While the Swedish biathlon team oftentimes comes out on the short end of their biathlon battles with the friendly neighbors and rivals Norway, things are getting more competitive than they have been in quite some time. Magdalena Foresburg is indeed one of the all time great women in biathlon. And Swedish men like Bjoren Ferry have been able to be competitive as well. But the Swedish team as currently constructed might be the best and most competitive group they have ever had.
On the women’s side there are a slew of top athletes with as many as four or five women capable of fighting for the top 10 in the overall. They are headlined by the Oeberg sisters who are able to be competitive at the highest of high levels. The men, meanwhile, have their best 1-2 punch in a generation. We’ve seen Samuelsson go head to head with the top men of biathlon. Now Martin Ponsiluoma has a top 5 Overall finish to his credit. Is anybody else going to join them in the battle? Let’s check out the Swedish rosters!
Women
Quota: 6 Athletes to Start
Contenders: Leading off our list we have the Oeberg sisters (spoiler alert). Both of them, well Elvira more than Hanna, have shown the ability to race for the top of the Overall standings. They can certainly win almost any race.
Elvira Oeberg (24)
The 2022-2023 season was clearly a disappointment for Elvira Oeberg. She started out a little slow (by her wildly high standards) with just a single podium over the first six races. Then she went on a run where it looked like the Elvira Oeberg we’ve come to love was back with three wins and five podiums in a seven race stretch. Then COVID hit and her season was more or less over. She still raced but she was a shadow of herself. She failed to qualify for two Pursuit races and her best finish in that stretch was 16th.
After getting so used to seeing Elvira Oeberg flying around the course on her way to four wins and 10 podiums in 2021-2022 this was really tough to see. While she started out her normal fast self, once the COVID hit her legs were gone. She finished the season MUCH slower than usual, failing to be better than 22nd in course time rank in the last few weekends of the season. Overall it’s hard to take away much from her skiing. Let’s just assume that Elvira Oeberg will have recovered completely and we’ll see the same old Elvira in 2023-2024, regularly in the top 3 on the skis.
| Prone % | Standing % | Total % | Shooting Time | |
| 2019-2020 | 76 | 82.7 | 79.3 | 32.5 |
| 2020-2021 | 83 | 81.5 | 82.3 | 29.5 |
| 2021-2022 | 82.6 | 87.9 | 85.3 | 29.4 |
| 2022-2023 | 89.3 | 87.9 | 88.6 | 29.4 |
However, there were some encouraging signs on the range. You can see her shooting was slowly improving every year. And then last year she took another solid jump all the way up to 88.6% overall shooting. This included 89.3% prone shooting. Never was this more visible than in Pokljuka. She was already feeling the effects of illness at this point. She finished 19th in the Pursuit in course time rank. However she went 20/20 and won the race. It was easily the worst course time rank she had ever had and still won. Two weeks later in Antholz she was 13th on the course in the Sprint but went 10/10 and secured 3rd place.
Elvira Oeberg is one of the best biathletes out there and she’s just 24 years old. Her shooting has moved from a weakness that clearly held her back to the point where she actually was able to succeed because of her shooting and not in spite of it. Even if Elvira doesn’t get all the way back to her top 3 skiing form she can still be incredibly competitive, especially if she continues to get more accurate. I happen to think that she will recover fully. I also think that in the next few seasons we’re going to see her get very close to 90% shooting if not surpass it. Elvira has a very good chance to win multiple Overall Globes in the next decade. This year may very well be the first of those.
Hanna Oeberg (28)
Do I really think that Hanna Oeberg is going to compete for the Overall this year? No, I really don’t. But, if I’m making a list of the 10 women most likely to race for the title, then I think you have to put Hanna Oeberg on it. Right? Yeah, I just checked, you have to put her on it.
Hanna Oeberg has been solid and consistent for the last five years never finishing worse than 7th in the Overall rankings. Last year was actually a fascinating year for Hanna Oeberg. 7th place was the worst finish in the Overall that she has had since her big breakthrough. Now part of that was because she missed Pokljuka recovering from Covid. However, she also had four victories last season and she had never previously had more than two. But then her 6 podiums, 8 top 5’s and 14 top 10’s fell a bit short of previous career highs. So really she was doing a better job converting her opportunities.
When most people think of Hanna Oeberg, I think the image that comes to mind is decently fast, but a poor shooter. That’s more or less right. I think I underestimate exactly how fast she is. The last two seasons she has finished the year 6th in the overall ski rankings.
| Prone % | Standing % | Total % | Shooting Time | |
| 2017-2018 | 85.7 | 89.5 | 87.6 | 29.6 |
| 2018-2019 | 91.5 | 85.5 | 88.5 | 27.4 |
| 2019-2020 | 90 | 82 | 86 | 25.7 |
| 2020-2021 | 85.2 | 83.8 | 84.5 | 26.7 |
| 2021-2022 | 80 | 80 | 80 | 25.9 |
| 2022-2023 | 82.2 | 90.3 | 86.2 | 25.8 |
Her shooting also is a bit better than I anticipated. I picture her missing standing shots to lose out on podiums/top 5s. But last year she was up to 86.2% overall. That was good enough for 34th overall. I mean that’s not going to knock anybody’s socks off but it’s definitely not weak. And clearly so as she won four times last year! Also, lets not forget that she’s fast, averaging 25.8 seconds per shooting.
So should we really keep Hanna Oeberg on our list for potential winners in the Overall? Yes absolutely. She missed two races last year. She had the 4th highest points per race last season. If she had been healthy all year last year (yes you can play that game with anybody) she would like likely been 5th in the Overall. Hopefully that shooting gets even just a touch better this season!
World Cup: Do you realize how stacked the Swedish women’s team is? We get past the top two women, who are on the short list for Overall Globe contention, and the next two names on this list would be welcomed on basically every other World Cup team. Both Persson and Magnusson, as we’ll discuss, have high goals themselves this year!
