The G.O.A.T Challenge: "It is on!"

After the winter in which he won his fifth Total Score title, won all seven medals and matched the gold medal count of Ole Einar Bjoerndalen at the World Championships and surpassed Martin Fourcade in the number of World Cup wins, JT Boe set up a stage for a very personal meeting with history. In the next two seasons, Johannes has the opportunity to match or emulate all the grandest achievements in biathlon.

Johannes’s milestones in the 2023/2024 season

JT Boe opened and closed the 2023/2024 season on a significantly different note: he didn’t win any of the three competitions at the Season’s Opening in Oestersund but achieved a career-third Sprint-Pursuit-Mass Start triple at the Season’s Finals in Canmore.

On the way to his fifth Total Score title, Johannes added eight wins to his career tally of 83, surpassing The God of Biathlon (as he called him in Canmore) Martin Fourcade (85) and still trailing The King of Biathlon (as he called him at the Olympic Winter Games Beijing 2022) Ole Einar Bjoerndalen (95) by 10. Knowing that Boe won 7 World Cup competitions per season from 2017/2018 (including the 2021/2022 season when he just won one), his surpassing Bjoerndalen looks realistic.

Johannes already holds the record for the most World Cup wins (excluding World Championships or Olympic Winter Games) in one winter: 16 in 2022/2023.

At the BMW IBU World Championships Nove Mesto na Morave 2024, Boe won all seven available medals as the first biathlete in history, repeating 7/7 from Oberhof 2023. He won gold medals in the Pursuit, Individual, and Mass Start and matched Bjoerndalen’s record of 20 gold medals from the World Championships.

HISTORICAL COMPARISON: JT BOE vs FOURCADE vs BJOERNDALEN

The season ahead

Johannes will look into another record still beholden to Bjoerndalen at the BMW IBU World Championships Lenzerheide 2025: Bjoerndalen won 45 medals at the World Championships to Boe’s 38. Should Boe score another 7/7 in Lenzerheide, he would match the record.

In the Discipline Score titles, Johannes trails Fourcade and Bjoerndalen as he has 11 to Bjoerndalen’s 16 and Fourcade’s 26. To match Fourcade seems too much of a stretch for Boe, even if he would prolong his career past Milano-Cortina 2026.

But at the end of any season, there is one title that is the ultimate reward for excellence: the Total Score.

“Very few athletes know what burden one carries throughout the season to end it victorious. It is really, really hard,” said Johannes in Canmore.

Johannes’s fifth Total Score title puts him one behind Bjoerndalen and two behind Fourcade.

Is the chase after Bjoerndalen’s six on for the 2024/2025 season, he was asked in Canmore.

“It is on!”, said Johannes.