what happens if you miss a shot in biathlon

February 14, 2026

If you miss a shot in biathlon, you don’t get disqualified – you get punished with time or extra skiing, and that’s often what decides the race.

Quick Scoop

In modern biathlon, every shooting stage has 5 targets, and each miss triggers a penalty.

Depending on the race format, that penalty works in two main ways.

1. Penalty loop (most common)

In sprint, pursuit, mass start, and relays, a miss usually means:

You must ski a 150 m penalty loop for each missed target.

You do the loops immediately after leaving the shooting range, before rejoining the main course.

For top athletes, each loop costs roughly 20–30 seconds, depending on snow and weather.

So, missing 3 out of 5 targets could mean three full laps of that short loop, which can completely change your position.

2. Added time (classic “individual” race)

In the individual race format (the long one):

There is no penalty loop.

Instead, a fixed time penalty (typically 1 minute) is added to your total time for every missed target.

This makes clean shooting incredibly valuable, sometimes even more than raw skiing speed.

One miss here often matters more than a miss in a penalty‑loop race because a whole minute is very hard to “ski back.”

3. Relay twist: spare rounds

Relays have a small twist that changes what “missing” means in practice:

Each athlete still faces 5 targets per shooting, but has up to 3 extra “spare” rounds to load manually.

If, after using all 8 shots, there are still targets left standing, the skier must ski one 150 m loop per remaining miss.

Teams can survive one or two misses by using spares, but big miss streaks still send them to the loop.

This is why relay shooting looks more chaotic: reloading, trying to avoid those penalty loops at all costs.

4. What it means in a race

A missed shot doesn’t end your day, but:

It costs valuable time and energy in extra skiing or time penalties.

Multiple misses can drop a favorite from medal contention very quickly.

Tactics matter: some athletes ski slightly slower into the range to steady their shooting , because five hits can be faster overall than skiing all‑out and doing loops.

An example: in a sprint, Athlete A misses 2 targets, skis two penalty loops (~40–60 seconds), while Athlete B shoots clean but skis a bit slower; Athlete B can easily finish ahead despite being weaker on the skis.

TL;DR: Miss a shot in biathlon and you pay with either extra skiing (150 m penalty loops) or added time (often 1 minute per miss), depending on the event format.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.