Ole Einar Bjørndalen (born 27 January 1974) is a Norwegian professional biathlete. He is often regarded as one of the greatest athletes of all time. In 1992, he won his first career medal at the junior world championships. A year later In 1993, after winning a record three junior world championship titles, Bjørndalen made his Biathlon World Cup debut. His breakthrough came in 1994 when he featured on his first World Cup podium in a Sprint race held in Bad Gastein, Austria. Bjørndalen's first participation at the Olympic Games was during the Lillehammer 1994 Winter Olympics, which were held in his home country of Norway. He obtained his first major victory on 11 January 1996 in an individual competition held in Antholz-Anterselva, Italy.

Bjørndalen occasionally competes in cross-country skiing, and in 2006 he won an FIS Cross-Country World Cup race in Gällivare, Sweden, to become the first ever biathlete to win a cross-country competition. He is also the only biathlete who has won every event during the same Winter Olympic Games (four gold medals). He achieved this feat at the Salt Lake City 2002 Winter Olympics, becoming the most successful athlete there. This makes him one of only three Olympians to win four gold medals during the same Winter Games. Seven years later he repeated this medal haul at the 2009 Biathlon World Championships in Pyeongchang, South Korea.

Michael Rösch (born May 4, 1983) is a German biathlete. Michael Rösch has been junior world champion four times, three times in the relay and once in the sprint distance in 2003. On December 16, 2005, he took his first official world cup podium with a second in the 10 km sprint and on January 15, 2006, he won he first and so far only world cup victory in Ruhpolding when he beat Raphaël Poirée. Rösch is the son of the former biathlete Eberhard Rösch.