Farewell to Johannes

Johannes Thingnes Bø retires, a writer mourns

Johannes Thingnes Bø is, perhaps, the greatest sportsperson you’ve never heard of. In fact, it’s possible you don’t even know his sport. But I’ll explain everything.

If you’re one of those people, like me, that watches at least one or two random sports during each Olympics, then you’ve possibly watched biathlon before. It’s the incredible sport that combines Nordic Skiing with rifle shooting. It, literally, is fire and ice. I fell in love with it at the Beijing 2022 Winter Games.

To be a top biathlete, you need immense skill and calm for shooting, but also otherworldly athleticism. I won’t go into the minutiae of the different formats here but, as an example, I’ll briefly explain a Mass Start. The 30 top athletes begin at the same time. They ski and then shoot Prone (the one where you lie down on a mat), twice. Then they ski and have two Stand shoots.

That’s the basic gist of it. And if you miss a shot, you have to ski an extra 150 metres, on a penalty loop. That’s an extra 150 metres for each missed shot. It’s brutal. And is often chaotic.

So to master the sport, you need to be a supreme athlete, both mentally and physically.

To win almost a third of all the races you’ve ever entered, as a professional, is basically unheard of.

And yet, that is precisely what the great J.T. Bø has done, over the course of a record-breaking career.

And now it’s all over. He originally planned to retire after the Milano-Cortina Winter Olympics, in 2026 but decided to call time on his glittering career a season earlier.

It’s a shame because he was so close to taking almost every record going. He holds most of them but, like tantalus, a few major ones are agonisingly close. Ole Einar Bjørndalen’s total win record of 95, across World Cups, World Championships, and Olympics is safe. Bø remains on 91 wins for his career. Although, again, it is worth pointing out that Johannes’ win ratio is a staggering 32.7%, compared with Ole’s (also astonishing by normal standards) 19.9%.

Here a few of the numbers, for context:

Johannes Thingnes Bø Career Stats

As with all great athletes though, the genuinely iconic ones, he had something more than an extraordinary winning rate. More than Olympic and World Championship golds. Something special. Something extra.

Watch him at his peak, circa 2022-2023 season, and you’ll understand. He was doing things that seemed impossible before him. Missing 2 or 3 shots and still finishing 30+ seconds ahead of people who had only missed one. He was still doing it last year. Coming from 17th place in a Pursuit to win. Not just occasionally but seemingly every single race meet.

He hit a superhuman peak, that only few athletes in history ever reach. Think Usain Bolt or Lionel Messi and you’re about there.

He was a showman too. He’d hit the last standing 5 shots, like he was firing from a machine-gun, then mock-shush the crowd. Or make a James Bond pose on the finish line.

But, of course, it is worth mentioning his 5 Olympic Gold medals, his 23 World Championship golds, the 5 Overall World Cup titles. Because, frankly, that is quite ridiculous too. And that’s before we get onto his total medals, individual discipline titles and so on.

I’m going to miss him. His brother, Tarjei too. They are both retiring now and Bødiums will be a thing of the past. Tarjei deserves his own article, with his 12 World Championship gold medals, 3 Olympic golds and so on. But that’s for another time.

His peak coincided with me falling in love with biathlon. A period of near-total Norwegian dominance. Of Marte Olsbu Røiseland and Tiril Eckhoff. Of Sturla Holm Lægreid coming second every season - a genuinely great biathlete whose time has finally come; he won the Overall Crystal Globe in 2024-2025. Ingrid Landmark Tandrevold, the junior member, who brings joy to everyone who loves biathlon.

And now it’s over. And I’m in a period of mourning for it. It became a huge part of my life and will remain so forever. Thanks, in large part to this incredible generation of Norwegian biathletes.

It seems the time of France is now. And it will be amazing too. But nothing ever quite matches your first time.

Tusen takk, Johannes, for all of the joy you have given me. You’re a sporting immortal now.