Super Athletes – Ole Einar Bjoerndalen

Ole Einar Bjoerndalen is a 40-year-old Norwegian biathlete that holds the record of world cup wins (a competition that goes along a season encompassing several events where points are obtained and summed up in the end) considering all winter sports. Bjoerndalen has a total of 95 victories in Biathlon events (accordingly to IBU, the official Biathlon’s regulatory body). He has an additional 31 wins in relay events, 68 2nd place and 39 2rd place finishes (including both single and relay events).

Included in these 126 victories are 8 gold medals in 4 different Olympic Games (1998, 2002 – where he took gold in all events making him the only biathlete who has won every event during the same Winter Olympic Games, 2010 and 2014 were we took 2 golds at the age of 40).

That amazing deed in 2002 Salt Lake City Games made him one of only three athletes to win four gold medals in a same Winter Games. Additionally, he also won 4 silver medals (2 of them in 2006) and one bronze in Olympics, totalling an impressive register of 13 Olympic medals.

He also records outstanding marks such as 6 Biathlon’s World Cup Overall wins, 5 times ending as runner-up and once in third. He also collected 19 Global Crystals (Winner of a specific Biathlon event in a season’s World Cup), 8 in Sprint, 5 in Pursuit, as well in Mass Start, and another one in the Individual event.

In what respects Biathlon World Championships (one-off races of each Biathlon’s event held each year) he gathered a total of 16 titles since he started competing in 1992. He has an extra 11 silver medals and 9 bronze ones in these championships.

Bjoerndalen also competed once in a while on cross-country skiing (one of Biathlon’s sports) and in 2006 he won a World Cup race in Sweden,  becoming the first ever biathlete to win a cross-country competition.  He already had grasped in the past a 3rd place in a World Cup at Ramsau 2002. One year before that, under a completely different weather, he won a Beach Volley Ball Tournament at Laguna Beach 2001. In his free times he still manages to dedicate himself to practice rock climbing…

Already without the speed of his youth times, that made him by far the consistently fastest Biathlete ever, he still is in the pack and you can see him in action in the 2013/2014 season in which he will turn 40. This should be his last season and winter olympic games.

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