------------- 50 5. Technology and Rifle Availability--------------------------------------------------------------------- 54 6. Economics and Athlete Support------------------------------------------------------------------------ 55 7. The Effects of September 11, 2001-------------------------------------------------------------------- 58 8.
Modern Competition Discipline Changes------------------------------------------------------------ 62 Chapter 4: Perceptual Post-Historicism and Biathlon 1. Perceptual Post-Historicism---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 64 2. Athlete Perceptions of Modern Biathlon-------------------------------------------------------------- 65 3. Potential Causes of Dissonance Among Female U.
Other Explanations for Perceptual Dissonance------------------------------------------------------ 76 Conclusion-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 77 Appendix A--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------82 Appendix B--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------84 References----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------81 4 Introduction Part 1: Introduction In 2011, a few hundred elite athletes, along with their coaches, support staff, sponsors, media, and thousands of fans descended on a small town in northern Maine, situated nearly on the border between the United States and Canada. Over four days of racing, they competed against one another on the ski trails and on the shooting range, and against the bitterly cold temperatures that are commonplace in that part of Maine during the winter. That small town was Fort Kent, Maine, and the event was a IBU biathlon World Cup. From the summer of 2016 through the spring of 2017, I lived, trained, and raced on the very same trails and facility that only 6 years prior had played host to the best biathletes the world had to offer as a member of the Outdoor Sport Institute post-graduate racing team.
While not a biathlete myself (I was a part of the cross-country team), all of those I lived and trained with on a daily basis were biathletes and so I became exposed to many of the intricacies of the sport. While I learned a great deal about the technical side of the modern sport, I had only a rudimentary understanding of where the sport came from and how it got to the point it did; therefore, when it came time to select a thesis topic, it seemed a natural fit between a subject with significant historical capital and my own personal interests. In this thesis, I will argue that the sport of biathlon (particularly in the United States) has undergone what I refer to as a Post-Historical transition, moving from all but complete dependence on military patronage to a point at which the sport has almost fully separated itself from those roots. To do so, I observe changes at both the structural and perceptual levels.
Structural transitions include those of management, governance, and competition design and typically are influenced by outside forces including technology, politics, economics, and culture. 5 Perceptual transitions involve how the athletes themselves view their place in the historical timeline and how they identify themselves. Crucially, perceptual transitions rely on a postmodernist understanding of the production of history, as it requires those actively involved in the sport to create a history rooted in their own understandings of the past and their place rather than an Olympian master narrative of that history. It is important to remember that I as the author can only write with the intention to understand these voices as best I can, not posit certainty in my interpretations, as is the case with any source.
As these are living sources of perception and memory, it is even more important to be careful not to make assumptions that would harm, damage, or demean those who were willing to share a piece of themselves with me in the creation of this project; I do my best here to explain and interpret in good faith and without malice, but simply to try to understand these perceptions that I have been granted access to help to shape the development of biathlon along its continuum. Part 2: Post-Historicism: A Review and Adaptation One term I will employ with frequency in this paper is “Post-History,” which I use in reference particularly to the nature of biathlon at a given point along its timeline. Essentially, Post-Historical biathlon is post-military biathlon; it is the point at which biathlon could continue to exist relatively unscathed if the institution of the national military were to vanish, completely and in an instant. Obviously, this is theoretical as the idea of the national military appears in no way close to complete and utter collapse, but it does demonstrate the historical motion of the sport and its repercussions.
A Post-Historical context is created in two spaces: structurally (in the design and execution of the institution) and in individual perceptions of those involved and how they place themselves within the institution’s present and past. This is of particular importance in understanding how a postmodernist conception of history has allowed for non- 6 academic individuals to create histories of their own, which in turn allow us to understand the greater development of biathlon as it applies to military athletics. This theory is based on the concept of Post-Historicism created by Francis Fukuyama so I provide a brief description of its origins below, but I utilize the term primarily for a different purpose and in a different context, using it as a framework rather than an exact model. The theory of Post-Historicism was first raised by political scientist Francis Fukuyama in his book The End of History and the Last Man, published in 1992.
