HAPPINESS IS A WARM GUN

It has always been difficult being an American in Olympic biathlon competition, particularly in Nagano.

Japan has some of the strictest gun-control laws on the planet, and Olympic officials here are scrutinizing the registration of biathletes. Among the security measures:

* Retinal scans are taken of each biathlete for identification purposes. In order to check out a rifle before practice or competition, a biathlete’s eye is scanned to determine if it is a match with the scan taken upon registration.

* Ammunition is taken from biathlon teams upon their arrival at the airport and counted, round by round. Then the bullets and the guns are stored--at separate sites--to be checked out only by a team’s rifle coach.

* Bullets are counted before and after each round of practice and competition.

* After the Olympics, all leftover ammunition will be destroyed.

“I don’t mind the bureaucracy of getting everything set and organized--it’s nice, it’s comforting,” says Stacey Wooley of the U.S. women’s biathlon team. “But what you miss here is the Zen with your rifle, when you can just pick it up in your room.

“It’s there, you look at it, it’s part of your equipment. You bring it around with you, you pull the trigger a hundred times a day, it’s only going to make you feel more comfortable.”