Linn Persson (29)
I know that the final Overall standings will show that Linn Persson only finished 13th in the Overall, just one place better than her prior career high. But 2022-2023 was undoubtedly Persson’s career season…to date. She started out the season absolutely on fire before seriously fading late in the season. Just to cover the end of Persson’s season, over the last three weeks of the season she failed to finish better than 27th and scored just 26 points towards her Overall score. Before that though Linn Persson was a top 10 biathlete. She had four podiums, easily her best of her career, including two 2nd place finishes, one of which was a silver in the Individual at Worlds. That went along with five top 5’s and a whopping 12 top 10’s. Both again, easily the best of her career. So even without any success at all the last trimester, Persson STILL had the best season of her career.
Over the last five seasons Persson has established herself as a good skier. She’s finished in the top 25 of the overall ski rankings four of the last five seasons including last season finishing 24th. That’s even with her late season stumble. Without that she might have finished top 20 in skiing. In general though, she’s been solid on the snow, about 2-3% faster than the average World Cup biathlete for each of the last five seasons.
| Prone % | Standing % | Total % | Shooting Time | |
| 2017-2018 | 89.3 | 85.7 | 87.5 | 33.2 |
| 2018-2019 | 87.1 | 87.9 | 87.5 | 33.3 |
| 2019-2020 | 89.3 | 82.1 | 85.7 | 31.6 |
| 2020-2021 | 89.1 | 78.6 | 83.8 | 30.9 |
| 2021-2022 | 86.5 | 80 | 83.2 | 30.2 |
| 2022-2023 | 88.3 | 89.4 | 88.9 | 25.7 |
Her shooting ticked back up last season as well. Just taking a look at the data above it’s easy to see that she had a really nice rebound of her standing shooting in the 2022-2023 campaign. As a result she ended up at 88.9% her best overall shooting percentage of her career, and ranked 16th in overall shooting which was also the best of her career. Importantly she did this while shooting faster and faster. Last year she went from being decent to downright blazing. A cool 25.7 second average shooting time put her ahead of even her fast shooting teammate Hanna Oeberg!
It’s hard to know how much better Lin Persson is going to get, but I’m not going to bet against her. She’s been improving little by little every season. If she can just do exactly what she did last season, which is admittedly a huge performance, but do it for the whole season, she’s a top 10 biathlete. Just before Worlds, which remember didn’t count towards scores starting last season, she was up to 6th in the Overall. Is it possible for her to replicate that for a whole season? It very well might be!
Anna Magnusson (28)
Speaking of career best seasons, you know who else had a career best year? Yep, Anna Magnusson. Finishing just one spot behind her teammate Persson, at 14th Magnusson easily surpassed her previous career best of 33rd in the Overall. Along the way she captured her first career win, the Sprint in Annecy-le Grand Bornand. This is frequently remembered for the breakout race by Sophie Chaveau that put her on the map for most biathlon fans. But, it was Anna Magnusson who beat out her teammate, once again Linn Persson, for the first victory. She picked up another podium and seven total top 10’s along the way.
| Prone % | Standing % | Total % | Shooting Time | |
| 2020-2021 | 73.7 | 80 | 76.8 | 32.2 |
| 2021-2022 | 85 | 83.5 | 84.2 | 31 |
| 2022-2023 | 91 | 82 | 86.5 | 28.4 |
For Anna Magnusson this clearly wasn’t a massive jump in just one area but the cumulative effect of continued improved across all aspects of her performance. Over the last three years she’s continued get a little bit faster every season peaking this season at 1.5% faster than average and a total skiing ranking of 32nd overall, the best of her career.
Meanwhile her shooting has gotten just a little more consistent over time as well. She was actually shooting about this well around five seasons ago. But that took a big tumble and her average fell down to 76.3% and 76.8% in the 19-20 and 20-21 seasons. However the last two years, driven primarily by huge improvement in prone shooting, she’s come all the way back to 86.5% with a really nice 91% prone. All the while that shooting time just keeps getting faster and faster.
Will 2022-2023 go down as the best season of Anna Magnusson’s career? Probably not. She’s just 28. There are likely at least a couple more levels for her to find. Is it possible for Sweden to put four women in the top 10? I guess we’ll find out. She just missed out last year by four places. Two of the women ahead of her retired but again there is also young talent that will push up from behind. If she can make the same improvement to her standing shooting that she has with the rest of her performance she has a chance to take some more of those top 20’s and turn them into top 10s and then she’ll really start to accumulate some points.
Mona Brorsson (33)
While Linn Persson and Anna Magnusson were having the best seasons of their careers, Mona Brorsson was having a bit of a set back. She had just one top 10 after having at least two for each of the last five years. More importantly, and more pronounced, she had just three top 10s. The last time she had that few was 2016-2017. She actually ended up being sent down to the IBU Cup for a few weeks, racing there seven times, the most in a decade. Meanwhile she lined up just 14 times at the start on the World Cup, her fewest there since 2013-2014.
The really unfortunate aspect for Mona Brorsson was that she was actually having the best shooting since 2015-2016. Her 89.4% total shooting was just 0.2% off from her career best. As you can see from the chart below it was also at least 3.5% better than any season in the last five years. This even held true in her IBU Cup starts where she hit 89.1% of her shots in those seven races And she was shooting faster too with her average shooting time of 28.2 seconds a full two seconds faster per shooting!
| Prone % | Standing % | Total % | Shooting Time | |
| 2017-2018 | 94.3 | 82.9 | 88.6 | 31.9 |
| 2018-2019 | 86.5 | 84.7 | 85.6 | 32.7 |
| 2019-2020 | 92.9 | 75 | 83.9 | 32.1 |
| 2020-2021 | 92.4 | 76.5 | 84.4 | 30.7 |
| 2021-2022 | 92.4 | 81.2 | 87.1 | 30.2 |
| 2022-2023 | 94.8 | 83.5 | 89.1 | 28.2 |
Clearly though she sagged on the skis. And that’s seen when looking at the numbers. Her overall skiing ranking was down to 46th from 31st in 2021-2022. Her In all it was her slowest season since 2015-2016.
