Biathlon brings many languages to County

FORT KENT – Bilingualism is a way of life in the St. John Valley, where French and English are spoken. But few if any residents were ready for the 14 different languages, and an unknown number of dialects, being heard around the Biathlon World Cup venue and on the street this week.

The International Biathlon Union itself has three official languages, English, German and Russian. Each team in the competition is expected to carry someone fluent in at least one of those languages.

The meetings of team captains are held in those three languages. One man, Janez Vodicar, sports director of the IBU, conducts the meetings and speaks all three languages. He speaks several other languages as well.

Jerry Kokesh, development director with the U.S. Biathlon Association and their press officer, said Thursday that the languages routinely heard around the sport include French, English, German, Russian, Slovak, Czechoslovakian, Slovenian, Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, Italian, Chinese, Japanese, Austrian, Finnish, Polish, Korean, and Russian dialects from Ukraine, Moldavia and Belarus.

“Somehow, everyone communicates,” Kokesh said. “There are always problems, but we wade through them and somehow survive.

“The one man who brings it all together is Janez [Vodicar],” he said.

Vodicar, 51, a Slovenian who has studied Russian, has been with the IBU since 1988. He has been involved in biathlon dating back to the 1970s. Along with the official biathlon languages, Vodicar also speaks French, Italian, Hungarian, Croatian, Austrian and several dialects.

He knows the sport and its athletes, and enjoys sharing his knowledge.

He is the man who conducts the press table at the World Cup competitions. He introduces the winning athletes and talks easily about their histories. He sometimes asks questions of them, and is even known to answer the query before the biathlete can.

“I don’t know how we bring it all together,” he said Thursday about the many languages of biathlon. “It just comes together.

“Everyone is happy, most of the time,” he continued. “At one time or another, everyone needs help [because of the language differences] and they talk to me.”

He admits language problems arise, and sometimes he becomes “a referee.”

“Sometimes I use three languages, or more, to make everyone understand what I am saying,” Vodicar said. “I sometimes believe my entire right brain is used solely for language.

“It’s fun, most of the time,” he said.