Dhe most successful biathlete of recent years is ending her sporting career: “The races at Holmenkollen will be my last,” wrote Norwegian Marte Olsbu Röiseland on Instagram on Tuesday. The 32-year-old couldn’t have chosen a more suitable location for her grand finale. This weekend the biathlon season comes to an end at Holmenkollen in Norway’s capital Oslo.
The timing is also well thought out. Due to a corona infection last summer and the resulting further health restrictions, Röiseland was only able to start the current season at the beginning of this year. But at the World Championships in Oberhof in February, she won gold in the mixed and single mixed relay. These were her World Championship gold medals, number 12 and 13, surpassing Germany’s Magdalena Neuner, who had won 12 world titles during her career, which ended in 2012.
In the year that Neuner retired from the biathlon stage, Röiseland started in the World Cup for the first time and since then has won seven Olympic medals, three of them gold most recently in Beijing, 17 World Championship medals and the overall World Cup in the 2021/22 season. At the 2020 World Championships, she became the first biathlete to manage to win a medal in all seven World Championship races, including gold in sprint and mass start. “Now is the right time. I just feel it and I’ve had that feeling all year,” she was quoted as saying in a press release from the International Biathlon Union.
The Norwegian is married to Sverre Olsbu Röiseland, who has been the assistant coach of the German women’s team since April 2022. She describes him as “the love of my life” and is grateful to him for “putting it up with me all these years”. Roiseland says that competitive sport with rifles and cross-country skis has given her many happy moments and memories. But: “Life is so much more than biathlon. Of course, biathlon will always remain in my heart, but I am so excited for the future!”