April 11, 2018 (Norway) – The queen of cross country skiing is stepping away after 19 years of racing internationally. Norway’s Marit Bjoergen, the most successful cross-country ski racer of all time, with 114 World Cup wins in 303 starts, 15 Olympic medals, eight of them gold, 26 World Championship medals, 18 of which are gold, has announced her retirement.

“I don’t have the motivation needed to give 100 percent for another season, and that’s why I choose to retire,” the 38-year-old mother told Norwegian TV as reported by Associated Press. “It’s been an era in my life, more than 20 years. So it’s special thing to say that this is my last season as a top athlete.”

Bjoergen grew up on her family’s farm in Rognes and started competing at age 7.  She earned her first international top ten in the 1999 Junior World Championships at Saafelden, Austria, with an 8th place in the 5km classic.  She made her World Cup debut in December 1999 in Engelberg, Sweden, at the age of 19. In 2001, Bjoergen achieved her first podium result at the Norwegian National Championships finishing 3rd in the 5km classic. That year she also raced for Team Norway at the Nordic World Championships in Lahti, Finland.  The next year, Bjoergen made the Olympic team, her first of five, and earned a silver medal on the relay team at Soldier Hollow, Utah.

Bjoergen’s first individual World Cup successes were achieved in sprinting. Her breakthrough win occurred in Duesseldorf, Germany in October 2002.  That was the start of a very successful season with more World Cup sprint wins, and her first FIS Nordic Worlds gold medal in the freestyle sprint in Val di Fiemme, Italy. She earned her first World Cup Sprint title in 2003, the first of four consecutive years until 2006. During the 2005 season she claimed her first distance race victory winning the 10km CL in Gaellivare, Sweden capturing her first overall World Cup globe as well including the Distance and Sprint globes. She repeated as the overall World Cup winner in 2006.

Finland’s Virpi Kuitunen dethroned her for the overall World Cup in 2007. Bjoergen experienced a relative drop in her results in 2008, and with no medals earned at the 2009 Nordic World Championships in Liberec, CZE, she decided to make some major changes in her racing preparations.  She focused more of her training on mental aspects, balance, technique and strength.

The change paid big dividends as she came away from the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics with five medals.  The following year at the 2011 World Championships she earned five medals again including four gold, in front of her home crowd at Oslo. She repeated her four gold, one silver performance at the 2013 Nordic Worlds at Val di Fiemme, ITA.

Bjoergen is the winningest Winter Olympian of all time with 15 medals. She raced at five Olympic Games, from 2002 through 2018 and at every biennial FIS Nordic World Championships from 2001 through 2017. She finally captured the grueling multi-day Tour de Ski title in 2015.

Bjoergen took off the 2015-16 season to have a baby with her longtime boyfriend, Fred Borre Lundberg, a former Nordic Combined Olympic medalist. Marius was born in December 2015, and she got back to training, readying herself for the 2017 season. She quickly showed she was back at full force, winning the first World Cup 10km of the new season in Ruka, Finland in November, 2016.

Again she dominated in the 2017 World Championships, earning three individual golds while anchoring the Norwegian relay team to a gold medal as well. At the Pyeongchang 2018 Games, Bjoergen went home with five medals: bronze in both the 10km freestyle and Team Sprint (USA’s Kikkan Randall and Jessie Diggins won gold); silver in the Skiathlon; gold as anchor of the 4×5 km relay; and she won the 30km classic final event by a record margin.

She closed out her international racing career with stunning wins at the Holmenkollen in Oslo, making up a 35-second deficit after changing skis in the 30km freestyle to catch Jessie Diggins, and finally at the World Cup finale in Falun, Sweden, where she held off a hard-charging Diggins for the win in the 10km freestyle pursuit.

Bjoergen now lives in Oslo. She has a sister Kari and a brother Anders. Throughout her career she continued to represent her home club, Rognes IL.

SkiTrax joins the cross-country ski community around the globe in congratulating Marit Bjoergen on her amazing career and for her immense contributions to the sport. We wish her all the best in her future endeavors.