Under the Surface: The Visual Science Behind Biathlon Shooting

The reason I’m in Finland this week - and heading to the U.S. next - is because I’m working with their national biathlon teams to help them better understand the visual processes underlying shooting performance, and how these processes are impacted by fatigue.

This project is part of a research initiative designed not only to advance scientific knowledge in this area, but also to provide practical, evidence-based feedback to athletes and coaches to support performance gains on the course and at the range.

With only limited time available with each athlete, it was essential to focus on the visual skills most relevant to biathlon shooting. But how do we determine what those are?

One approach could be to rely on my own two decades of experience as a sports vision coach and researcher - identifying skills I believe are important based on similar target-based sports. However, as I’m certainly not a biathlon expert, this method has its limitations. Although I conducted a thorough performance analysis of the sport to guide my hypotheses, I knew there was a more effective way to pinpoint key visual demands: ask the experts themselves.

To do this, I used the questionnaire I originally designed and validated in field hockey, adapting it for biathlon (link to scientific paper in previous blog). This allowed me to collect the insights of over 50 athletes and coaches. Their responses were illuminating: the visual skills most frequently cited as important for shooting included Static Visual Acuity, Peripheral Awareness, Visual Concentration, and Eye-Hand Coordination.

This was a strong foundation - but working with international-level athletes meant I needed to dig deeper. I convened a focus group of elite biathlon coaches to gather more targeted insights. While there was significant agreement with the athlete responses, the coaches also emphasised Coincidence Anticipation, Contrast Sensitivity, and Visual Memory as key to high-level performance.

And of course, I couldn’t resist contributing a few additional ideas of my own. Based on my analysis of the shooting task, I suggested including Gaze Stability and Saccadic Eye Movements, which I believe may also play a meaningful role in biathlon performance.

So these are the visual skills we’re now testing - alongside several key components of shooting performance. Athletes are also being re-tested under conditions of extreme fatigue, to see how well these visual abilities hold up when physical exhaustion sets in. This is a particularly under-researched area, yet in the real-world demands of biathlon (and many other sports), athletes are expected to coordinate visual, motor, and psychological systems while under intense physical strain.

Closing Thoughts

What makes this research exciting isn’t just identifying which visual skills are important - it’s exploring how those skills interact with fatigue, pressure, and elite performance. If we can better understand how visual systems hold up (or break down) under stress, we can begin to tailor training that prepares athletes not just for ideal conditions, but for the real ones. And that could be the difference between a missed target and a podium finish.