Men’s Overall Big Picture

As the first trimester has come to a close, and we turn our eyes to the remainder of the season, we’ve come to the point where true contenders separate away from the rest of the field. In general the men’s race tends to have fewer athletes battling for the Overall Crystal Globe than the women’s race. Over the last few seasons, by the end of December it is usually clear that only a handful of men (at most) will have a chance to raise the big Globe at the end of the year.

The 2024-2025 season is following along with just about the same pattern. After starting out with some interesting winners and podium finishers in Kontiolahti, by the time we head to our two week swing in Germany you can fairly easily cut the list down to just a handful of men with a real chance at the Globe. And truthfully you can probably make the case that it is down to even fewer than that…maybe even that it’s already over. But that’s no fun now is it?!?

So first let’s take a look at the top 10 and where we stand right now:

Athlete	Current Score (Points Back)
Johannes Thingnes Boe	569
Sturla Holm Laegreid	454 (-115)
Emilien Jacquelin	373 (-196)
Eric Perrot	368 (-201)
Sebastian Samuelsson	354 (-215)
Vebjoern Soerum	310 (-259)
Philipp Nawrath	292 (-277)
Fabien Claude	260 (-309)
Martin Uldal	251 (-318)
Quentin Fillon Maillet	233 (-336)

For the purposes of this exercise I cut down the “real contenders” list to the men who I believe would have the best chance of winning the Overall should everything go right for them the rest of the way. We’re going to pretend that everybody has good health the rest of the way including no injuries and no infections. Everybody is able to race the rest of the season with no restrictions!

First we’ll run through the men who are on this list but don’t really have a chance to win the Overall. Then we’ll hit the top 5 men who I believe have a real chance, even if that chance is very small.

Quentin Fillon Maillet: He’s in the top 10 but he just doesn’t look like the same guy that won the Overall in the 2021-2022 season. Since that year in which he was absolutely unbeatable he just hasn’t been able to achieve the same success. After having 16 podiums that year he has just four total since then. This year he has just one podium and two top 5’s. While he’s already matched his total from last season, and he’s skiing near the same level as he always has, he doesn’t have the shooting to get it done. He’s hitting just 77.7% overall this season which is nowhere near where he was from 2018 through 2023 when he was consistently hitting 87-88%. He shows no signs to turn it around and being in 10th with a 336 points deficit he would need to win a TON of races and that just isn’t going to happen.

Martin Uldal – Had he started the season on the World Cup Martin Uldal would likely be in the group that does have at least some chance of winning the Overall. In his five races he has an average finish of 7.8 which is actually third best on the World Cup behind just JT Boe and Sturla Holm Laegreid. He’s just too far behind, though, with eight men ahead of him and 318 points back of JT Boe.

Fabien Claude – Fabien Claude is on his way to potentially having the 2nd top 10 Overall finish of his career. He already scored his first podium since having two in the 2020-2021 season. That’s also his only top 5 of the year. And though he does have four top 10’s, a 50% top 10 rate isn’t going to get it done. While you can win the Overall without hitting over 85%, in order to do so you need to be really freaking fast. He currently has an average course time rank of 10.4 and unfortunately that’s just not going to get to the top of the Overall. However, he’s still having an awesome year!

Philipp Nawrath – 31 year old Philipp Nawrath has really had a nice last few seasons in his career. My personal expectations for him were never extremely high and he’s on track to not just have his third top 20 Overall finish in the last four seasons, but also a career best Overall finish possibly in the top 10. After having three podiums last season he has another this year and with five top 10’s he’s already matched the most in his career! While he’s not skiing any faster than he ever has in his career, currently ranking 14th overall in skiing, he’s hitting targets at the highest rate of his career with an 87.7% hit rate including his career best 81.5% standing shooting. This is a great season he’s having but let’s be honest, it’s not going to be near enough to challenge the top of the Overall. If he has a great rest of the season he very well could have the first top 10 Overall of his career though!

Vebjoern Soerum – Vebjoern Soerum is the first man that I think you could make a legitimate argument for. However, I still think he has a 0% chance to win. Soerum’s case would be his skiing. he’s currently running as the third fastest man on the World Cup behind just JT Boe and Sebastian Samuelsson. In eight races he already has three top 5’s which is more than the two he had in 13 races last season. He also has six top 10’s in eight races. The problem is if you’re going to challenge for the Overall you need to be on the podium regularly and so far this season he has 0 podiums. I think he ultimately finishes with a handful of podiums this season, but so far his shooting percentage of just 82.3% is holding him back. While I don’t think he’s going to challenge for the Overall this season I think a top 5 Overall finish could definitely happen.

