Dream marriage collapsed: Santer and Bjørndalen go their separate ways

Nathalie Santer and Ole Einer Bjørndalen had been in a relationship since 1998 and tied the knot on May 27, 2006 in Dobbiaco. Since then they have lived together in Hochpustertal and in Obertilliach, in East Tyrol.

Two years after the wedding, Santer ended her active career at the World Cup finals in Oslo. Santer had her best time in biathlon in the early 90s. In the 1993/94 season she achieved her first two World Cup victories in Bad Gastein. At the end of the season, Santer took second place in the overall standings. The 40-year-old from Pustertal celebrated her third and final World Cup victory in the sprint in Ruhpolding in the 1999/00 season. Santer also landed on the podium 15 times in the World Cup. From Albertville 1992 to Turin 2006, she took part in five Winter Olympics. In 2007 she took part in the home World Cup in Antholz as a member of the Belgian national team.

Bjørndalen, for his part, is considered the greatest biathlete of all time. He has achieved the most successes ever at the World Championships (18 gold, 11 silver, 9 bronze), the Winter Olympics (6 gold, 4 silver, 1 bronze) and in the World Cup (97 victories, 175 podium places). With six overall World Cup victories, he is clearly ahead in this ranking. Bjørndalen celebrated one of his greatest successes at the 2002 Winter Olympics when he won all four biathlon competitions held there. In the 2006/07 season, Bjørndalen also won a World Cup cross-country skiing race in Gällivare. The 38-year-old Scandinavian continues to be active in biathlon as a member of the Norwegian national team.

After six years of marriage, Santer and Bjørndalen have decided to call it quits. On Thursday they filed for separation at the Bolzano regional court.

Biathlon sport – a love nest? In no other sport are there more cross-national relationships between athletes than in biathlon. Nathalie Santer and Ole Eine Bjørndalen were perhaps the most prominent and dazzling, but there are a number of other couples to follow, such as Simon Schempp and Miriam Gössner, Christoph Stephan and Sabrina Buchholz or Toni Lang and Kathrin Hitzer, who previously met Olympic champion Michael Greis was in a relationship. Olympic sprint champion Vincent Jay supports his compatriot Marie Laure Brunet, while Latvia's Ilmars Bricis forms a pair with Lithuanian Diana Rasimoviciute.

Austria's biathlon star Dominik Landertinger is in a relationship with Veronika Zvaricova from the Czech Republic. The two-time world champion Helena Jonsson has chosen the somewhat less successful David Ekholm. Former star Liv Grete Skjelbreid now has three daughters with her husband Raphael Poiree, who is the same age. The Olympic silver medalist in Turin, Martina Beck, née Glagow, has taken the name of her husband, the Austrian ex-ski hunter and doctor Günther Beck. Andrea Henkel, on the other hand, strolls through the biathlon camp hand in hand with US boy Tim Burke.

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Dream marriage collapsed: Santer and Bjørndalen go their separate ways

The biathlon dream couple Nathalie Santer and Ole Einar Bjørndalen have separated. The six-year marriage between the woman from Dobbiaco and the exceptional athlete from Norway was annulled by mutual agreement at the Bolzano court on Thursday.

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