Neither sevenfold nor individual golden square for Johannes Boe, beaten in mass start on Sunday, like the day before with the men's relay.

Despite everything, he is indeed the king of the Worlds-2023, to the point that the organizers have renamed the German village "Boeberhof" to pay tribute to the Norwegian five times gold medalist.

Yellow bib of the leader of the general classification of the World Cup, carried by a new regularity in prone shooting, Simon (26) was able to respond once again for the last race of the world fortnight: with a 17 out of 20 in shooting , she won the bronze medal behind Sweden's Hanna Oeberg and Norway's Ingrid Tandrevold.

Norwegian biathlete Johannes Boe poses with a sign renamed "Boeberhof", February 19, 2023 © Christof STACHE / AFP

For a time, we thought a French double was possible, when Julia Simon and Anaïs Chevalier-Bouchet took the last standing shot in the lead.

But each made a mistake and Oeberg and Tandrevold, five out of five for both, took advantage of it.

Chevalier-Bouchet finally finished at the foot of the podium.

The French team leaves Oberhof, its fog, its wind and its rain, with four medals: two in gold and two in bronze.

To Simon's two individual medals, we must add gold in the men's relay and bronze in the mixed relay (with Simon as the last torchbearer).

Boe third from the mass start

Less than at the 2022 Olympics or at the previous Worlds (7 medals in both cases).

Above all, it is the first time since 2009, then the first Worlds of Martin Fourcade, twenty years old at the time, that the men's group has not climbed on any individual podium.

Like their poor form since the start of the season (only four individual podiums, 1 for Fillon Maillet, 3 for Jacquelin).

The day after the gold in the men's relay, the best Frenchman in the mass start, Fillon Maillet, ranked sixth, with two faults, 1 min 10 from the head.

In a negative spiral, Emilien Jacquelin is narrowly in the top 20, just behind Antonin Guigonnat (5 faults each).

At the gates of two unprecedented performances before the last weekend of competition, a septuplet and an individual golden square, Boe saw the two escape him.

Norwegian Johannes Boe during the mass star of the Oberhof Biathlon Worlds, February 19, 2023 © Christof STACHE / AFP

In the race to become the first biathlete to win the four individual events in a world fortnight, the 29-year-old Norwegian stumbled on the last step: in the rain, he finished "only" third in the mass start, behind two Swede, Sebastian Samuelsson, faultless behind the rifle, and Martin Ponsiluoma (18/20).

The fault of his last missed ball, when he had arrived in the lead on the shooting range.

Like Bjoerndalen and Fourcade

With a 17 of 20 shooting, Boe crossed the line 38 seconds behind Samuelsson and almost 30 behind Ponsiluoma.

The day before, the Norwegian relay, the big favorite, had been trapped by the gusts of Oberhof and had only obtained the silver medal.

"Johannes is a super athlete, a great guy, it's really special to be able to beat him, especially on an important day like today", appreciates Samuelsson, the first to inflict an individual defeat on Boe in 2023.

Swede Sebastian Samuelsson, crowned mass start world champion in Oberhof, February 19, 2023 © Christof STACHE / AFP

Like Ole Einar Bjoerndalen and Martin Fourcade before him, each of them twice, the Norwegian redhead thus capped at three individual medals in one edition of the Worlds.

Also like Raphaël Poirée, the German Laura Dahlmeier, the Norwegian Liv Grete Skjelbreid and the Ukrainian Olena Zubrilova.

With five gold medals collected in the Thuringian Forest, adding the relays (mixed and mixed single), he does there as well as his compatriot Marte Olsbu Roeiseland (2020) and the German Laura Dahlmeier (2017).

But he does not become the first to amass six.

With seven medals in seven races finally, he equals the performance (possible only since 2019 and the introduction of the single mixed relay) of Roeiseland in 2020. It deserved to be renamed Oberhof.

© 2023 AFP