Okay…now on to the men who at least have an argument at being in the race! They are ordered by how likely I think they are to win in ascending order (most likely is at the bottom of this list. I think you know who it is going to be!). I’ve assigned them a “percent chance” of winning the Overall globe. There is no analytics at play here. These are all just numbers I came up with off the top of my head just based on their situation right now. If you were to crunch the numbers I’m sure these wouldn’t be strictly accurate but I feel they do a good job of giving a picture of where we are now and their chances of winning this thing. (And yes, they do add up to 100%!)

Sebastian Samuelsson

Statistic	Current Rank
Overall Rank/Points	5th / 354 (-215)
Average Finish	9.9 (Rank = 6th)
Podium Percentage	25%
Overall Ski Rank	2nd
Back from Median	-4.63%
Shooting Percentages	80.8/84.6/76.9 (Rank = 40)
Shooting Speed	26.4 seconds (Rank = 24)

Sebastian Samuelsson, as is usually the case, came into the season hot. He finished 2nd in the first Sprint of the season 1 miss, and 18.9 seconds, behind Emilien Jacquelin. Since then he has finished in the top 10 every single race. Really the only bad finish he has was 39th in the Short Individual to start the season. He’s been top 6 in ever Sprint and Pursuit while he’s been 10th in both Mass Starts.

Not surprisingly the key to Sebastian Samuelsson’s performance thus far has been his skiing. He’s been the 2nd fastest man this season behind only Overall leader JT Boe. That’s important because he’s hitting just 80.8% this season including 76.9% standing. Not to put too fine a point on it but you just can’t challenge for the Overall with shooting like that. It’s actually his worst shooting season since he hit the same 80.8% in the 2019-2020 season. Thankfully there are still three months to go so hopefully we’ll see those numbers tick up a bit!

It’s actually fairly impressive that he’s been able to finish as high as he has in some of these races with this shooting. In the Kontiolahti Mass Start he was 15/20 and still finished 10th. In the Annecy Pursuit he started in 3rd and was able to hold on to 5th once again only hitting 15/20. For most athletes a shooting day like that would be disastrous and he still turned them into decent to good finishes! That’s just how good his skiing has been this year.

So can he win the Overall? Sure. I would never rule out anybody who is skiing like that who shoots better than Jeremy Finello. Is it likely? Absolutely not. I only put it at 5% because I wanted to round everything to 5% intervals. It’s more like 1% and would need a miracle. But who knows. If he starts hitting 90% or better next month (highly unlikely!) then I might need to revisit that.

Chance of winning the Overall Globe: 5%

Eric Perrot

Statistic	Current Rank
Overall Rank/Points	4th / 368 (-201)
Average Finish	7.9 (Rank = 4th)
Podium Percentage	25%
Overall Ski Rank	16th
Back from Median	-2.53%
Shooting Percentages	92.3/89.2/95.3 (Rank = 8)
Shooting Speed	26.4 seconds (Rank = 22)

Everybody please welcome 23 year old Eric Perrot to the Overall Globe race! Once compared to a young Martin Fourcade he has fought his way into the top 5 this season! He actually wore Yellow for the first time in his career after he won the Mass Start. Unfortunately he was not able to hold on to it, but it was a great experience for him to have!

Eric Perrot has gotten himself into this position on the back of his very accurate rifle. So far this season he’s hitting 92.3% including a superb 95.3% standing. That means that so far this season he’s missed just three standing shots. That’s just three penalty loops in the 2nd half of races in the first eight races of the season. It’s an incredible weapon to be able to make up that much ground in your standing shooting. It’s allowed him to make up for the fact that compared to his other contenders for the Overall, the ski speed just isn’t quite there yet.

Ultimately the lack of ski speed is what is going to keep him from really challenging for the Overall this season. For example even hitting 19/20 in the Short Individual and 100% in the Annecy-le Grand Bornand Sprint he wasn’t able to make it to the top 5. He’s still just 23 so that ski speed will likely come. It just likely won’t come this season so competing in the Overall likely won’t happen especially since he’s already 200 points behind. However, with a hit rate of 92.3%, if he’s able to keep that up, he’s going to keep collecting top 10’s and a few more podiums this season. He likely ends up right around 5th in the Overall unless he finds the ski speed, which may come at any time!

