The weather sure was gross, but the racing was absolutely on fire. (Okay that was pretty cliché, but it was true!). The fans in Oslo, both the native Norwegians and everybody who made the pilgrimage to one of biathlon’s holy sites, have my utmost respect. The weather truly was gross with temperatures just at touch above freezing along with wind, rain, and fog. But the fans were there every day and they were loud. Thank you Oslo fans, and all over Europe, for being so terrific this winter even in some trying conditions!
And it really is true. Even though we started off with a postponement, the racing didn’t miss a beat. Every day there were truly heart pounding moments. So let’s get to them! Just a reminder these are the “new version” where I’m trying (trying!) to stay brief
The Winners – Top Performers of the Week
Nations Medal Table for the Week
| Nation | Medals |
| Norway 🇳🇴 | 🥇🥇🥇🥇🥇🥈🥉🥉 |
| Sweden 🇸🇪 | 🥈🥈🥈🥉 |
| France 🇫🇷 | 🥇🥈🥉 |
| Switzerland 🇨🇭 | 🥇 |
| Germany 🇩🇪 | 🥈 |
| Finland 🇫🇮 | 🥉 |
Athlete Medal Table for the Week
| Athlete | Medals |
| Sturla Holm Laegreid 🇳🇴 | 🥇🥇 |
| Ingrid Landmark Tandrevold 🇳🇴 | 🥇 |
| Lena Haecki-Gross 🇨🇭 | 🥇 |
| Tarjei Boe 🇳🇴 | 🥈 |
| Elvira Oeberg 🇸🇪 | 🥈 |
| Benedikt Doll 🇩🇪 | 🥈 |
| Julia Simon 🇫🇷 | 🥈 |
| Vetle Sjaastad Christiansen 🇳🇴 | 🥉 |
| Ida Lien 🇳🇴 | 🥉 |
| Jesper Nelin 🇸🇪 | 🥉 |
| Lou Jeanmonnot 🇫🇷 | 🥉 |
Men’s Athlete of the Week: Sturla Holm Laegreid – How are you going to compete with the man who won both of the non-relay race this week? He won the Individual in fairly solid fashion with perfect shooting and by a solid 28.5 seconds. He followed that up with a come from behind Mass Start victory. He was in 4th and trailing by 34 seconds coming to the last shoot of the Mass Start. He was the man to go clean and came away with the victory!
It has felt like a down season for Laegreid and it’s completely understandable. His top 10 percentage this season is just 57.8% and his worst before this season was 73.9%. There are of course still 5 races to go but even a top 10 in each race, which on his current form wouldn’t be a massive surprise, would only get him to 67%. He’s skiing slower than any prior year and his shooting is definitely off.
Yet at the same time Laegreid is once again having a very successful season. He had 3 victories which is the 2nd most in his career behind the 2020-2021 season when he had 7. He just needs 2 more podiums for the 2nd most in a season in his career. He’s currently in 4th in the Overall and has a very real chance of making it to the top 3 for the 4th straight season. Laegreid’s problem is that he set the bar so dang high that anything other than excellence looks like a step back. He’s having another very good season just with a little more up and down than usual. Right now, with 4 top 2’s in the last 6 races he’s decidedly up and is racing to the finish the season on a high!
Women’s Athlete of the Week: Ingrid Landmark Tandrevold – After Nove Mesto there were all sorts of questions about where Ingrid Landmark Tandrevold was. She was still in Yellow but it looked like a VERY shaky yellow. She struggled mightily on the range, particularly with the standing shooting when she hit just 57% standing. I think we all fully expected her to either lose Yellow or hang on by a thread. Not so fast!! Ziggy Mazet told her to go and just not think about biathlon for a bit and it seemed to work it’s magic.
This week Tandrevold came back in ferocious fashion. She won the Individual with 19/20 shooting and very solid skiing. She looked not only like the woman who had earned the Yellow bib but actually better. There was a confidence in her racing, particularly in the Individual that was so reassuring to see. While she looked lost on the range in Nove Mesto that was totally gone in the Individual. The Mass Start she actually used her standing shooting to make up places going from 15th after her 2nd prone shooting all the way to 4th. Her 17/20 shooting was actually very good on a day with bad shooting.
At the end of the weekend Tandrevold’s lead grew from 30 points to over 90 points. While she had a few misses standing in the relay, her shooting in non-relay races was much much better. She hit 90% in the 2 races combined including 9/10 standing in both the Individual and Mass Start. While the last two races are going to be difficult considering they are both at altitude, she did herself a major service this week and holds the Overall Globe destiny in her hands.
Men’s Young Athlete of the Week: Eric Perrot & Campbell Wright (again) – These two were once again the best young men’s athletes. Eric Perrot continues to show how he is not only the future of the French men’s team but more and more the now. He is ranked 16th in the Overall right behind Jacquelin (14) and QFM (15) but at just 22 years old he’s significantly younger than those two men. This year he has 8 top 10’s in 20 races marking himself as a regular presence amongst the top men in the world. This week was no exception as he earned himself a 4th in the Individual.
