The only other forum where I talk about a biathlon, a Dutch one (very active at least during the Olympics, decent outside of it), always agrees with it being utter nonsense to have a set of Olympic medals both for a qualifying event and the 'main' event
It's kind of like giving Olympic medals for the short program in figure skating, and then also one for the overall, whilst still counting the short program scores. It's perfectly fine for the world championships of said sports, but not so much for the Olympics, where events should be as much as possible stand-alone events, with everyone who starts having 'equal' chances (as far as possible of course).