Nicholas Howe: Sean Doherty’s Game

There’s a hand-grenade practice range on the way to the biathlon nationals in northern Vermont, and every few minutes there’s a short metallic grunt nearby, they’re testing rotary cannons that can fire up to 6,000 rounds a minute. The road ends near a large metal shed with three barrel stoves inside and the atmosphere of a college weekend; a hundred or more people have gathered for the U.S. biathlon championships.

Most of them are working their way through a vexing truth of the sport; there are so few coaches in America that the “Biathlon Bulletin” offers a sort of mail-order tutorial -- shoot ten targets a month during the summer and send them to the U.S. team coach. He’ll return them with a critique, for instance, “Your misses standing were all at four or five o’clock, indicating a trigger control problem or jerking the shot.” Rachel Steer is from Alaska, she just turned 15 and she has not been hardened by the big time, when I asked her for a few words, she says, “Me? Oh gosh -- I’d be honored!”