Meanwhile, Campbell Wright, a year younger at just 21 years old, is establishing himself as the next great talent in US biathlon. His first full season in as an American biathlete got off to a slow start but has picked up steam in recent weeks. Prior to this year he had a career best of 15th which was his only top 20 finish of his career. Since the start of racing in Ruhpolding this season he has 4 top 20’s including this week an 8th in the Individual (a new career best) and 18th in the Mass Start. He’s only getting better and it is thrilling to watch!
Women’s Young Athlete of the Week: Elvira Oeberg – It’s hard to believe but Elvira Oeberg is still only 25 and still eligible for the Blue bib. I have to remind myself of that because sometimes it feels like she is running out of time. She’s got plenty of time. And peak Elvira is still something special! This week we saw another hint of it with her 2nd place finish in the Individual race. It was her first podium since Lenzerheide. That 10 race stretch without a podium was the longest stretch of her career since she had just the 3rd podium of her career back in Kontiolahti in 2021. She followed up with a 9th in the Mass Start. It wasn’t a perfect weekend but it was a massive improvement from her recent form.
Men’s Race of the Week: Mass Start – If a Mass Start is a part of a weekend chances are that it’s going to be the best race of the week. Nothing beats the intensity of head to head racing. Sometimes you get it with the Pursuit, but you are guaranteed to have it in the Mass Start at least in the beginning stages.
This time around the major moments happened in the close. With JT Boe out of running after poor shootings early on it was Tarjei Boe and Benedikt Doll running together at the head of the pack. They came to the last shooting with 22 seconds in hand on Samuelsson and 35 on a large group led by Laegreid, Christiansen, and Jacquelin. Boe and Doll had an adventurous shoot with Doll having 2 misses and Tarjei Boe 3. That left the race hanging on Samuelsson rifle but he too had 3 misses and the door opened for that huge chase group to do something magical.
Laegreid did not disappoint as he went clean and skied away for the victory. He was followed by Justus Strelow, Jesper Nelin, Philipp Nawrath, and Emilien Jacquelin. In the middle of that group Doll left the penalty loop as well meaning 5 men were racing for the last 2 podium spots. In the end Nelin and Doll separated from the pack with Doll pulling past Nelin in the latter stages of the loop. The end result, Laegreid had his 2nd victory of the weekend, Doll another podium in the final season of his career, and Jesper Nelin, at age 31, the first podium of his career!
Women’s Race of the Week: Mass Start – Just as with the men, a Mass Start makes for the best drama. And the Women’s Mass Start was full of it. The conditions were fairly awful, maybe the worst of the week outside of the Thursday fog that caused the postponement. Of the 30 women who ran the race there were 0 perfect shootings and only Tereza Vobornikova finished 19/20. As a result Lena Haecki-Gross rode her 18/20 shooting, including 10/10 standing while going head to head with Julia Simon, to the 2nd victory of her season and career! Julia Simon was viciously fast on the skis, and tried to make up ground with her fast shooting, but she faltered with 1 miss on every shooting. It goes to show how fast her skiing and shooting was that even with 4 misses, more than anybody else in the top 5, she still managed a 2nd place finish.
The real drama of the race was the race for the podium between Lou Jeanmonnot, Ingrid Landmark Tandrevold, and Lisa Vittozzi. The three of them were close together almost from the moment they left the range for the last lap of the race. Halfway through Tandrevold tried to leave them behind but she wasn’t able to. Jeanmonnot started tugging at the yoke and broke free in the last few hundred meters. Tandrevold tried to come along but just didn’t have the foot speed. Vittozzi, who has beaten Tandrevold in final sprints multiple times before got left behind. My recap doesn’t do it justice. This was a real fun last lap!
Super Sprints – A super quick hop through some top stories
Yellow Bib Updates
1.Men: JT Boe holds a 59 point lead on Tarjei Boe with 5 races to go. Tarjei just needs to make up 12 points per race and he takes home the Overall Globe in what would be an earthquake of a story. Dale-Skjevdal and Laegreid I guess are technically still in the race but it would basically take JT Boe and Tarjei Boe taking a weekend off or being sick for that to happen. Do I think Tarjei Boe will actually win this thing? No, I still think that when it comes to Canmore we’re going to see JT Boe buckle down and win it. Plus, Tarjei Boe continues to have difficulty in the high pressure last shoots.
2.Women: This is outrageous to say, but Tandrevold has a lead nearly twice as large as JT Boe. She is 93 points ahead of Lisa Vittozzi, 97 points ahead of hard charging Julia Simon, and 104 points ahead of Justine Braisaz-Bouchet. Elvira Oeberg at 150 poitns back feels like she is just a few points too far away. The Vittozzi, Simon, and Braisaz-Bouchet remain in the thick of the race though.