Chance of winning the Overall Globe: 5%

Emilien Jacquelin

Statistic	Current Rank
Overall Rank/Points	3rd / 373 (-196)
Average Finish	9.0 (Rank = 5th)
Podium Percentage	37.5%
Overall Ski Rank	5th
Back from Median	-3.85%
Shooting Percentages	84.6/89.2/80 (Rank = 35)
Shooting Speed	24.5 seconds (Rank = 9)

First of all, how great is it to have Emilien Jacquelin back in this position. Back in the 2021-2022 season he was actually leading Quentin Fillon Maillet at this exact point of the season. Through the first four weekends of racing he had eight top 10s, four podiums, and a win which came in the Annecy-le Grand Bornand Mass Start leading to the picture below. Unfortunately his season quickly deteriorated after that. He had a 2nd in the Oberhof Sprint coming out of the break. Then he had just one top 10 in the next five races leading up to the Olympics. He finished the year falling down to 5th in the Overall. The following season got off to a fast start with four top 5’s in the first five races before things got a little loose. After a disappointing World Championships he ended his season early. Last year he got off to a slow start but ended the season with a bang finding the top 5 in his last six races of the season.

That brings us to this season where he is currently 3rd in the Overall. He has a win, his first since that amazing Mass Start that put him in the Yellow bib in December of 2021. He also has two more podiums in each of the Pursuits.

The key to Jacquelin’s performance so far this season is exactly what you think it is: skiing and shooting speed. Jacquelin is skiing at a level he never has in his career. He is 3.8% faster than the median biathlete and just 0.1% slower than the median top 10. That puts his average ski rank of 6.9 this season compared to his career best of 11.1 last season. He is also shooting nearly as fast as ever. He’s averaging 21.4 seconds per shoot. That’s only slower than last season’s 20.2 seconds. This even includes an uncommonly slow 31.3 second avg shoot in the Hochfilzen Sprint which was his slowest shooting day since the first race of the 2022-2023 season. In his 156 career races that was the 9th slowest shooting day of his career and only the 20th time he’s had an average shooting time of slower than 30 seconds.

So the only reason he is at 3 podiums in eight races vs. four or five is his shooting. He’s hitting just 84.6% which is well behind JT Boe’s 88.5% and Sturla Holm Laegreid’s 92.3%. That includes four different races shooting 80% or worse. You just can’t win the Overall with that hit rate unless you’re skiing like top notch JT Boe and he’s just not quite there.

Can Emilien Jacquelin win the Overall Globe? Sure he can, but it’s going to take a type of shooting we haven’t seen him from him maybe ever. He has the ski speed that can win race, and shooting speed that can really pressure his competitors especially in a tight race. The major problems are twofold: 1) He has to shoot very well and we haven’t seen that since the 2020-2021 season when he hit 87.4% and 2) He has to do it a lot because he’s nearly 200 points back of JT Boe and that’s a HUGE gap to make up.

Chance of winning the Overall Globe: 5%

Sturla Holm Laegreid

Statistic	Current Rank
Overall Rank/Points	2nd / 454 (-115)
Average Finish	4.4 (Rank = 2nd)
Podium Percentage	50%
Overall Ski Rank	9th
Back from Median	-3.28%
Shooting Percentages	92.3/96.9/87.7 (Rank = 7)
Shooting Speed	25.9 seconds (Rank = 19)

In what is becoming a pattern that I’m sure is at least a little frustrating to Sturla Holm Laegreid he is once again having a very very good year, but he’s once again running behind Johannes Thingnes Boe. For example, in the 2022-2023 season Sturla Holm Laegreid did what should have won him the Overall. He had 15 podiums and 20 top 5’s in 22 races. That’s an incredible podium rate! Yet he finished a wild 491 points behind JT Boe who was having the best single season by a male biathlon.

If you just look at Laegreid’s statistics he definitely has the profile of somebody who should be in contention for the Overall Globe if not the outright front runner. He’s 9th overall in skiing and 7th in shooting at 92.3% which is the best of those men in contention. His average finish is a terrific 4.4 which would have been the best on the World Cup in three of the last five seasons. He has four podiums and six top 5’s in the eight races this season. His “worst” finish of the year is 9th. He has 454 points, which is just 30 points fewer than eventual Overall Globe winner JT Boe had at this same point last season. Yet he’s in 2nd place a whopping 115 points behind JT Boe with a larger deficit than last season’s 2nd place Tarjei Boe had at this point last year

Can he win the Globe? Absolutely. Just as noted above he’s doing everything that we would normally see from somebody who would be able to win the Overall. The only problem is the next man on this list: JT Boe. However, any time you’re getting a podium every other time out you can’t be counted out. I just don’t think it’s going to be enough to take down the king.