So was this just the start of the downward trend of her career? Or a bump on the road? Or maybe she just spent a lot of time focusing on shooting in the offseason and it hurt her skiing? It’s really hard to tell. At 33 she’s certainly not completely over the hill. Plenty of women in the age range continue to compete at the absolute highest levels. I guess we’ll find out soon.
Tilda Johansson (24)
I actually debated a little bit about who to put in this spot since it is the magical “6th” spot on the roster. Truthfully I know that there will be more than six women who line up to start a World Cup race for Sweden this season. I would imagine Andersson, Nilsson, Skottheim might all see starts here as well.
Tilda Johansson was easily the best of these women last year. It’s hard to debate that when she finished 1st Overall on the IBU Cup. It was close but she held on by her fingernails over a hard charging Gilonne Guigonnat, winning the IBU Cup globe by a thin 2 point margin. Regardless of how she did it, Johansson won the crown over a very talented group of women. I think we might look back in a few years and really appreciate how much talent there was on the IBU Cup this last season. Tilda Johansson won the title, not with wins, but with consistent high level racing. She had 13 top 10s in 20 races which included 5 podiums and 1 win. Pretty nice for her first career IBU Cup season!
How did she do it? Well you don’t win without being good at both skiing and shooting and that was the case with Johansson in 22-23. She finished 7th in skiing which put her 5.4% faster than average. This was a mild surprise as her performances on the Junior Cup were rarely that fast. In her last season of racing, 20-21 (she didn’t race in 21-22), she was 5.9% faster than average on the Junior Cup which at the time was just 24th. A jump from 24th fastest on Juniors, up to 7th fastest on the IBU Cup with only one year of no racing in between is a really really nice jump. Is this a one time surge? Is she going to be able to maintain this? Or was this the birth of a new insanely fast Swedish biathlete?
Meanwhile, her shooting was a solid 85.8% overall. Her shooting has been on an interesting journey on the Juniors and IBU Cup. A few years ago she was a very good shooter, she took a little dip, then she made it back to the mid 80’s. There really is no good year over year trend to her shooting though. All of that is to say it’s hard to say if this was a one time deal or if she can replicate it.
Tilda Johansson is one of the most fascinating biathletes to me this season. I assume that she’s going to spend a substantial amount of time on the World Cup. But what if last season was a shooting star once in a lifetime season? I mean all of it is hard to predict. She went from being pretty good on the Juniors/IBU Cup. Then she took a year off. Came back and won the IBU Cup Overall with the best skiing of her life and solid shooting. More than just about any other athlete the variance for Johansson appears vast. She could be anywhere from a solid World Cup biathlete shooting towards a top 20 Overall finish to a regression on the IBU Cup. I know what I want to see (World Cup success!) but I simply don’t know.
IBU Cup and Hopefuls
Sara Andersson (20)
We’ve looked at a number of very high level Swedish women. And yet there are still more to come. Sara Andersson is only 20 years old and I couldn’t be more excited about her potential. Over the last three seasons on the Junior Cup level she’s only raced at the Youth and Junior Worlds. In those nine races she’s never raced finished outside the top 10 while winning once and collecting two more podiums. Meanwhile she’s starting to get a little IBU Cup experience as well. She’s raced decently well with 15 top 20’s in 20 races including 6 top 10’s and 2 podiums.
Andersson is clearly in the mold of Elvira Oeberg. She’s been one of the fastest women on the Juniors level each of the last two seasons. In the last two years she’s never been worse than 4th in course time rank on the Juniors level. Even on the IBU Cup she isn’t exactly slow finishing ranked 5th and 7th in overall skiing over the last two seasons respectively. Keep in mind that was in her age 18-19 and age 19-20 seasons. She’s definitely got some serious ski potential.
The shooting is still a work in progress…but there is progress! Her shooting on the IBU Cup has improved over the last two seasons from 80.6% to 84.7% relying on a substantial standing shooting improvement. Her prone shooting has been solid right around 90% both of the last two years on the IBU Cup. The same is seen on the Junior Cup racing with 90% prone shooting and not quite as good standing shooting. By comparison Elvira Oeberg was shooting also in the low 80% range during her Junior and IBU Cup racing.
| Age 19-20 Season Stats | Sara Andersson | Elvira Oeberg |
| IBU Cup Ski Speed vs. Avg | -3.1% | -2.2% |
| Juniors Ski Speed vs. Avg | -9% | -4.5% |
| IBU Cup Shooting Splits | 89.4(P) / 80(S) /84.7(Total) | 84.6(P) / 80.3(S) /82.4(Total) |
| Juniors Shooting Splits | 92.0(P) / 68(S) / 80 (T) | 83.3(P) / 76.7(S) / 80 (T) |
| IBU Cup Top 10 Percentage | 50% | 11% |
When you look at Sara Andersson vs. Elvira, Andersson actually compares pretty favorably. On the Juniors Sara Andersson has actually been faster vs. the field than Elvira Oeberg was being between 9-10.5% faster than average while Elvira was “only” 7-8.8% faster. Meanwhile on the IBU Cup Sara Andersson is much faster than Elvira was. The shooting is fairly similar. Sara Andersson’s success rate of top 10’s is better than Elvira’s was as well. This is far far far from a perfect way of looking at this. But I just think it’s a really interesting comparison.
