At which Winter Olympics did modern biathlon first appear?

Modern biathlon first appeared at the Olympic Games at Squaw Valley in 1960.

The inaugural modern Olympic biathlon was a men’s 20-kilometre individual race held on 21 February 1960 at McKinney Creek Stadium. Competitors skied cross-country and stopped at four shooting stations, combining endurance with marksmanship. Thirty athletes from nine nations entered the event.

Sweden’s Klas Lestander won the first modern biathlon Olympic gold medal. Finland’s Antti Tyrväinen took silver, and Aleksandr Privalov of the Soviet Union won bronze. Unlike later biathlon formats, the 1960 race used a longer individual distance and a time-penalty system for missed shots.

The sport’s history is sometimes confused with military patrol. A military patrol race was held at the 1924 Winter Olympics and later appeared as a demonstration event in 1928, 1936, and 1948. The International Olympic Committee regards military patrol as part of biathlon’s lineage, but Squaw Valley 1960 is the accepted debut of modern biathlon as an Olympic sport.