Chance of winning the Overall Globe: 10%

Johannes Thingnes Boe

Statistic	Current Rank
Overall Rank/Points	1st / 569
Average Finish	3.0 (Rank = 1st)
Podium Percentage	75%
Overall Ski Rank	1st
Back from Median	-4.71%
Shooting Percentages	88.5/92.3/84.6 (Rank = 20)
Shooting Speed	26.3 seconds (Rank = 21)

Here’s the thing…just compare the numbers for JT Boe to all of the rest of the men. It’s no surprise that he’s leading and by a fairly large margin. It feels like he hasn’t been as dominant as usual and yet he’s still averaging a podium finish. He’s once again the fastest man in biathlon. He’s the 20th best shooter and having the 4th most accurate season of his career. He’s shooting faster on average than he ever has before. If you add up the numbers for the other men you know that I set JT Boe’s chances at winning the Overall at 75%. That’s a gross under estimate. Truly it’s more like 95%…but that’s just not as much fun.

The only “weakness” one might point to in his biathlon right now is that he’s not *as fast* as he normally is. Well regardless of how he’s skiing he’s still the fastest man in the field. Also, there is some indication that he’s getting faster. Pursuits and Mass Starts can be dictated by the dynamics of the race. For example in the Annecy-le Grand Bornand he wasn’t under much stress so he didn’t need to go full out the entire race making him look slower than some of his competitors when he is really just running a smart race. So the best way to analyze pure speed is to look at a Sprint where he’s going hard the entire race. He’s run three Sprint races and compared to the field he’s getting faster every week:
– Kontiolahti Sprint: -6.4%
– Hochfilzen Sprint: -7.1%
– Annecy-le Grand Bornand Sprint: -7.8%
– 2023-2024 Avg Sprint: 7.6%

So his skiing vs the field may have started out a little off his peak, but he’s built up pretty quickly towards where he was last season which turned into a fairly comfortable Overall Globe victory. It’s safe to say that with his skiing where it is now, plus shooting 88.5% and the fastest shooting of his career, that he’s quickly moving towards a top form that we’ve seen to be nearly unbeatable.

Normally I would go back and compare his lead now vs the last 10 seasons. However, the change in scoring before last season makes that fairly unhelpful. So the only season we can compare to with the same scoring is last season. At this point last season JT Boe lead his brother Tarjei Boe by 73 points. Compare that to JT Boe’s currently lead on Sturla Holm Laegreid of 115 points. We know also that JTB went on to win last season’s Overall Globe by 182 points. That doesn’t tell the whole story because Tarjei Boe was within 47 points with four races remaining. JT Boe of course went on to win the final four races. I think deep down none of us ever really thought the title was in doubt last season.

To summarize JT Boe’s season thus far, while he’s not racing at the absolute best level we’ve ever seen him, but he’s getting stronger as the season goes on. If he follows his current pace he will he will end up with 9-10 wins and 18-20 podiums. That means he’s on pace to meet or exceed his averages for his Globe winning seasons in regards to wins and podiums
– 2018-2019: 16 wins and 19 podiums
– 2019-2020: 10 wins and 13 podiums (missed 4 races on paternity leave)
– 2020-2021: 4 wins and 14 podiums
– 2022-2023:19 wins and 22 podiums
– 2023-2024: 11 wins and 15 podiums

As with every season you have to compare to the other men battling for the Overall Globe. Clearly JT Boe is the class of the field at this point. I put his chances at 75%, but if we’re being true to the goals of this exercise, how we would expect them to perform given good health and no injuries, frankly I would be stunned if Johannes Thingnes Boe didn’t take home a 6th Overall Globe this season.

Chance of winning the Overall Globe: 75%

So what’s the grand takeaway then? JT Bø is the HEAVY favorite to win his 5th career Overall Globe. That’s not to say somebody else can’t win it, but JT Bø is in control of his own fate. As they say in tennis, the competition is on his racket. It’s his to win and either he does as we all expect or we will be surprised to see him stumble.