There is a really nice path for Sara Andersson to follow to World Cup success. It’s still a couple of seasons away. I think that she could do some split time among all three levels this season with most of her racing on the IBU Cup. Let’s hopefully see her getting even a bit faster this season. We also want to see that standing shooting catching up to her already solid prone shooting. All in all, I’m pretty high on her future.
Stina Nilsson (30)
It feels positively weird to have Stina Nilsson this far down this list. I’m not sure that I really want to put her higher though. This may not be the way the Swedish federation stratifies them, but I still think I would give first dibs to Johansson and Andersson over Nilsson. Nilsson gave up a highly successful FIS World Cup XC career, including 5 Olympic medals and 7 World Championship medals along with the 2019 Sprint title.
When Nilsson secured her first, and thus far only podium, near the end of the 2021-2022 season there were many declarations of Nilsson’s arrival. It just hasn’t been that easy. Last season she never finished higher than 33rd in her nine World Cup races. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not throwing in the towel on Nilsson. She is just a couple of seasons into what can be a very difficult switch and at just age 30 she has several more years of being highly competitive. Just look at Denise Herrmann-Wick, another former XC skier who was wildly successful in her own transition. Herrmann-Wick rode the best form of her career to the Sprint Globe and the gold medal in the Sprint at the World Champs last season. Still lots of time to get things where she wants them to be!
As for Nilsson’s current performance, last season was a little bit of an interesting one. It’s easy to think that with her XC history she should be a top skier (see Anamarija Lampic). Last season though she was just 26th ranked on the World Cup. That actually put her slower than Linn Persson and just behind Baiba Bendika on the skiing rankings. Looking for silver linings, she likely was putting in more shooting practice at the expense of the skiing. Her shooting percentage bounced up from 65% to 72.7% including 80% prone. That was the first time in her career shooting 80% for prone or standing.
Looking ahead for Nilsson it’s a bit of a cloudy picture. I know this could be said for any athlete but I wonder if it is just a case of “only time will tell.” There is a good chance this is her breakthrough season where she really figures out the rifle. Or will her skiing continue to decay as she struggles on the range. We’ll find out in just weeks.
Ella Halvarsson (24)
One of the reasons that, even at age 30, time feels short for Stina Nilsson is that the Swedish team is quite full. In addition to well known names like Tilda Johansson and Sara Andersson there is Ella Halvarsson. Still just 24 years old Ella Halvarsson has not been the most highly regarded Swedish prospect, but she’s solid if not spectacular. This is her third straight IBU Cup season with a solid overall finish. She missed the entire first trimester but still managed a 26th Overall finish. This included 4 top 10’s in 12 races and her first career IBU Cup podium.
Thus far in her career she’s a solid biathlete but not great at any one particular thing. Last season on the IBU Cup she was slightly faster than average. It was good enough for 38th overall on IBU Cup ski rankings. Unfortunately she also had the worst shooting of her career, which was still a decent 86.3% shooting percentage. Meanwhile she had an average shooting time of 29.8 seconds.
Where does this leave Halvarsson? Well likely she’s aiming for a solid full season on the IBU Cup. Even just racing a full season could be enough points to get her to the top 20 in the Overall. If her shooting can also rebound back to the upper 80’s where she normally is, and she can be slightly faster maybe she can hit something like 15-20 in the IBU Cup Overall? I think that would be a really solid year and would set her up well.
Johanna Skottheim (29)
Johanna Skottheim has become the ultimate “go-between” for the Swedish women. She’s on the World Cup just about every season, but rarely does she spend more than 2-3 weeks on the World Cup once she gets there. She’s shown flashes with five top 10’s in her career including a podium. However, it’s just inconsistent enough that she can’t quite stay there. Last season was similar.
She started on the World Cup but went down to the IBU Cup after Pokljuka. In those four weeks she did have a 13th in the Sprint in Kontiolahti, but success was otherwise difficult to grab hold of. Once back down on the IBU Cup she had three top 10’s in nine races and managed to finish all the way up to 37th in the Overall rankings. Not bad considering she was only there for the European Championships and the last trimester of the year.
Throughout her career Skottheim has been an above average skier who struggles on the range. Usually she runs about 2-3% faster than the average World Cup biathlete but struggles to shoot above 80%. This held true to last season. On the World Cup she was 1.7% faster than average (ranked 31st) and on the IBU Cup 2.2% faster than averaged (ranked 28th). Across both levels she averaged about 30 seconds per shooting.
There really hasn’t been much of a change in Skottheim’s performances over the last several seasons. I’m always open to seeing somebody improve. However you can’t start unlimited numbers on the World Cup. The first four spots are spoken for. That leaves two spots that are open. Skottheim may once again be elevated for a weekend or two. But barring a major improvement in shooting I don’t know that we’ll see her more than that. It’s too hard to justify putting her over one of the young guns, or Stina Nilsson who they have so much invested in.
Emma Nilsson (30)
Yet another Swedish woman in the late 20’s/early 30’s range to add to Stina Nilsson, Johanna Skottheim and Felicia Lindqvist. That’s not even mention the World Cup locks in Hanna Oeberg, Linn Persson, Mona Brorsson and Anna Magnusson. There is a pattern here. Lots of women, all in the same age range, all fighting for the same spots. Usually, depending on the team, you might say they give the edge to the youth or experience depending on the situation. But these women are all right lumped together.
With Emma Nilsson we have another woman who is usually good for a handful of World Cup starts per season. Unfortunately not last year though as she stayed 100% full time on the IBU Cup. In doing so she finished 32nd Overall with no top 10’s and five top 20’s in 12 races. She did have an average finish of 22nd though, which really isn’t bad. She just didn’t have the high finishes she normally would have, and she just raced less.
