By Mike Wise
Tuesday, February 14, 2006

CESANO, Italy -- I am at the women's biathlon today because I am a lonely male sportswriter in a room full of female colleagues and the only principessa who speaks English in this godforsaken mountain town rejected my advances like Mutombo about an hour ago.

Which is why, being a progressive, non-misogynistic sort of columnist, I am now interviewing heat-packing women on skis.

"I don't understand why we don't like this sport more," said Alaskan Jay Hakkinen, our best men's biathlon hope. "Woman on skis in tights. Guns. This should be our kind of sport."

The women ski like mad and empty four magazines each filled with five bullets during the race, twice aiming at targets while lying down and twice aiming while standing up. Their heart rate fluctuates wildly between the starts and stops.

The combination of stamina and marksmanship has been compared to trying to thread a needle after running a marathon.

Yes, the biathletes had a response ready for questions about the Vice President Cheney hunting accident and whether such a thing could happen in their sport. "We're very safe with our equipment," said American Lanny Barnes. "We don't have 'accidents.' "

Lanny was carrying a 22-caliber Anschutz on her back, which she said was not loaded. So was Norwegian Gunn Margit Andreassen, her blond pigtails hanging over the warm pewter barrel. She also said her chamber was empty. Still, just standing next to a woman with a weapon is intoxicating. It has this dangerous, hit-on-or-miss quality to it. There's no gray area. Kind of like being next to the vice president.

It just so happens that many of the sport's best European stars are indeed attractive, leading to an intriguing gender role reversal. Male fans actually plead with their female athletic heroines, rather than the tired, old "Marry me A-Rod" back home.

Take Monday, the five slovenly German youth standing sentry over a banner that read, " Uschi: Wir Wohlen Ein Kind Von Dir ."

"Uschi, We Want A Child From You."

Ooooo-sheee. Ah, the name alone invokes danger, adventure, perhaps a clandestine romance on a gondola. I'm not saying I feel that way about Uschi Disl, the biggest biathlon star of all. But some people might. Uschi makes more than $1 million per season, mostly through product sponsors. Fortunately for Uschi, she is dating a Norwegian ski technician and not one of the troubled youth holding the sign.

In Europe, Uschi has a fan club Web site in which she peers back from a photo in a sort of playful, inviting way -- as if Uschi would like you to join her for a day of skiing, cocoa, hand warmers and sawed-off shotgun blasts in the woods and, well, again, I'm not saying I feel that way; some people might though.

Like George.

George is the one who put me up to the biathlon. George is a CIA counterterrorism analyst who infiltrated The Washington Post last fall while posing as my running partner. His job is so intensely secretive and covert I am not allowed to mention his last name. (Okay, it's Schroeder. He has a weakness for fast, lethal women; case in point, his 5-year-old daughter, Claire).

Anyhow, in his travels overseas, George developed a fondness for obscure European sports, which certain Americans cannot relate to because they are addicted to genuine spectator sports. Like bowling and poker.

(George got up at 4:30 a.m. in his suburban Virginia home to watch the women's 15-kilometer individual pursuit and, before that, curling. We're not too sure about George.)

On Monday, only one of his favorite German athletes medaled. Martina Glagow took bronze behind Russian deadeyes Svetlana Ishmouratova and Olga Pyleva.

Twenty times Svetlana pulled the trigger while sore and tired from skiing; 20 times she did not miss.

Imagine being caught cheating by her.

Biathlon is amazingly boffo box office in Europe, one of the most watched sports on television between December and March. The stands were packed with Norwegian and German flags on Monday, the press area an elbow-to-elbow affair between the German Press Agency and some Bulgarian news service.

"It's like a soap opera, families get up and watch for breakfast," said Ulrike Krieger, a journalist with the German newspaper BZ (Berliner Zeitung). "I don't understand why America don't like this sport. You love guns."

Look, we need to catch up to Norway, Russia and Germany fast. The whole afternoon I felt like I was in the opening sequence of a Bond movie, where all the beautiful snow bunnies happened to double as lethal, fast women in tights. They are all I have this Valentine's Day in my office hovel.