Tandrevold has the Globe in her hands but this is where things get tight. In Oslo she looked solid again with shooting so maybe she has things sorted out, but this is a whole new world for her. Simon obviously already has a Globe and at her best is basically unbeatable, Vittozzi seems unflappable, and Braisaz-Bouchet has super speed that can overcome her shakiness on the range.
Just for reference on how much 93 points is, 6 races ago Tandrevold was 91 points back of Justine Braisaz-Bouchet. Obviously Tandrevold had 6 races and there are only 5 left, but nobody needs to build the 93 points lead that Tandrevold currently has, they just need a 1 point advantage. This is wide open.
3. Finland to the Podium – Suvi Minkkinen and Otto Invenius joined together in the Single Mixed Relay and put together the first Finnish relay podium since 1999. That just seems unbelievable right? Like literally not believable. It was the first Finnish podium in any event since Kaisa Makarainen had the last win of her career in the Oberhof Mass Start in 2020. Finland isn’t a traditional biathlon powerhouse but with Makarainen you would have expected a Nordic nation like Finland to grab a relay podium at some point in the last 25 years. It was amazing to see Invenius coming across the line with that amazing celebration. You can tell how much they enjoyed that one!
4. Single Mixed Relay Madness – The finish in the Single Mixed relay was absolutely bananas. Sebastian Samuelsson was racing with a 4 second lead as he left the range for the last loop of the race. These are 1.5km loops and Christiansen didn’t appear to be making much ground for most of that time. Samuelsson looked over his shoulder roughly 28 times throughout that lap, especially as he closed in on the finishing stretch. After coming over the last hump it looked like he thought had the win. He was definitely still racing hard, but he looked like he thought he had it. With under 100m to go Christiansen engaged the turbos. It seriously looks like rockets start up on his skis. He comes absolutely blasting up and gets around Samuelsson. Samuelsson tried but the last lunge got Christiansen’s ski tip across the line just 0.1 seconds ahead of Samuelsson. It was wild. Christiansen looked like an absolutely hulking beast chasing down Samuelsson. I will never forget that forever.
5. Ida Lien’s Turn Around – Ida Lien’s year has been one of the stories of the season. After a disappointing 2022-2023 and substandard preseason test racing she started the season on the local Norwegian circuit. She got an opportunity to race the IBU Cup and immediately made it count. In just her 2nd race she went from 16th to 2nd. She scored three more IBU Cup podiums and went to the European Championships fighting for a chance to get to the World Championships. It came down to her vs. Maren Kirkeeide for the final spot. While Kirkeeide had better solo races with two victories to Lien’s one win and two 4th place finishes, Lien’s relay performance likely paved the way for the path to the World Championships.
Worlds didn’t go spectacularly well, but she maintained her roster spot for the World Cup in Oslo. With fairly low expectations in what is generally her worst discipline Lien turned in what was absolutely the best performance of her career. A 19/20 shooting performance including a perfect 10/10 to close the race and she raced to her first career podium. What a career turn around in just a few short months!
6. Mixed Relay Sadness – 23 nations started the Mixed Relay. 13 were lapped. 10 nations finished. There are likely many factors, not the least of which is the women went first and the men had the 2 closing laps. However, it’s just not something you want to see.
Flower Ceremony – We’ll recap some top finishes from the week!
🥉🇳🇴Ida Lien – Mass Start. First career podium as covered above
🥉🇸🇪Jesper Nelin – Mass Start. 150 non-relay races in the World Cup and he finally gets his first career podium in the 151st. Nelin has had a solid career with a 2018 Olympic relay gold and three World Championship relay medals. However, this was his first solo trip to the podium. Congratulations!
5th 🇨🇿Tereza Vobornikova – Individual. Prior career best was 6th in the Sprint in Oslo last season. I think she likes it there!
8th 🇺🇸Campbell Wright – Individual. Before this his career best was 12th in the Ruhpolding Sprint this season. As noted above 4 of his 5 career bests are this season!
12th 🇳🇴Maren Kirkeeide – Individual. Back to the World Cup she gets a big career best of 25th. Prior career best was 25th in the Oslo Sprint last season.
14th 🇮🇹Hanna Auchentaller – Mass Start. Prior career best was 17th in the 22-23 Oestersund Individual. She also finished 20th in the Individual this week which stands as her 3rd best career finish.
18th 🇩🇪Johanna Puff – Individual. Just her 3rd career race she finished 18th. Her two prior races she finished 61st in the Lenzerheide Sprint and 35th in the Antholz Short Individual.
22nd 🇸🇰Zusana Remenova – Individual. Prior career best was 44th in the Oestersund Pursuit to start this season.
24th 🇦🇹Lea Rothschopf – Individual. It was her debut on the World Cup! Congratulations!
24th 🇸🇪Viktor Brandt – Individual. Surpasses prior career best of 32 in Short Individual in Antholz this year.
25th 🇸🇪Anna Karin-Heijdenberg – Individual. Another World Cup debut!
Penalty Loop 
I really appreciate this recap. I was unable to catch the action and now have to got watch whatever I can find. Seeing Vetle’s charge seems like a must!
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