Emma Nilsson, very much like Johanna Skottheim, is a decent skier and shooting. Last season she finished 23rd in skiing on the IBU Cup and 22nd in shooting. Just wasn’t great at any one particular thing. She was 2.6% faster than the average IBU Cup racer, which is about where she normally is, but she shot just 83% for the season.
For Emma Nilsson I have to imagine we are going to see more of the same. I want to be clear, Emma Nilsson is a far better biathlete than I could ever hope to be. On many teams she would be a World Cup regular. However she’s stuck on a team with lots of talent and many women all in the same age range. Just like with Skottheim, barring a major change in performance in either skiing or shooting, she’ll probably spend another full season on the IBU Cup. But this is the start of the season and there is always hope! So maybe this is the year she becomes a sharpshooter!
Felicia Lindqvist (28)
Stop me if you’ve heard this before, another Swedish woman in her late 20’s. She had another solid season finishing 17th in the IBU Cup. It was a really nice return to form after a couple of seasons of under performance. However, it still wasn’t her best year end ranking after finishing 10th on the IBU Cup in 2018-2019.
Lindqvist is actually the opposite of Johanna Skottheim and Emma Nilsson as she succeeds more on the back of her shooting. Last year she hit 88.3% overall which, not coincidentally, was the best since her 10th place Overall finish in 18-19. Meanwhile she’s just right around average skiing. The end result last season was 10 top 20’s in 18 races including 5 top 10s and a 5th in the Super Sprint in Brezno-Osrblie.
For Lindqvist to have a successful season, she’s going to need to get some improved skiing. If she can catch up to Emma Nilsson and Johanna Skottheim, in the 2.2% faster than average range, and combine that with her 88% overall shooting, she has a chance at closing in on her best ever 10th place Overall IBU Cup.
Up and Comers
Alva Skold (22)
The young Alva Skold, primarily a Junior Cup racer, has started to get her first experience on the IBU Cup. Last season, with her first extensive run, she raced the 2nd through 5th weekends and actually had a moderate level of success. In nine races she got her first career IBU Cup top 10 and had four other top 20s. She still raced Junior Worlds last season and finished 12th in both Individual and Pursuit along with a 7th in Sprint. She only had six prior Juniors races but those were her three best finishes as a Junior. So both IBU Cup and Juniors she had career bests!
So far in her career she doesn’t appear to have a super strength. While in her first six Junior races she shot better than 90% five times. Unfortunately since then she has been a bit more average on the range hitting almost exactly 80% of her shots. She’s more of a well balanced biathlete with skiing that was 2.4% faster than average on the IBU Cup.
So what does Skold’s career look like over the next few years? Well we don’t have a lot of data, and the data we have is a bit mixed. However, she’s incredibly young at just 22. There is plenty of time to see what happens. Hopefully she can rediscover her proficiency on the range. Becoming a top tier shooter again would be a major boost in her efforts to move towards the World Cup. She’s also been pretty quick compared to her Juniors competitors. So maybe, just maybe, Skold has a pathway to the World Cup in the next few seasons.
Bente Skale (22)
Bente Skale, another 22 year old young woman, has just two years of racing including six Junior Worlds races, and ten IBU Cup races. So far at Junior Worlds, every single one of her finishes has been between 20th and 26th. It’s a remarkable amount of consistency really. On the IBU Cup last year she did have a 17th in a Super Sprint for her first top 20 and she has three top 30s in her career.
Thus far a little bit of a pattern is emerging in her performance. She has generally hit around 80% of her shots while being an average skier. This season is another chance for growth so hopefully we’ll see some improvement all around!
Men:
Quota: 6 Athletes to Start
World Cup Top Tier – For the Swedish men there are two that stand head and shoulders above the rest. These two men, just like the Oeberg sisters, have the ability to win pretty much every race. They can each go on runs where they look like top 5 in the world biathletes…and as a matter of fact each of them have finished top 5 Overall in there careers
Sebastian Samuelsson (26)
No longer just a young kid with big aspirations, Sebastian Samuelsson enters the 2022-2023 season coming off of his “least successful” campaign in a couple of years. Outside of the World Championships he garnered seven top 10’s but failed to land on the podium. However, he did have an remarkably successful Worlds, winning three medals with a gold in the Mass Start and bronze in Pursuit and Individual. He did miss the last two weekends of the season and ended up 14th in the Overall standings. At the end of the day, I think Samuelsson would be happy with that. Not many people are going to win three World Champs medals in a season. However, he failed to replicate the success the rest of the year that got him to 6th and 3rd Overall the previous two seasons. Now though, it’s time to put it together for a full season.
We all know Samuelsson at this point. He’s very fast, he’s a decent shooter, and he’s a tenacious competitor. You can see in the plot above that while his skiing took a small dip last season that he remains one of the fastest men on the World Cup. His season ending rankings the last five years are 9th fastest, 3rd, and 5th. That’s the kind of speed that puts you in the thick of things every time out there.
| Prone % | Standing % | Total % | Shooting Time | |
| 2017-2018 | 85.2 | 85.2 | 85.2 | 29.8 |
| 2018-2019 | 83.6 | 76.4 | 80 | 30.6 |
| 2019-2020 | 84.2 | 77.5 | 80.8 | 27.8 |
| 2020-2021 | 88.6 | 85.7 | 87.1 | 28.6 |
| 2021-2022 | 86.8 | 81.1 | 83.9 | 29 |
| 2022-2023 | 91.5 | 81.8 | 86.7 | 28.3 |
What has been the sticking point for Samuelsson, keeping him from really getting into the mix for the Overall Globe so far in his early career, has been his shooting. That appears to be improving though. He did have what appeared to be a shooting breakthrough in 2020-2021. However, after a setback in 21-22 he rebounded again to 86.7% overall shooting. Last year his prone shooting was really really good at 91.5%. Meanwhile his shooting time was as good as it has ever been.
