(Article written before race of March 6, 2025)
The Men’s World Cup Overall has seen absolute dominance over the last 13 years, first by Martin Fourcade and now by Johannes Thingnes Boe. As the third trimester of the 2024-2025 World Cup season kicks off this week in Nove Mesto there is a real chance that for just the 2nd time in this era somebody other than those two men will hoist the Overall Globe at the end of the season. Just like the women’s race, the men’s competition will come down to two men: perennial favorite Johannes Thingnes Boe and Sturla Holm Laegreid.
Over the last 13 seasons Johannes Thingnes Boe has written himself in the biathlon history books. He’s at least in consideration for one of the greatest of all time alongside Martin Fourcade and Ole Einar Bjoerndalen. Personally, I already consider him to be the best biathlete we’ve ever seen but I’m not going to dissuade somebody who prefers one of the other two. This year, if he could finish off the Overall title would bring him his 6th Overall Globe, one ahead of Bjoerndalen and one shy of Fourcade. It’s a big year for the final argument on the legacy of one of the greatest of all time.
Sturla Holm Laegreid, meanwhile, certainly isn’t a surprise contender. He quite nearly stole the globe from Boe’s grasp in the 2020-2021 season. He even donned the Yellow bib in the final race of the season before falling just short. That year he was a remarkably young contender for the Overall. Since then Laegreid has finished 2nd in the Overall two more times before “slipping” to 4th last year. Now he is entering what promise to be the prime years of his career and coming off of a very good 2nd trimester where he took advantage of JT Boe’s less than stellar performances with very good racing of his own, to take over the top spot in the standings.
| Athlete | Current Score (Points Back) |
| Sturla Holm Laegreid 🇳🇴 | 854 |
| Johannes Thingnes Boe 🇳🇴 | 806 (-48) |
| Eric Perrot 🇫🇷 | 585 (-269) |
| Emilien Jacquelin 🇫🇷 | 567 (-287) |
| Tarjei Boe 🇳🇴 | 553 (-301) |
| Sebastian Samuelsson 🇸🇪 | 549 (-305) |
| Vebjoern Soerum 🇳🇴 | 491 (-363) |
| Quentin Fillon Maillet 🇫🇷 | 490 (-364) |
| Tommaso Giacomel 🇮🇹 | 465 (-389) |
| Fabien Claude 🇫🇷 | 437 (-417) |
We’ll take a look at everybody in the top six but we are primarily going to focus on the two men who are contesting this Overall battle. I still expect the rest of the field to continue to put forth maximum effort but there doesn’t appear to be much of a pathway to the Globe for them.
The Extreme Outsider Contenders
🇸🇪 Sebastian Samuelsson
| Statistic | Current Rank |
| Overall Rank/Points | 549 (-305) |
| Points Per Race Needed to Make Up | 43.5 |
| Average Finish | 14.2 (34.6pts/race) |
| Podium Percentage | 14.2% |
| Overall Ski Rank | 3rd |
| Back from Median | -3.93% |
| Shooting Percentages | 76%/87.3%/81.7% (66th) |
| Shooting Speed | 26.9 seconds (39th) |
Yet another very good year from Sebastian Samuelsson who is well on his way to another top 6 finish if not better. At this point we’ve just come to expect this from him as he rides his high-level ski speed to occasional podiums and wins. Unfortunately, his shooting keeps him from being consistently good as represented by his 14.2% podium percentage as he’s finished in the top three just two out of 14 races. It’s that inconsistency, plus his very large deficit, that makes it highly unlikely we would see any sort of miracle charge from him.
