Martin Fourcade

Fourcade finished 24th in the overall World Cup that year.

The next season was already much more successful for him, as he grabbed his first World Cup points at Hochfilzen, placing 36th in the individual race and 10th in the sprint.

In the overall World Cup he finished 5th, 64 points ahead of his brother Simon, who finished a career-best 7th.

Martin Fourcade (born 14 September 1988) is a retired French biathlete and sous-lieutenant.

He is a five-time Olympic champion, a thirteen-time World Champion and a seven-time winner of the Overall World Cup.

Fourcade took up biathlon in 2002 and started competing internationally in 2006, following in the footsteps of his older brother Simon Fourcade.

He became only the third male biathlete to win three non-team gold medals at a single World Championships after Raphaël Poirée (Oberhof 2004) and Ole Einar Bjørndalen (Hochfilzen 2005 and Pyeongchang 2009).

Fourcade won the overall World Cup for the first time, as well as the discipline titles in the sprint and the pursuit.

The younger Fourcade competed for France in the 2007 and 2008 Junior World Championships, winning a bronze medal in the relay in 2007.

Fourcade first competed in the Biathlon World Cup at Oslo in March 2008, finishing 61st in what would be his only World Cup appearance that season.

His best results that year came at the 2009 World Championships, where he finished in the top 20 in every competition, including an 8th place in the pursuit and a 4th place in the relay.

Fourcade again improved in the 2009–10 season, consistently finishing in the top 10 and making the French team for the 2010 Winter Olympics, together with his brother.

Fourcade grabbed a silver medal in the mass start, marking the first time he made the podium in a World Cup event.

Fourcade then claimed his first victory in a pursuit at Kontiolahti, and followed up with two more first places at Oslo, in a sprint and another pursuit.

The two pursuit victories meant Fourcade won the 2009–10 Pursuit World Cup, edging out Austria's Simon Eder by just one point.

The 2010–11 season was also highly successful for Fourcade.

He opened the season at Östersund with three top 5 finishes, including two 3rd places.

After somewhat weaker showings at Pokljuka and Oberhof, Fourcade placed runner-up in all three races at Ruhpolding.

Fourcade is the all-time biathlon record holder of overall World Cup titles with seven big crystal globes and he's also the all-time record holder of the most consecutive Major Championships titles with at least one non-team gold medal in every major championship from 2011 to 2018.

Fourcade won mass starts at both Antholz and Fort Kent, and entered the 2011 World Championships in Khanty-Mansiysk, Russia as one of the favourites.

The first event at the World Championships was the mixed relay, where the French placed 3rd after Fourcade as anchor showed the best male performance in the race to lift his team up from 5th.

Fourcade then claimed the silver medal behind Arnd Peiffer in the sprint, despite missing two shots at the prone stage; Fourcade was the fastest skier in the competition.

The next day in the pursuit Fourcade won the gold despite three penalties, thanks to turning in another fastest skiing performance.

Fourcade finished 3rd in the Overall World Cup, 4th in the Sprint, 2nd in the Pursuit, 3rd in the Individual and 2nd in the Mass Start.

Fourcade had the best possible start in 2011–12 season with 2 wins in the individual and the pursuit in Östersund, Sweden, leading the Overall ranking for the first time.

In Nové Město, Czech Republic, he finished 3rd in the sprint, alongside his older brother Simon who took the 2nd place, behind Norway's Emil Hegle Svendsen.

It was the first time in biathlon's history that 2 brothers stood on a podium together.

In the following pursuit (although finishing respectively 2nd and 3rd) Simon was downgraded to 4th place after IBU decided to upgrade Germany's Arnd Peiffer following a target's malfunction (Peiffer did an extra lap).

But the French team claimed Martin had purposely slowed down before crossing the line, seeing that Simon was far behind.

IBU finally decided to tie Peiffer and Martin.

Antholz was a fantastic weekend for the French team, both men and women relays taking 1st place and Fourcade finishing 3rd of the sprint and the mass Start.

On home soil in Oslo, Emil Hegle Svendsen grabbed the yellow bib from Fourcade.

The first to start, Fourcade managed to win the sprint despite extreme temperatures in Kontiolahti, Finland (−18 °C).

At the World Championships in Ruhpolding, Fourcade won three gold medals in sprint, pursuit and mass start.

Fourcade started the 2012–13 season with a win in the individual in Östersund.

As of February 2018, he is the most successful French Olympian of all time.

On 13 March 2020, he announced his retirement following the 2019–2020 season.

, he serves as president of the Athletes' Commission of the organising committee for the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games in Paris, France.

In February 2022 Fourcade was elected to serve eight-year terms as a member of both the International Olympic Committee and the IOC Athletes' Commission.

This article uses the phrase "non-team" when referring to individual competitions to avoid mixing up one of the biathlon disciplines, the individual discipline and individual competitions in general.