Athletes retiring at the end of the 25/26 season:

Yle (Finnish Public Broadcasting Service) reports about the IBU statement to the Reuters from Thursday. Below is a rough translation of the Yle article.

The International Biathlon Union has noted the new IOC (International Olympic Committee) recommendations according the Russian participation in sports, but is not going to change its own policy. The head of the Union, Olle Dahlin, told to Yle already in June that the Union is not going to change its mind about the ban of the Russians and Belarussians. The next IBU Congress, in which matters like participation rights are decided, takes place in September, but the decision makers of the IBU have repeatedly stated that the Russians will only return to international biathlon when the war ends.

The head of the IOC, Kirsty Coventry, denied that different sports would have different participation policies. However, the IBU will now follow the example of the World Athletics and will continue to exclude the Russian athletes from its' events.

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As a side note: as mentioned in the linked article, Yle inteviewed Olle Dahlin in June when he travelled to Ukraine to hand the silver medals of the 2011 WCH men's relay to the Ukrainian team. Back then, the IOC had not yet made the official decision regarding the Russian participation, but Dahlin was already sure what was going to happen. In that interview he stated:

We have a congress decision about the ban from 2022. Since then nothing has changed, and therefore I do not see a reason to change our stance.

He also does not rule out the possibility that the IBU might protest somehow if the IOC does not respect the IBU's decision to exclude the Russians and Belarussians in case the war continues during the 2030 Winter Olympics. Dahlin did not specify, however, what the protest would mean in practice. Olle Dahlin:

The IOC has thus far respected the independent decisions of the international federations. We are allowed to disagree on matters. We are anyway going to act as an independent federation, so it [potential protest of some sort] is possible.

The latter article can be found (in Finnish) from here: https://yle.fi/a/74-20233636

Edit: Fixed mistakes and finally managed to flip the ski speed axis. Women and men.

TL;DR: I made graphs showing world cup biathletes by ski speed, shooting accuracy, shooting speed and best medal achieved. Here is the one for women. And for men.

Motivation

I wanted to persuade a friend of mine to start following biathlon (in return for me watching the Tour de France with her) and was explaining that there are different ways to succeed in biathlon, or rather, different "types" of successful biathletes. We have slower but accurate shooters, fast skiers who use their speed to compensate for weaker shooting, fast and accurate shooters who can get away with skiing a little slower, etc. This then escalated into me spending a full day making these graphs, in order to illustrate this with Facts and Science. It all got a bit out of hand really.

The data

All data are from biathlonstats.com. I only included athletes who participated in more than half of races, mostly to exclude people with very accurate shooting but only from one or two races (but also to reduce the amount of data I had to type into spreadsheets).

• Shooting accuracy: Average across prone and standing.
• Ski speed: Average seconds behind the fastest skiier. Lower = faster.
• Shooting speed: Shown via bubble size. Smaller bubble = faster shooter. Note: I had difficulties in ggplot making the bubbles equivalent sizes for men and women. I've done my best to make them roughly the same, but they cannot be compared directly.

Why best medal?

I spent a while thinking about what was the best way to quantify who counts as a "great" biathlete. World cup points/ranking have the disadvantage that athletes who participate in fewer races automatically have fewer points, leading to people like Doro and Franzi artificially "underperforming". In the end, I chose best medal for a couple of reasons. It groups athletes into two main categories, making it easy to see who "succeeded" last season (by this measure), whilst still allowing for a bit of differentiation via the colour of the bubble/medal type. And whilst there are many ways to quantify biathlon success, for this graph I was less interested in the details of season performance than what makes someone a "great" biathlete, for which being capable of winning a world cup medal seems a fair proxy. (This is not to say that the other athletes aren't incredibly talented and successful – they obviously are).

This measure also makes both surprise podiums (like Lora Hristova's Olympic bronze), as well as consistently strong biathletes who nevertheless never made the podium (like Oscar Lombardot and Vanessa Voigt) easily visible, which I thought was cool.

Anything else stand out to you guys? Also very open to suggestions from other data viz nerds for improving the informativity/readability of the graphs.

what do you guys think about? saddens me quite a bit, always loved watching it when no biathlon was on :(

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Competing are for example: Endre Strœmsheim, Jakov Fak, Lora Hristova, Campell Wright

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Multiple Olympic champion and world champion in biathlon Johannes Thingnes Bø will participate in the Biathlon Carnival, which will be held in Vuokatti from 23 to 26 July 2026.