🇳🇴 Tarjei Boe
| Statistic | Current Rank |
| Overall Rank/Points | 553 (-301) |
| Points Per Race Needed to Make Up | 43 |
| Average Finish | 10.6 (41.8pts/race) |
| Podium Percentage | 33.3% |
| Overall Ski Rank | 12th |
| Back from Median | -2.95% |
| Shooting Percentages | 95.6%/82.9%/89.2% (11th) |
| Shooting Speed | 28.5 seconds (55th) |
The final season of Tarjei Boe’s illustrious career, although we didn’t know it then, certainly didn’t start out too well. Over the first two weeks of the season he had three top 10 in five races but nothing better than 7th. He was actually sat for the Sprint in Annecy-le Grand Bornand but responded in a big way to win the Mass Start. Since then he’s looked much more like the Tarjei Boe we know and love with significantly better ski speed and actually excellent shooting. Over his last seven World Cup races he has four top 2 finishes including two victories. He’s back up to 5th in the Overall and is on pace for an 8th consecutive top 6 Overall finish and the 10th in his career. Unfortunately even with this amazing run he went on from the Mass Start in le Grand Bornand through Antholz he still appears to be too far out of contention. Needing 43 points per race on JT Boe and Laegreid is a huge ask.
🇫🇷 Emilien Jacquelin
| Statistic | Current Rank |
| Overall Rank/Points | 567 (-287) |
| Points Per Race Needed to Make Up | 41 |
| Average Finish | 14.8 (35.8pts/race) |
| Podium Percentage | 28.6% |
| Overall Ski Rank | 11th |
| Back from Median | -3.13% |
| Shooting Percentages | 86.7%/78%/82.3% (59th) |
| Shooting Speed | 24.3 seconds (9th) |
Emilien Jacquelin’s resurgence over the last 1.5 seasons has been exceptionally fun. The key to his return really seems to be an embrace of who he is. Fast, aggressive, go for broke shooting. Sometimes it works out like it has with his four podiums including his win in Kontiolahti. Sometimes it hasn’t. Unfortunately of late he seems to be falling back to where he was in the 2022-2023 season. He doesn’t seem to be nearly as joyous and he hasn’t had a top 10 since the Ruhpolding Mass Start. Even with how he was performing when he was doing well this year it is unlikely that he could have made a run at the Overall what with his inconsistency. As he appears now, especially in Lenzerheide, I can’t imagine him making too much of a run.
🇫🇷 Eric Perrot
| Statistic | Current Rank |
| Overall Rank/Points | 585 (-269) |
| Points Per Race Needed to Make Up | 38.4 |
| Average Finish | 7.9 (44.9pts/race) |
| Podium Percentage | 14.3% |
| Overall Ski Rank | 9th |
| Back from Median | -3.23% |
| Shooting Percentages | 87.3%/94%/90.7% (7th) |
| Shooting Speed | 26 seconds (25th) |
Eric Perrot is really just a small step away from being in the real contenders list. Yes he’s 269 points back which means needing to make up 38.4 points per race. That’s technically feasible but highly unlikely. It would at the very least require Laegreid and JT Boe to miss the podium every single race from here on out which just isn’t going to happen. I saw just a small step, though, because there are no huge holes in his performance. Very good skier. Excellent shooter. Shoots fast enough. Looking at his finishes there is nothing bad. He’s been top 15 all season. He just needs to move a few of those 10-15 range finishes into top 10’s and a few more of those top 10’s into top 5’s and podiums. So, while I expect Perrot to have a great finish and is my bet to finish #3 in the Overall, I think this year he remains out of real contention. Next year though, especially with JT Boe retiring, I think he’s going to be right in the mix for the Globe.
The Real Contenders
🇳🇴 Johannes Thingnes Boe
| Statistic | Current Rank |
| Overall Rank/Points | 806 (-48) |
| Points Per Race Needed to Make Up | 6.9 |
| Average Finish | 9.3 (59.6pts/race) |
| Podium Percentage | 57.1% |
| Overall Ski Rank | 1st |
| Back from Median | -4.41% |
| Shooting Percentages | 86.7%/84%/85.3% (33rd) |
| Shooting Speed | 25.3 seconds (16th) |
If I had written this just after Antholz, which I nearly did, the section on JT Boe would have looked much different. The 2nd trimester he just didn’t look anything like himself. Just two podium finishes, the worst finish of his entire career happening in Ruhpolding, announcing his retirement…it was all just so strange.
