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The best remains: biathlete Johannes Bö, here at the World Cup in Oslo

Photo:

Terje Bendiksby / AFP

Norway's superstar Johannes Thingnes Bö has won the overall biathlon World Cup for the fifth time.

In the pursuit at the season finale in Canmore, Canada, the 30-year-old celebrated his 75th World Cup victory on Saturday and thus secured the yellow jersey early.

His brother Tarjei (35), who came fifth, can no longer catch him in the final mass start on Sunday (10:10 p.m./ZDF and Eurosport).

»It was the toughest fight for the overall World Cup.

Only Tarjei could challenge me like that,” said Bö.

Nawrath becomes the best German

The record world champion, who had also dominated the sprint the day before, also secured the discipline ranking in the pursuit after winning the Small Crystal Globe for the individual ranking.

After three penalties, the five-time Olympic champion was 11.2 seconds ahead of the Swede Sebastian Samuelsson (1 penalty), who beat the Frenchman Eric Perrot (1) by 0.4 seconds in the finish sprint.

The Germans showed solid performances, but couldn't do anything forward.

As with the World Championships in Nove Mesto, the problem was that the ski material was not competitive in the double-digit temperatures with bright sunshine and the resulting wet cross-country ski conditions.

The Germans' running times were far from the top, but these dimensions do not reflect their performance.

The best German was Philipp Nawrath in eleventh place.

With just one mistake he was over two minutes behind.

»It was extremely difficult.

I noticed right from the start that things weren't going well.

Overall, I'm still in good shape.

“So it was unusual after it was so good yesterday that it didn’t go quite so well on the cross-country ski trail today,” said Nawrath.

The error-free Justus Strelow came 15th, Philipp Horn crossed the finish line in 16th, Danilo Riethmüller ended up in 23rd position and veteran Benedikt Doll came 26th in the last hunting race of his career - after three mistakes, over three minutes behind.

Johannes Kühn finished the race in 28th place, directly followed by Roman Rees.

ara/dpa