WHISTLER, British Columbia  Ole Einar Bjorndalen pushed out of the start for his fifth Olympics, his arms and skis working in hard-wired harmony, and the announcer at Whistler Olympic Park made sure everyone knew who was on the course: “The king of biathlonnnnn!”  Join the discussion with news, analysis and features from the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver.  Jeremy Teela of the United States finished ninth.  But Bjorndalen, the lean Norwegian with the cleft chin and nine Olympic medals, would not come close to ruling the first men’s biathlon race of the Vancouver Games. There would be trouble from above, caused by the wacky weather that presumably does not seem so wacky to those who spend their lives in this scenic, soggy corner of Canada.  Above all there would be trouble on Bjorndalen’s first of two trips to the shooting range, where he arrived in strong position and left with a grimace after missing three of his five shots from the prone position and saddling himself with three penalty loops for his lack of accuracy.  It was a stunning gaffe from the 36-year-old Bjorndalen, a winter sports legend, and it did not lead to the podium or even a top-10 finish.  Bjorndalen faded to 17th in the 10-kilometer sprint, his worst Olympic result over this distance since he was 20 years old and still learning his craft at the 1994 Olympics on his home snow in Lillehammer.  “I just shot too badly,” Bjorndalen said, his national team race suit stained a darker shade of red by the rain, sleet and snow. “The weather didn’t help me, but that’s hardly the reason I lost. I just didn’t do what I had to do.”  Nonetheless, shooting well was not enough if you had a later start position on Sunday. It was no coincidence that the top six finishers were among the first 10 men to start in this staggered race in which skiers begin at 30-second intervals.  Shortly after Bjorndalen pushed off wearing bib No. 21, the light rain turned into a steady downpour, then quickly into sleet and eventually heavy snow before tapering off to drizzle once more.  All this transpired in less than 20 minutes, which was enough to leave the rest of the racers slogging through wet snow and fighting a losing battle against the clock with their rifles strapped to their backs.  Bjorndalen, one of biathlon’s fastest skiers, dropped nearly 40 seconds to the leaders after the second and final shooting session as he struggled to generate speed coming to the finish. Fast-shifting conditions are a ski technician’s nightmare, with most waxes designed for specific types of snow, not the wide range that had to be dealt with on Sunday.  But there were some beneficiaries, above all Vincent Jay, the Frenchman who was born in the Winter Olympic city of Albertville and is now an Olympic champion after starting in sixth position and winning in 24 minutes 7.8 seconds.  In second was Bjorndalen’s Norwegian heir apparent, 24-year-old Emil Hegle Svendsen. Jakov Fak was third, giving Croatia its first Olympic medal in biathlon.  Of the men on the podium, only Svendsen was among the favorites before the race, although Jay won a World Cup race at this site last year and has kept a map of the course in his bedroom ever since.  “It helped me to get mentally ready for Vancouver,” he said. “Because let’s face it, it’s the goal of any athlete, the dream, and I tried to put everything I could on my side.”  Bjorndalen has turned dreams into medals more efficiently than any Winter Olympian except Bjorn Dahlie, the Norwegian cross-country king who won a record 12 medals, including a record eight golds from 1992 to 1998.  Dahlie, now a successful businessman in Norway, had the benefit of competing in three Games in just six years because of the International Olympic Committee’s decision to put the Winter and Summer Games on a different timeline.  But Bjorndalen, now as big a star at home as Dahlie was in his prime, has proved the more enduring figure. He says he intends to compete in a sixth Games in Sochi, Russia, in 2014.  But right now, the urgent matter at hand is recovering his marksmanship and salvaging medals in Vancouver in the four events that remain. His poor finish Sunday  1:41 behind Jay  means that he will have a lot of snow to make up in Tuesday’s combined pursuit race.  “Everything is possible, but that’s a big gap,” he said.  Everything does seem possible indeed after Bjorndalen, the greatest biathlete of all time, missed three of his first five shots, an indignity that no one else in the top 50 dealt with Sunday.  “I think that’s the beauty of our sport,” said Svendsen, who said his interest in the biathlon was inspired by Bjorndalen’s success. “You never know what happens until the last shot. A person can lead and then leave the shooting range suddenly number 20. You can never be sure, and that’s why I love it.”  Easier to say, of course, when you are the Norwegian with the Olympic medal.
Deteriorating weather conditions and poor shooting doomed the medal chances of the Norwegian star Ole Einar Bjorndalen in the men's biathlon.