The one area of low hanging fruit and “easy” improvement for Samuelsson is standing shooting. He’s regularly in the low 80’s. It’s the only real weakness right now for Samuelsson. If he can get that up to the mid 80’s it could boost his shooting into the upper 80’s. Skiing in the top 5-10. Shooting around 87-88% overall. That’s a recipe to compete for a globe. I mean if JT Boe is going to be the greatest biathlete again then it’s going to be hard to win the Overall. But it’s clear that Samuelsson has a chance to win one of these before his career is done.
Martin Ponsiluoma (28)
At least in my opinion, Martin Ponsiluoma has been a bit over shadowed by Samuelsson through this point in their careers. That’s not too surprising to see as up until last year Ponsi’s best Overall finish was 10th. However, after last season where Ponsiluoma captured 5th Overall I think it’s time to put them together as contenders. Last season was easily the best of Ponsi’s career. He had his 2nd career win, 6 podiums (which equaled his entire career total prior to last season), and 13 top 10’s. And he added a silver medal in the Worlds Mass Start for good measure!
Why was Ponsiluoma so much better last season? Well it certainly wasn’t his skiing. He’s been a top 6 skier for the last three seasons. Remove JT Boe from the equation and he always has the ability to be the fastest man on the snow. In fact he had three races where he was the fastest man on the course, the most of his career. By ever metric though, 2022-2023 was still the fastest of Ponsi’s career. He was faster compared to average. He was faster compared to median top 30. He was faster compared to median top 10. He had a better average course time rank.
| Prone % | Standing % | Total % | Shooting Time | |
| 2017-2018 | 74.3 | 91.4 | 82.9 | 27.2 |
| 2018-2019 | 82 | 86 | 84 | 27.8 |
| 2019-2020 | 69.1 | 78.2 | 73.6 | 28.4 |
| 2020-2021 | 77.1 | 81.9 | 79.5 | 27.3 |
| 2021-2022 | 75.6 | 72.8 | 74.2 | 28.3 |
| 2022-2023 | 78.6 | 80 | 79.3 | 26.1 |
However, the big improvement was the shooting. The remarkable thing is, even with the shooting improvement he has A LOT of improvement that could still be made. His total hit rate was up to 79.3%. It was relatively good though as he was at 74.2% in 21-22. However he did get his shooting time down to 26.1 seconds.
The big looming question is really how well can Ponsiluoma shoot? There is so much room to grow. He hasn’t even reached 80% overall shooting. Can he get to 83% Or even 85%? With his speed that would make him competitive in virtually every race. He would have a real chance at increasing his career win, maybe even winning multiple wins for the first time in his career. He was 5th in the Overall last season but we have to expect bounce back seasons from QFM and Samuelsson, if not Jacquelin as well. He might very well have a better overall season but still fail to improve on 5th Overall. I’m really excited to see what he can do though!
Filling out the World Cup Starters
Jesper Nelin (31)
Last season, while flying very much under the radar, Jesper Nelin had the season of his career. It’s easy to see why nobody was paying attention. There were just too many other stories to pay attention to. But from start to finish Nelin was just very very solid. He had 5 of his top 11 finishes of his career included 3 of his top 5. This included a new career best 6th place in the Pursuit in Kontiolahti. The end result was an Overall finish of 15th, by far the best of his career, easily outpacing his previous career best of 27th in 20202-2021.
Nelin was clearly better in just about every measurable metric for biathlon. His skiing was the best of his career. He’s always been a pretty good skier. He usually finishes around 17-25th in overall skiing. Last season he landed at 15th overall. This included his best skiing very average last season at 2.6% faster and just 1.6% slower than median top 10. It wasn’t a massive improvement, but he was better than he’s ever been before.
| Prone % | Standing % | Total % | Shooting Time | |
| 2017-2018 | 83.9 | 74.6 | 79.2 | 27.9 |
| 2018-2019 | 86.4 | 71.2 | 78.8 | 29.7 |
| 2019-2020 | 89.2 | 67.7 | 78.5 | 28.9 |
| 2020-2021 | 78.4 | 69.7 | 74.1 | 30.7 |
| 2021-2022 | 81.6 | 70.4 | 76 | 31.5 |
| 2022-2023 | 90.5 | 79.5 | 85 | 30.8 |
The big time improvement though was in the shooting. Prior to 2022-2023 he was never better than 79.2% overall. Last year he made big time prone shooting improvements and got his overall shooting up to 85% overall. Just look at that prone shooting jump. He even got his standing shooting up spectacularly as well. 79.5% isn’t exactly blowing the doors off of the competition. However, considering he was rarely about 70% before last season this was huge. He was right near the bottom of the World Cup in standing shooting prior to last season. Then last year he was solidly middle of the road. It’s amazing what getting up to merely average can do for you!
So what can Jesper Nelin do next season? That’s an excellent question. Was last year a once in a life time kind of shooting year? Or was it the start of a larger trend? Obviously we don’t know yet and that’s why this time of year is so exciting! There are so many possibilities open at this time. Maybe with some further improvements to his standing shooting he could get his overall shooting to the upper 80s? Combine that with continued top 20 skiing and he’s on his way to a great finish. Is there a possibility of a new career best this season? Absolutely. Let’s see it Jesper!
Peppe Femling (31)
Peppe Femling, just like Jesper Nelin, is solidly in the middle of the peak of his career. Unlike Jesper Nelin, we haven’t been seeing the same improvement. Over the last four seasons, from ages 27 through 30, Femling is locked in and as steady as they come. Each of those seasons he’s been 39th and 47th in the Overall. Even his race to race consistency is remarkable. He isn’t a boom or bust guy. He’s steady with a handful of top 30’s every year but very rarely into the top 10. He has just 1-3 top 20’s every year as well.