Well, I’m not writing it after Antholz, I’m writing it after Lenzerheide where in the individual races he took home two gold medals in the Sprint and Pursuit as well as a bronze (nearly silver!) in the Mass Start. While compared to his own sky high standards that he set over the last two seasons he didn’t look nearly as strong, nigh on unbeatable, as we expect him to be, he was still definitively the strongest man at the World Championships. Ultimately what wins Overall Globes? Being the strongest man of that particular season. He doesn’t have to measure up to his own historical greatness, just be the strongest man the rest of the way to Oslo.
What we’ve seen in his statistics is that he can do that. No, he’s not as fast as he was the last few seasons, but he’s plenty fast enough. In fact he still on average the fastest man on the World Cup. He’s definitely not hitting as well as he did last year. In the 2nd trimester he hit 90% of better just once. At Worlds, though, he improved a bit as he went 10/10 in the Sprint and 18/20 in the Pursuit. That was good enough with his speed for 2 gold medals!
Johannes Thingnes Boe isn’t the dominating force that we saw in 2022-2023. He doesn’t measure up to the man that we saw that ran away from the field in the second half of the 2023-2024 season. But he may just be strong enough to add one more Globe to his legacy.
🇳🇴 Sturla Holm Laegreid
| Statistic | Current Rank |
| Overall Rank/Points | 854 |
| Points Per Race Needed to Make Up | N/A |
| Average Finish | 5.2 (58pts/race) |
| Podium Percentage | 57.1% |
| Overall Ski Rank | 7th |
| Back from Median | -3.26% |
| Shooting Percentages | 95.3%/90%/92.7% (2nd) |
| Shooting Speed | 25.7 seconds (21st) |
After an excellent 2nd trimester including two victories and two 2nd place finishes Sturla Holm Lægreid stole Yellow off Johannes Thingnes Bø’s shoulders and will wear it as the races kick off in Nove Mesto. Over those three weeks of racing, outside of the Individual in Ruhpolding, he was tremendous. He skied well, consistently in the top 10. He hit 93/100 shots with no days hitting less than 90%. His shooting time, never slow, was getting better every week too as Antholz was the fastest shooting of his season to date.
So if he looked so good and so dominant why isn’t he the favorite? Well we’ve seen racing since then. In the four races in Antholz he was consistently outshone by JT Bø. He finished 9th, 4th, 15th, and 🥈. The only time he beat Bø was in the Mass Start when he finished ahead of Bø only because of a last second sprint.
If we hadn’t seen the racing in Lenzerheide I would be thinking Lægreid was the odds on favorite to win the Overall. Now though…?
Bottom line: Sturla Holm Lægreid has all of the talent to win the Overall Globe. We saw it all on display in amazing fashion as he stormed to the head of the leaderboard in the 2nd trimester. The only questions are 1) Can he keep up that level (and after Lenzerheide that is a question) and 2) Is JT Bø just back to being too good to beat?
Johannes Thingnes Boe (NOR) – IBU World Cup Biathlon, trophies, Canmore (CAN). http://www.biathlonworld.com © Manzoni/IBU.
Final Thoughts
We start the final trimester of racing with a razor thin margin. Just 48 points with seven races to go means it’s a difference of under 7 points per race. This competition could go any number of ways and I wouldn’t be surprised. JT Bø wins by a lot? Close all the way to the last race? Lægreid ultimately extends his margin? I would believe all of them.
My take on the last 2 months of racing is that it won’t reflect what we are about to see this month. JT Bø clearly came into Oberhof without his best form. Furthermore he was likely mentally not completely as sharp as he would like to be as he announced his retirement after the worst finish of his World Cup career, 85th in the Ruhpolding Individual. In top of that Sturla Holm Lægreid showed some of the best form we have seen from him in the last couple of seasons.
If you were to make me bet on the outcome I’m betting on Johannes Thingnes Bø. It’s his last chance. You know he’s going to empty the tank. Yes the pressure is going to mount at the end of the season. Yes he hasn’t had the best shooting of his career. But back against the wall, last chance to shine, I can’t imagine him not going out in glory. If Laegreid wins I won’t be stunned. He’s awesome. He will compete for many more Globes. I just think this one last year belongs to JT Bø.