at the 2002 Winter Olympics (also anchored by Bjørndalen). With this victory he became the second most decorated Winter Olympian of all time and one of only two athletes to win 11 medals at the Winter Olympics. With his gold medal in 10 km sprint at the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics, he tied fellow Norwegian Bjørn Dæhlie for most Winter Olympic medals, with 12 in total, before overtaking Dæhlie by winning his second gold of the Games as part of the Norwegian mixed relay team. Bjørndalen has won eight Olympic gold medals, four silver and a bronze. He has also won 20 World Championship gold medals, 14 silver and 11 bronze (more than anybody in biathlon history), along with a record 95 World Cup victories in biathlon and 1 World Cup victory in cross-country skiing, 179 podium finishes in biathlon individual races and 3 in cross-country skiing. He also finished in the top three of the Overall World Cup rankings for a record thirteen successive seasons between the 1996–97 and 2008–09 seasons. In total Ole Einar Bjørndalen has won 44 Norwegian Championship gold medals. He has won 30 gold medals in the Norwegian Championship, biathlon, winter event: 20 individual gold medals: individual (4), sprint (6), pursuit (6), mass start (4) and 10 gold medals in relay and the team event: relay (8) and team (2). Bjørndalen has also achieved 14 individual gold medals in the Norwegian Championship, biathlon, summer event: sprint (7) and pursuit (7). In January 2018 Arne Botnan, the sporting director for Norwegian biathlon, announced that Bjørndalen would not be selected for the 2018 Winter Olympics, after he failed to achieve the qualifying standard of a top six finish in a World Cup race before the Norwegian Biathlon Association was due to nominate its Olympic squad on the 15th of that month. However, he did travel to the Games after being accredited as part of the Belorussian Olympic delegation as a coach, in order to support Darya Domracheva. On 3 April 2018 Bjørndalen announced his retirement from competition, explaining that his form had been affected by heart murmurs several times during the previous season. In September 2019, Bjørndalen and Domracheva were appointed as head coach and women's coach respectively of the Chinese biathlon team. 2005–06 World Cup season Bjørndalen finished the 2005–06 International Biathlon Union World Cup season in first place, with Frenchman Raphaël Poirée in second place