The really funny thing is, if you look at the plot above, it doesn’t really seem to matter what Femling focuses on, he finds his way to that 39-47 Overall range. Most of the time he’s about World Cup average skiing, literally finishing within 0.1% of average 3 of the last 4 seasons. However one season he got a little slower. When he did that though, his shooting compensated, in positive fashion. He went from normally shooting a touch over 80% to 85% The end result? Right back to his normal spot in the Overall!
| Prone % | Standing % | Total % | Shooting Time | |
| 2017-2018 | 84.6 | 73.9 | 79.2 | 33.3 |
| 2018-2019 | 73.8 | 78.8 | 76.3 | 32.5 |
| 2019-2020 | 82.7 | 80.9 | 81.8 | 29.3 |
| 2020-2021 | 85.6 | 80 | 82.8 | 27.6 |
| 2021-2022 | 93 | 78 | 85.5 | 26.9 |
| 2022-2023 | 79.3 | 74.7 | 77 | 25.2 |
What can we expect from Peppe this season? Well I mean he’s one of the most consistent guys that we have. I have to imagine that we’ll see more of the same. If I was going to guess I would think that his team would like to see the slightly better shooting version of him? They’ve got plenty of speed on the team, some good shooting would be really nice for the relay. Regardless though, Peppe Femling is a guy that has a standard. I see no reason to see less than the standard this season!
Malte Stefannson (22)
And now we get to some young talent. Stefansson is just 22. For the Swedish men that makes him practically a kid! The Swedish team is in a bit of a strange spot though. Based on the incredibly strong top of the team, they are virtually assured of a top 5 Nations Cup ranking every season. As a result they’ve got 6 spots to fill and only 4 men that feel like locks. So a young man like Stefansson gets the opportunities to get some World Cup starts!
Over the past two seasons Stefansson has been getting his feet wet on the World Cup while also racing plenty on the IBU Cup level as well. Last year for example, he went 12 races on the IBU Cup with 7 on the World Cup. Without a full year it was difficult to accumulate the points. He still ended up 29th on the IBU Cup Overall though. He showed some solid consistency with six top 20’s in 12 races including a top 10. He had one stretch of four straight top 20s at one point. That was easily the most consistent high level racing of his career. The reward was a late season call up to the World Cup.
Looking at his IBU Cup statistics, since he spent most of the season there, he had a clear pattern to his performance. Stefansson is fast. Over 6.5% faster than average. It put him at 4th on the IBU Cup in skiing and in the range of the top Norwegians. With over 12 races last season that’s plenty of data.
So why didn’t he have the top finishes to go along with that? Well not surprisingly the shooting isn’t quite there. The best he’s ever done on any level was 76% total shooting. If you squint at his shooting you can see that there has been an improvement in his prone shooting lately. It’s not perfect but it really does appear to be happening. However, prone shooting in the low 80s looks like it is where he is now. The key now is going to be getting the standing shooting to catch up.
Malte Stefansson is starting to show some potential. He’s got a similar profile to Sebastian Samuelsson and Martin Ponsiluoma. I don’t want to go crazy and say he’s another future top 10 World Cup contender, but I just mean to say he’s fast and the shooting is taking some time to catch up. He doesn’t really have the Juniors career that points to high level success, with a career Juniors best of 17th. However it’s hard to ignore how fast he was last season. The pieces are there. Let’s hope this is another good season of growth!
IBU Cup Regulars – If you count above you’ll have just five men. There are 6 spots on the World Cup. So my guess is that these guys will likely primarily be on the IBU Cup but will rotate through on the World Cup for the last slot. If somebody grabs the spot then they might have a chance to stick!
Oskar Brandt (27)
Oskar Brandt is a perfect example of that idea. Over the last two seasons he’s had 13 and 8 races on the World Cup respectively. However, if you focus on the IBU Cup you can see some signs of improvement. Last season he score four top 20s including a career best 2nd place if you count Super Sprint Qualifications, which we will for this measure. He had five of the best seven finishes of his IBU Cup career. Even while splitting time he ended up at 42nd Overall on the IBU Cup, the best of his career.
Oskar has started to show us something over the last couple of seasons. He’s starting to flash some solid if not spectacular ski speed. He ended up 16th and 18th in the IBU Cup ski rankings the last two seasons. Looking at his World Cup skiing he moved from nearly 3% slower than average in 2020-2021 to 1% faster than average last season. That was good enough for 32nd on the World Cup. Now the question is will the shooting catch up? His shooting is a struggle. The last two years on the IBU Cup he hit 62% and 66% of his total shots. On the World Cup it was 66% and 70%.
If Oskar Brandt wants to grab hold of that 6th spot that shooting is where he’s going to have to do it. There is a real opportunity there. I hope that he can do it!
Emil Nykvist (25)
At least in my opinion, Emil Nykvist is the most likely man to fill the 6th spot on the Swedish men’s World Cup roster for the very start of the year. He may not stay there but he will likely start there anyway. He’s got a couple of things going for him. One, he spent most of last season there. And two, he’s still decently young so lot of opportunity for growth still. Last year in his first year on the World Cup he had mixed success. He had 14 starts and he did grab his first top 30. Overall though it was more a year of continued work.
Nykvist did have improved skiing last year moving up to average in his skiing. That isn’t a huge improvement but hey, it’s better than being slower than average. Meanwhile his shooting stuck around 80%, which is basically unchanged over the last three seasons. He did shoot in the mid 80’s while a Junior so it’s in there somewhere!
Nykvist is 25. He’s not a finished product as evidence by the improved skiing last year. However, it’s time for him to start making some moves. Jesper Nelin showed that it is never too late. I would love to see a little improvement with his skiing once again to pair with shooting that moves to the mid 80s. The door is open for him.
