JT Bø Answers the Question

As Johannes Thingnes Bø continues his reign of excellence over the men’s World Cup biathlon field we continue to examine his place in history. Is he one of the best ever? Is he the best ever? We are fortunate that over the last 30 years we’ve had the opportunity to see the likes of Ole Einar Bjoerndalen and Martin Fourcade. We can argue about them forever. In fact that’s something I plan on doing this summer as I put together what I would consider the Temples of the Biathlon gods. In that project we’ll take a look at the best men and women in biathlon history and where their legacy fits in the story of biathlon over the last 50ish year. (More on this later). For now though lets just focus on the latest chapter that JT Bø has authored in his own story.

Coming on the heels of the absolutely stunning 2022-2023 campaign where JT Bø laid down the greatest season in biathlon history the question was “What else might JT Bø do?” In case you forgot what he did that year let me give you a quick refresher. Bø ran 19 World Cup races. He won 16 of them including the last 11(!!) in a row. The only World Cup races that he failed to win from January 1 through the end of the season were the two races in Oestersund which he missed due to COVID. At the World Championships Bø was almost as equally amazing in winning the Sprint, Pursuit, and Individual (by a massive margin) with a bronze in the Mass Start while collecting two silvers and a bronze in the relays. All totaled in 2022-2023 JT Bø raced 23 non-relay races and won 19 of them.

His statistics were eye popping. He was BY FAR the fastest man on skis. Measured against the “median” skier he was 5.95% faster. The 2nd fastest man was Martin Ponsiluoma at 4.12% faster making it a gap of 1.83%. That equals the gap between Martin Ponsiluoma, again the 2nd fastest man, all the way down to Andrejs Rastorgujevs, the 20th fastest man. JT Bø was just on another planet. It’s like they made everybody else ski with lead weights around their ankles. In the average sprint he started with a nearly 2 penalty loop advantage. He won the World Championships Individual by over 2 full 1 minute penalties.

If that wasn’t enough he was shooting as well as he ever did in his career. He ended the year at exactly 90% overall hit rate. While in past seasons, and even this season, there was sometimes a chance that he might throw some misses in and give somebody else a chance, in the 22-23 season there was an air of finality every time he came to the standing shoot even close to the lead. You just knew he was going to knock them all down. He was so confident on the range that several times he played to the crowd including famously “shushing” the crowd before his last shot. His average shooting time for the year was 26.5 seconds. Not the fastest on the World Cup but definitely the fastest of his career.

Long story short, in 2022-2023 JT Bø was the perfect biathlete. He was nearly unbeatable. How could any man live up to that kind of expectation? What could he possible do for an encore? Or would he even try? Maybe at this stage in his career, after that kind of dominance, the World Cup was…boring? He had proven nobody could challenge him. Was there anything or anybody to drive him to be great again?

The early signs were that he wanted to take a slightly different direction this year. It started with an offseason where he had significant fall and he was bitten by a snake. Very strange. I mean can you think of another sport where the greatest practitioner of the sport gets injured and bitten by a snake in the same offseason. That’s just bizarro. He also clearly was happy to spend more time with his family. It’s not that he wasn’t training hard, he was just making sure to prioritize his wife and young children. As a dad with two young kids I can whole heartedly say I support that!

As a result he came into the season repeatedly saying that he felt that he was out of shape. It showed a little bit in the preseason races. It’s not that he looked slow. He won both races in Sjusjoen convincingly. He just was nowhere close to the blazing fast rocket-powered biathlete that we saw in 2022-2023. After one particular race he basically said he felt like a turtle out there.

When the season officially got underway in Oestersund it was clear that this was not the same JT Bø that we saw last season. He certainly wasn’t bad. He finished on the podium (3rd) in the first race of the year, but he followed that up with 18th in the Sprint and 15th in the Pursuit. He was a full 30 seconds slower than Sebastian Samuelsson in the Sprint. To be fair so was nearly everybody else, but that was something that would never have happened in 22-23. He did rebound to lead the pack in the Pursuit, though only by a handful of seconds. Meanwhile he shot 7/10 in the Sprint and 17/20 in the Pursuit, both off from where he had been the prior season.

Suddenly it seemed like there was a chance for somebody else to steal the crown. JT Bø looked mortal and open to defeat in a way that we just aren’t accustomed to seeing. Of course he had the 2021-2022 season where Quintin Fillon Maillet took the Overall title while JT Bø focused entirely on the Olympics. Other than that though we never see him look just good but not great. The speed and shooting were no longer unbeatable.

The next weekend in Hochfilzen started out with more of the same in the Sprint. Once again JT Bø had 3 misses on the range, and finished in 11th, while his brother took the win. While the speed was decent again, as he finished 2nd fastest behind Johannes Dale-Skjevdal, the shooting was just not good. This was NOT the man that dominated in 22-23.

At that moment, and without warning, is when the season completely turned around. Halfway through the first trimester of the 23-24 season JT Bø was sitting in 8th place in the Overall standings. It was still very early in the season but this was a real shocker. It didn’t last long though. The following day he pulled off the massive comeback from 11th, and 47 seconds off the lead, all the way to the top of the podium. He had just a single miss in the first shooting and rode 15/15 shooting in the last 3 trips to the range, and the fastest skiing on the course, to the victory. Okay fine, he was 1.4 seconds slower than Dale-Skjevdal but when you consider he ended up winning by 22 seconds and clearly relaxed down the stretch, I’m going to say that Bø was actually faster. Okay, that was more like it. Pulling off ridiculous comebacks is what JT Bø can do!

