The biathlon encourages athletes to balance two things at once. A competitor must be able to ski a great distance at an immense speed, and then, as if turning off a light switch, lower their heart rate, aim a gun, and shoot six tiny targets, before returning to skiing around really quickly. But after winning the bronze medal in the men's 20km biathlon Tuesday morning, Norwegian biathlete Sturla Holm Lægreid admitted, for no reason at all, to another kind of balancing act: cheating on his damn girlfriend.
After winning bronze, Lægreid gave an interview to the Norwegian broadcaster NRK in which he immediately broke down in tears, and revealed all the details of his personal life to the entire country of Norway. "Last night, I had a kind of revelation that I should drop this bomb ... then we'll see what happens. I have nothing to lose," he told NRK. You would think that an athlete who spends a lot of time regulating his heart rate would have a little more self-control, but no! He spilled all the details of this unexpected variety of Olympic cheating scandal.
"There is something I want to share with someone who may not be watching today," the 28-year-old Lægreid said as he cried. "Half a year ago, I met the love of my life. The world’s most beautiful and nicest person. Three months ago, I made the mistake of my life and cheated on her, and I told her about that a week ago. This has been the worst week of my life."
God. There is nothing I love more than the great Norwegian tradition of telling everyone all the details of your personal life! This reminds me of a passage that Karl Ove Knausgaard wrote in My Struggle, about his now ex-wife: "The sun rose in my life. At first, as dawn breaking on the horizon, almost as if to say, this is where you have to look. Then came the first rays of sunshine, everything became clearer, lighter, more alive, and I became happier and happier, and then it hung in the sky of my life and shone and shone and shone." This was the woman he married after he cheated on his first wife, and then waited a year to tell her about it, according to his own books.
Norwegian men love to be in love and then sabotage it. That's fine. But my idiot! My guy! You can keep that to yourself! You have won the damn bronze medal for skiing and shooting, and for no reason at all decided to tell everyone that you cheated on "the love of your life" just three months after you started dating her. That's one shot that you should not have taken.
Lægreid, still going through it, continued: "I had the gold medal in life, and I am sure there are many people who will see things differently, but I only have eyes for her. Sport has come second these last few days. Yes, I wish I could share this with her." It's tough to have the gold medal in life and end up, six months later, with a bronze in biathlon instead. Meanwhile, a woman in Norway has just been awarded gold in Having Your Private Business Exposed On Television By A Sobbing Doofus.
After the medal ceremony, Lægreid told NRK, "I do not want to say who it is. She has had enough to deal with after last week, but I hope that there is light at the end of the tunnel for us both. And that she can continue to love me."
The main question I have here is this: Why wait three months after cheating on her to tell her that you did? Wait, I have another one: Why tell her right before the Olympics? Oh, and also, who all did this doofus tell first? Because Lægreid's teammate Johannes Dale-Skjevdal told the broadcast, "We have known that, yes." And all of us will never forget it.