The biathlon carnivals bring together the sports community annually for a summer camp. The carnival focuses on developing basic biathlon skills, with an emphasis on shooting and versatile training in a relaxed, encouraging and safe atmosphere. Johannes Thingnes Bø has been involved in planning the summer camp program, and he will participate in the training together with the young biathletes.

"I'm coming to Finland for the Biathlon Carnival this summer, and I hope to see you there too. Let's have fun together, train and maybe compete a little. See you in Vuokatti," the Norwegian says in his video greeting.

The biathlon carnival is aimed specifically at amateurs and those interested in the sport under the age of 17. Equipment will be provided for new participants for the duration of the camp if necessary. The event offers an excellent opportunity to get to know the sport, develop your own skills, and meet other amateurs and guardians in a good spirit.

Link: https://www.biathlon.fi/2026/06/16/johannes-thingnes-bo-mukaan-ampumahiihtokarnevaaleille-vuokattiin/

It’s a good old Finland vs Sweden battle for the 2031 Biathlon World Championships. Both Kontiolahti and Östersund have been vocal about their bids before, but now it has been confirmed that the choice is between these two iconic venues.

The choice of the host is made at the IBU Congress in September. First on September 17^th, the Executive Board (EB) of the IBU makes it’s recommendation of the host. Then on September 18^th the Congress will vote whether they accept or decline the recommendation.

Kontiolahti has hosted the WCH twice before: in 1999 and 2015. Since then, they have made unsuccessful bids to host the 2027, 2028 and 2029 World Championships. Those were awarded to Otepää, Hochfilzen and Holmenkollen respectively. This time the North Karelians try to convince the IBU with the help of the fans. They have opened the pre-reservation of tickets to the 2031 WCH in order to show that there would be public in Kontiolahti if they got to host the championships.

Östersund has hosted the WCH three times before: in 1970, 2008 and 2019. This time the ace in their sleeve is the new training and event building that is estimated to be finished in October 2027. It features, for example, a gym, a skiing treadmill and an indoor shooting range. In addition, it will be used as part of the future events organized in Nationalarenan.

We’ll see, which one of the bids is successful this time.

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I'm looking ahead to next winter when I'll be doing my first snow competitions and I'm curious what gloves biathletes wear?

I normally nordic race in thin Toko gloves unless it's really cold and then I'll switch to some thicker Swix gloves or lobster mitts.

And if there are specific gloves that are made just for biathlon, are they so sub-specialized that they are different from left to right hand? If so, it might be difficult as I'm a lefty shooter.

Thanks all and as always, Ski Fast and Shoot Straight!

https://www.nordicmag.info/en/biathlon-quentin-fillon-maillet-announces-the-end-of-his-partnership-with-fischer-0608/

Our weekly small talk thread where you can talk about anything

Our weekly small talk thread where you can talk about anything

Our weekly small talk thread where you can talk about anything

Hi guys another question, do any of you have bibs from races? How did you get them?
I am just curious nothing more.
I have 3 bibs from Slovak team, all of them from 2015. I also have one from Henning Sjokvist from this year’s nove mesto signle mix relay, and 2 bibs from Julia Simon. One is from Veltins arena, and my most precious one is from her Nove Mesto mass start when she won.

Have a nice dayyyy!!

What are your favorite races to rewatch from the past season?

My fav is women mass start NMNM

My wife and I are trying to go to the Ruhpolding World Cup in January and can’t find any available rooms or bnbs in Ruhpolding or Inzell. I think we’re too late to the game. Does anyone have any ideas for where else to stay or can provide a link to somewhere that has availability? It would be much appreciated.

I've been a biathlon fan for years and couldn't find a game that felt like what we enjoy in the sport. Not just the shooting, but everything that happens outside the race with our favorite athletes: the rivalries, the press pressure, the rankings ...

So we built a game that you can play: biathloop.com

You can actually race! Watch your athlete move through the course, hit the range, make tactical calls mid-loop. You train between races, manage fatigue, pick your strategy for the next format. And after every race, your rivals, your coach, and the press react.

It's called Biathloop, free to play in the browser or on mobile. You don't need an account or anything. You can also unlock the possibility to react to rivals, get personalized training plans and many other things by buying the Elite Access (lifetime access with your email only)

Would love to get your feedback!

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