Video of all the biathlon World Cup (a series of races for top competitors throughout each winter) and world championships races are free at https://www.eurovisionsports.tv/ibu/

The biathlon world championships were just held a week or two ago. There are several different formats of races - interval starts where each person competes individually and whoever has the best time at the end wins, relays with either same-gender or mixed-gender, and a mass start where everyone starts at once and the first across the line wins.

The men’s and women’s mass starts were both particularly good this year, they’d be a good introduction to biathlon imo.

Men: https://www.eurovisionsports.tv/ibu/#ABSQGMVLKH
Women: https://www.eurovisionsports.tv/ibu/#APVTYFQZ33

There’s also /r/biathlon but I don’t really go on there much so I can’t vouch for it myself.

Cheers!

Edit: the link for the men’s race doesn’t work right, this one will take you directly to the video: https://ebu-emp.ebu.ch/embed/ABSQGMVLKH

Cross country skiing is not a mass participation sport in the US. I live in a place that gets reliable snow (or at least it used to up until a decade ago), and you would really have to seek out xc ski racing. Every high school has basketball teams in my area, but very few have xc skiing even though it would be a good complement to track (spring) and cross country running (fall).

Yes there is a lot of potential for finding the best with a higher population, but if these people never get introduced to the sport it won’t happen. On the other hand Norway has a population of less than Minnesota, but routinely dominates xc and biathlon. (Speaking of biathlon, you’d think the US would be good at it because, ya know, guns, but it’s the only Olympic sport we’ve never medaled in)

Hopefully one thing that will come out of the success of the American women in xc skiing over the past few years is increased interest in the sport, not just competitively but also recreationally. If nothing else it would give the people in my area a fun activity to do in the winter so they’d stop bitching every time it snows.