Like postmodernists, Fukuyama is convinced that the past was experienced in the context of dramatic ideological confrontations in a way that the present is not; Fukuyama however believed the contest to have been “won,” while traditional postmodernists believed that the contest had always been a matter of optics rather than practicalities.1 He supported these claims by arguing that by the end of the twentieth century the liberal democratic system of social and political governance remained unchallenged by any other alternative world order. The inflection points of this conquest by liberal democracy were in 1945 and 1989, the defeat of Nazism by the Allies and the fall of the Soviet Union and with it, Communism.2 This does not mean that Fukuyama makes the argument that all things are right in the world, or that the boons of liberal democracy have been recognized universally; what it means, is that political fascism or communism do not add up to an alternative world order that could supplant liberalism and democracy in providing a superior society. According to Fukuyama, humanity has ceased to look for what might come after democracy and capitalism, and any changes to the system are just adjustments and improvements to the existing order.3 That said, the political particularities of Fukuyama’s theory are relatively insignificant in the context of this paper; what 1 Peter Fritzsche, “Reviewed Works: The End of History and the Last Man by Francis Fukuyama,” The American Historical Review, Vol. 2 Fritzsche, “Reviewed Works: The End of History and the Last Man,” 817.
3 Fritzsche, “Reviewed Works: The End of History and the Last Man,” 817. 7 matters more is the principle of a point at which the model of an institution reaches effective hegemony. This is the point where no alternative model exists to challenge it or present an alternative structure, with an emphasis on specific inflection points and only superficial present change. I will demonstrate that this has become the case with biathlon.
Part 3: The Development of Postmodernism The discipline of history has long been present in a litany of forms: oral, written, drawn, enacted, or some combination of all of these and more. Though some strict postmodernists might disagree, there is largely a consensus that the past happened; however, “history” does not happen; it is a created thing, built from the foundations of what we can capture from the past. In her book Thinking About History, Sara Maza writes, “…the new cultural history started reading sources as patterns of words and stories as forms of ‘fiction’ in the broadest sense, rather than documentary evidence.”4 In the nineteenth century, the discipline of history was much more akin to that of the sciences; it was believed that there was a single, unconditional truth and it was the responsibility of the historian to uncover that truth, without distortion from personal bias or beliefs.5 At the time, the ranks of academia were largely homogeneous. Almost all scholars in major American and European universities were white men of a western European heritage, in both their ancestry and ideas.
While some Jewish individuals and some women earned doctoral degrees, most were either forced to remain loyal to the majority or sent to positions as specialized institutions; for example, most women who received their doctorates were sent to teach at all-female colleges.6 4 Sarah Maza, “Chapter 6: Facts or Fictions?” in Thinking About History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017), 211. 5 Maza, “Facts or Fictions?” 201. 6 Maza, “Facts or Fictions?” 202. 8 As such, the concepts of a “value-free and dispassionate” approach to history was able to remain largely unchallenged in the majority of major academic institutions.7 The first significant push back against the objective model of history came on the heels of major changes in the make-up of the academy itself.
Following World War II, the education benefits provided by the G. Bill and the increase in young people due to the post-war baby boom increase both the number of individuals attaining higher education and the demand for qualified individuals to teach at that level. Accordingly, the number of doctorates issued rose significantly, from around 150 annually in the 1930s to over one thousand per year in the 1960s.8 This increase also brought about an increase in scholars from various socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds that were more aware of the experiences of the non-elite and began to write what Maza refers to as “histories from below” or works that focused on class-based issues such as labor history, slavery, and working-class life.9 However, despite their emphasis on a different set of topics, this new class of historical scholars did little to challenge the existing paradigm of empiricism within the discipline. The “truths” they focused on were different, but they were still viewed as being objective truth.