Narrowly missing out on the Total Score title in the previous two seasons, Lou Jeanmonnot looks set to make 2025/2026 the winter of her triumph. But the quiet perfectionist still needs to carry a 202-point lead over the finish line.

The 2023/2024 season

Jeanmonnot surprised the field — and perhaps herself most of all — with back-to-back Sprint–Pursuit wins in the first week of the season in Oestersund. At the end of Trimester 2, after skipping the Sprint and Pursuit in Lenzerheide due to illness, Jeanmonnot was sixth with 590 points, trailing the Total Score leader Ingrid Landmark Tandrevold by 129 points. Yet in the end, it was Lisa Vittozzi’s turn to win, finishing with 1,091 points to Jeanmonnot’s 1,068 in second place. Lou had a phenomenal end to the season, winning twice and adding four podiums, but the two missed competitions in Lenzerheide proved crucial.

The 2024/2025 season

Jeanmonnot had an epic, season-long battle with Franziska Preuss last winter, which saw her in second place after the first two trimesters with 787 points to Preuss’ 879 in the Total Score standings. No living biathlon fan will ever forget how Lou and Franziska entered the Holmenkollen stadium shoulder-to-shoulder in the Mass Start, last competition of the season, how Lou slipped, and how Preuss waited for her to check on her wellbeing before celebrating the huge win. Preuss won with 1,278 points, 20 ahead of Jeanmonnot.

This winter, Jeanmonnot is in firm command

Jeanmonnot enters the Kontiolahti–Otepaa–Oslo-Holmenkollen weeks as the leader in the Total Score with 848 points, 202 more than Finland’s Suvi Minkkinen in second place. Jeanmonnot leads the Sprint, Mass Start and Individual Score standings and trails Minkkinen by just one point in the Pursuit Score.

With one Individual, two Sprints, two Pursuits and two Mass Starts still to come, Jeanmonnot is the overwhelming favourite to finally clinch the most coveted title in biathlon — the Total Score. If she were to continue averaging 60 points per competition, as she did in Trimesters 1 and 2, she would end the season with 1,272 points. Winning the Total Score would, after all, also be the title of her choice if she were to win just one.