Viktor Brandt (24)
The 2nd Brandt on this list, Viktor Brandt is just 24 years old and fighting for his spot on the World Cup as well. Thus far in his career, he’s had two seasons primarily on the IBU Cup and he’s finished 45th in 21-22 and 54th in 22-23. Prior to that with his Junior Cup racing from 2016-2017 through 2020-2021 he had plenty of races but only one finish higher than 40th. Interestingly, he actually has more top 10’s on the IBU Cup than Oskar Brandt and Emil Nykvist combined scoring one each over the last two seasons.
Viktor Brandt is a middle of the road biathlete. He is a decent skier and a decent shooter. However he doesn’t appear, at least at this juncture, to be great at either. Just a touch better than average on the skis and last season he his 81.7% of his shots. Clearly when he puts it together he can get to the top though. Its interesting because when I saw he had more top 10’s than Oskar Brandt and Nykvist, I would have assumed he was super fast or phenomenal shooter. But there he is, right in the middle with just two phenomenal finishes.
It’s not like there is a single area where he needs to really buckle down and get to work. However, he is just 24, so there is plenty of time. Maybe he’s just going to bring it along together? Just a little at a time he gets better at everything. Hopefully he uses the season to keep marching along!
Henning Sjokvist (25)
I will be honest, before doing this project last season, I had not heard of Henning Sjokvist. However, when doing this I saw that Sjokvist closed the 21-22 season strong and I thought maybe he was primed for a strong 2022-2023 campaign. While I won’t say it was a bad year, it wasn’t quite as strong as I was hoping. After those final four out of five top 25’s in 21-22 Sjokvist managed just two top 25’s in 12 races last year and ended up 65th Overall in the IBU Cup standings.
Sjokvist has actually turned into a decent shooter. He his 84.4% overall including 88.9% prone shooting. That was definitely his best season of shooting overall. More importantly he’s shown very strong ski improvement over his last three seasons on the IBU Cup. He went from over 6% slower than average, to exactly average in 21-22 and then 1.4% faster than average last year.
Overall everything is trending in a good direction. Let’s hopefully see another really strong season of improvement on the IBU Cup. Let’s aim for a few more top 20s and maybe a one or two more top 10s? I’m hopeful!
Up and Comers – Now we come to the youngest men on the Swedish biathlon team. These guys are all starting to get some IBU Cup run so it isn’t like they are solely Juniors. However, they are still pretty young so they get a category to themselves.
Anton Ivarsson (22)
Anton Ivarsson has easily had the most success in IBU racing thus far and last season was the best yet. He had 8 top 20s in 15 races including three top 10’s. He ended the season very strong with his last four finishes being 12th, 10th, 9th, and 3rd. And he didn’t even make it to Canmore for the reduced fields so that 3rd place was against a solid competition in Obertilliach. Even with just 15 races he finished the season 20th in the Overall. This is coming off of a pretty uneventful Junior Cup career so it wasn’t exactly expected.
Ivarsson isn’t exactly a specialist in any one particular area. He finished the season ranked 23rd in skiing at a little over 4% faster than average. Last year was a solid shooting year hitting 82.2% overall, a slight decrease from the year before. He’s also clearly a better prone shooter than standing shooter, hitting about 10% better prone than standing every year. For Ivarsson, lets see another strong season on the skis, paired with improved shooting, maybe finally getting that standing shooting up. A solid top 20 IBU Cup season may lead to some World Cup starts? Ivarsson is a strong one to watch the next few years.
Erik Larsson (21)
21 year old Erik Larsson has had a little success as a Junior. He’s only raced Youth and Junior Worlds but he has three top 10’s in those events including 9th in the Sprint last year in Kazakhstan. Thus far on the IBU Cup success has been a little harder to come by with just one top 30. But to be fair he’s just 21 years old.
Larsson actually had some of the best success of his career this summer at the Swedish Summer Championships. In the roller skiing championships he won bronze behind only Samuelsson and Ponsiluoma. Then in the Junior Competitions he won gold in both Sprint and Mass Start. Really hard to have a better Summer Champs than that right?
His performance on the skis isn’t so hard to figure out. That’s clearly been his strength at every level. Even last year on the IBU Cup he was 39th in overall skiing. And on the Junior levels he was clearly exceptionally strong. It’s the shooting that gives him problems. He hit just 59% overall in seven races on the IBU Cup. That included just 46% standing shooting. If we start to see improved shooting then I’m going to be very excited.
Oscar Andersson (21)
Young Oscar Andersson actually already has 13 IBU Cup races in his career compared to just 7 Junior Cup races. However since he didn’t race any IBU Cup last season, and he’s only 21, I’m going to focus just on his Junior Cup racing.
At Youth Worlds in 2020-2021 he looked amazing with finishes of 7th and 4th followed by a bronze in Pursuit. Moving up to Junior Worlds the last two years he hasn’t quite hit quite the same level. Over those four races he has a best finish of 19th in the 21-22 Individual in Soldier Hollow.
It’s unclear what exactly has happened as he went from being significantly faster than his peers to just about average. On the IBU Cup he remains on the slower side of things. Meanwhile his shooting, on both Junior and IBU Cup has dropped from mid 80s to the mid 70s. Andersson needs to get his mojo back.
Henning Lindh Ten Berg (19)
The man with the longest name on the list is bringing up the rear. To be fair, he’s also the youngest. He has just three races to his IBU Career after making his debut last season. He raced at Youth Worlds in Kazakhstan and finished 46th in the Individual, 13th in the Sprint, and 33rd in the Pursuit. It was a pretty up and down introduction but his ski ranks the last two races were 23rd and 24th. His shooting was really up and down hitting 90% in the Sprint but also just 55% in the Pursuit. The only consistency was that he was that his shooting time was 30-31 seconds in each race. The goal for Linh Ten Berg this season? More racing!
One thought on “Sweden 2023-2024 Team Preview”