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.