ANTERSELVA, ITALY, Feb 11 (Reuters) – Norwegian biathlete Sturla Holm Laegreid apologised to his gold medal-winning teammate Johan-Olav Botn after stealing the spotlight in a stunning post-race interview on Tuesday in which he admitted cheating on his girlfriend.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Laegreid, who took bronze in the men\u2019s Olympic 20km individual race, cried as he told Norwegian state broadcaster NRK that he had been unfaithful and his girlfriend had ended the relationship when he told her about it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Laegreid\u2019s confession prompted a volley of criticism from some of the biggest names in Norwegian sport.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cBoth the time, place and timing were completely wrong,\u201d biathlon great and Laegreid\u2019s former teammate Johannes Thingnes Boe, who won four gold medals at the Beijing Games, said in NRK\u2019s Olympic broadcast.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Therese Johaug, a four-time Olympic champion in cross-country skiing, agreed.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cI\u2019ve never seen an interview like this before. It\u2019s completely, completely the wrong time and place to do it,\u201d she said on the same show.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Botn dedicated his victory to Norwegian biathlete Sivert Guttorm Bakken, who passed away in December.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Former cross-country skier Petter Northug, who was at the centre of several controversies related to alcohol and drugs during and after his glittering career, praised Botn on social media before taking aim at Laegreid.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cJohan-Olav Botn, a training product that has put in endless hours to reach the top. Honours his dead friend Sivert. Strong!\u201d he wrote on X. \u201cTeammate chooses to focus on who he has or has not (slept with).\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Laegreid later asked Botn for forgiveness at the post-race media conference but said he stood by his choice.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cI apologise if I ruined your day, but I think you understand,\u201d Laegreid said to Botn as the medal winners took questions from the media.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cI don\u2019t know. I stand by my choice. It is a choice I have made in life. I understood it very well, and I see it myself in retrospect. As I said, this is Johan\u2019s day and it\u2019s a shame that this should take the focus.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Botn said he was not concerned about Laegreid stealing the headlines.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cI don\u2019t get involved in it. For me, this is first and foremost a personal victory – how much space it gets (in the media) doesn\u2019t really matter to me,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.celebrity.land \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" ANTERSELVA, ITALY, Feb 11 (Reuters) – Norwegian biathlete Sturla Holm Laegreid apologised to his gold medal-winning teammate Johan-Olav Botn after stealing the spotlight in a stunning post-race interview on Tuesday in which he admitted cheating on his girlfriend. Laegreid, who took bronze in the men\u2019s Olympic 20km individual race, cried as he told Norwegian state […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2278473,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25174],"tags":[419547,419548],"class_list":["post-2278472","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gossip","tag-olympics","tag-winter-olympics"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Olympian-Apologizes-After-Shocking-Confession-Overshadows-Teammates-Gold.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2278472","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2278472"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2278472\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2278474,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2278472\/revisions\/2278474"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2278473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2278472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2278472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2278472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Sturla](\"https:\/\/img.huffingtonpost.com\/asset\/698c5b26150000c81abb84f5.jpg?ops=scalefit_720_noupscale&format=webp)
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