The next week in Lenzerheide Bø finished 2nd in the Sprint and then won both Pursuit and Mass Start. He took over the Overall lead after the Lenzerheide Pursuit race and he wore Yellow all the way to the end of the season. It got close once or twice, but deep in our hearts did we ever truly doubt JT Bø? In all over the last 21 races, including the World Championships, JT Bø won 11 times. It was still not at his 22-23 level (which was frankly ludicrous), but this was far more like the JT Bø excellence that he has made us come to expect.

So what changed? Well for one his shooting rebounded nearly to last year’s levels. Over the first four races he hit 81.7%. Over the rest of the season he hit 88.1%. As it turns out hitting your shots really helps your outcome! But when we look at last season’s dominance, while Bø was fantastic on the skis it was his consistency on the range that really allowed him to make the most of that speed.

Another way of looking at it JT Bø averaged 3.66 penalty loops for every 4 trips to the range over those first 4 races. So, for example, in a race with 4 shoots in it he would average 3.66 trips to the range. Over the remaining 21 races that dropped to just 2.4 penalty loops per every 4 trips to the range. When you consider that his average penalty loop for the season was 21.2 seconds that an improvement of 26.7 seconds in a Pursuit/Mass Start and 13.4 seconds in a Sprint. With spending significantly less time on the penalty loop (just over 1 loop per race) he can go straight to the course and really punish the competition with his top weapon, his speed.

The other thing that helped JT Bø move on from the slower than normal start to his season was that around the time of the World Championships he found his super power again. Clearly he was still fast before that. He was still regularly in the top 5 of the course time ranks with several races being the fastest. And he won four races before Worlds and you certainly don’t do that without being fast. However, from the start of Antholz through the end of the season his course time ranks were as follows: 2, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 7, 1. Oh and those races where he was 2nd and 7th? He won those.

Here’s another way to look at it. For the first 12 races of the season, from the start of the season through Ruhpolding, JT Bø was on average 5.15% faster than the median biathlete. That’s spectacular. That would lead the World Cup most seasons (if you take JT Bø out of those seasons). However, from the start of Antholz through the end of the season he was on average 6.43% faster than the median biathlete. That’s beyond excellent. If done over the course of an entire season that would be the best since Ole Einar Bjoerndalen was on average 6.94% faster than the median biathlete in 2004-2005.

This very rough plot above shows the fastest man for each season as a percent faster than the median biathlete of that year. For example, for the 2004-2005 season Ole Einar Bjoerndalen was 6.94% faster than the median biathlete of that season. Of particular note are the three unique colors. Green JT Boe’s 23-24 season from Oestersund through Ruhpolding. Yellow is JT Boe’s complete 23-24 season. Red is JT Boe’s 23-24 season from Antholz through to the end of the season.

While JT Boe started the season fairly fast (just check that Green line is well more than half of the way towards the top!), it wasn’t quite where he had been. But goodness gracious he finished the season in a wild furious sprint. 6.43% faster than the median biathlete is historically great. You can also compare him to the median top 10 skier. From Antholz through the end of the season he was 1.81% faster than the median top 10 skier. That ranks 2nd best of the last 20 seasons behind only his dominance of last season where he was 1.98% faster than the median top 10. You can look at basically any skiing statistic and from Antholz through Canmore of this season JT Boe skied at an incredible level.

For the second half of the season he was basically back to the world dominating biathlete that we’ve come to expect from JT Boe. He skied at a level far above the rest of the field, matching a level of dominance only recreated by Ole Einar Bjoerndalen…and himself. He was shooting very well. While not as well as 22-23 it was more than well enough.

JT Bø gave the field four races before he took control of the season. In those four races it was fair to ask the question “Can somebody else win the Overall?” But once he won that Pursuit race in Hochfilzen from bib 16 it was like the old JT Boe was back. And once he donned the Yellow bib for the first time he never took it off. Sure, he had a couple of periods where he was less than sensational. Over a three race stretch in Oberhoff and Ruhpolding he finished 4, 5, & 9. If that’s what is considered “less than sensational” then you’re having a pretty good season. Late in the year, when he was recovering from illness, he finished 14th in the Oslo Mass Start and 17th in the Soldier Hollow Sprint. That was the only moment that he seemed to falter and briefly give Tarjei some hope. He responded to that momentary adversity by finishing the season with four straight resounding victories to reassert his dominance.

Yes, it was fair to ask the question, but the answer seems obvious now. He’s JT Bø. When he lines up to run a race he runs to win. When he comes to the start of the season he’s aiming to collect more glory. He isn’t just measuring himself against the other men on the starting line that day or that year. It’s a competition with ghosts. Can he permanently etch his name not only amongst the greats, but at the very top? After 8 more World Cup wins, 7 more World Championship medals including 3 non-relay golds, 3 discipline globes and another Overall Globe the answer is more and more becoming yes.