Norwegian biathlete Sturla Holm Lægreid decided last week the gesture would be stronger if he admitted his mistake to everyone on television as an Olympic medalist at the 2026 Winter Games.
So there he was at the finish line, in front of a camera from Norway’s NRK Television on Tuesday, Feb. 10 in Anterselva, Italy, after winning a bronze medal in the 20-kilometer biathlon final, telling his country ‒ and the world, as it’s turned out ‒ that he recently cheated on ‘the love of my life.’
This Norwegian love triangle played out on the international sporting stage, with Lægreid quickly in tears as he confessed on air, explaining how the circumstances affected his performance and his desire to restore the relationship.
‘There is someone who may not be watching today. Half a year ago, I met the love of my life, the world’s most beautiful, finest person,’ Lægreid said, according to a NRK transcript translated into English by Google Translate, ‘and three months ago I made the biggest mistake of my life and cheated on her.’
‘I had a gold medal in my life,’ he continued. ‘There are probably many now who look at me with different eyes, but I only have eyes for her. I don’t quite know what I want to achieve by saying it here now, but sport has taken second place in recent days. I wish I could share it with her.’
Lægreid, 28, is also a former gold medalist in the biathlon relay at the 2022 Winter Olympics and he’s a six-time former world champion in biathlon since 2021. But he said the guilt from his transgressions affected his preparation in the lead-up to the Milano Cortina Games. Lægreid declined to name the person he was discussing during the interview, though he revealed that he told her of his infidelity last week.
At the end of the conversation, the Norwegian reporter asked Lægreid if he had considered what this person might think now that he had told all of Norway what he had done. ‘Maybe I ruined myself now to get her back,’ Lægreid conceded, according to Google Translate.
‘It hurts to admit when you do something you cannot stand for and hurt someone you love so much. But such is life now,’ he said. ‘I had a chance at true love and turned out so amazing. It is not certain that it can be forgiven. But if this can give me a tiny chance to tell her how much I love her, I’d rather commit social suicide on live TV just to get that small chance.’