The sport of biathlon combines intense, all-out cross-country ski efforts with precise, steady rifle marksmanship - and there's a club in California teaching young athletes.

Biathlon combines two sports – cross-country skiing and shooting – into one race. The biathlon first made its debut 66 years ago in the 1960 Winter Olympics at the renamed Palisades Tahoe in Olympic Valley near Lake Tahoe. This year, the Winter Olympic biathlon games will be held in Antholz (Anterselva), Italy.

The Winter Games are often romanticized as a pure test of human limits, but in reality, they are a bureaucratic minefield where the rulebook matters as much as the athlete. Behind every record-breaking jump or lightning-fast run lies a dense web of regulations governing everything from fabric tension to invisible chemical residue.

Here is how the Biathlon works, including its rules, scoring and history in the Olympics.

ANTERSELVA, Italy (AP) — Johan-Olav Botn of Norway shot perfectly in his Olympic debut to secure the gold medal in the men’s 20-kilometer individual biathlon at the Milan Cortina Winter Games on Tuesday.

The Winter Olympics bring sports we barely see outside of these few weeks. Many of them look exciting. Some of them look like a bad idea for normal people. A lot of these events mix speed, ice, height,

TMJ4's Ashley Washburn tries cross-country skiing in another edition of 'Testing the Torch' at the Ariens Nordic Center in Brillion, which serves as a U.S. Biathlon National Training Center.

One biathlete admitted infidelity. Another won gold months after stealing her teammate's credit card. It's been a week at Olympic biathlon.