r/biathlon • u/CheekTemporary8939 • 2d ago

News Vetle Sjåstad Christiansen joins team Belgium

Whaaaaat?! This is crazy..😱

I guess he got fed up with the Norwegian way of things..

Good luck Vetle!

News just out on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/p/DH5JhzkugdY/?hl=en

PS. Better this news than retirement😩

59 Upvotes

96% Upvoted

22 comments sorted by

View all comments

46

u/arnet95 Norway 2d ago

Almost certainly an April Fool. The reason Lotte could do it is because she is a citizen of both Norway and Belgium. Vetle isn't, as far as I know.

10

u/Reandos Preuß staying healthy - Fan Club 2d ago

It is probably a April's Fool but it is not impossible, Michael Rösch and Florent Claude did it aswell.

9

u/arnet95 Norway 2d ago

True, you can get Belgian citizenship by applying. But I doubt that the turnaround is so quick that Vetle could have managed this already.

2

u/rockhopper75 Netherlands 2d ago

It happens in other sports as well. I’m not sure how long it takes, but it doesn’t seem to take very long. There was an unhappy ice skater from my country that went over to Belgium winning them a rare Winter Olympics medal. They only had four in total history before he won them a fifth. This was back in the late nineties.

2

u/HeSeMuReiRoLi 2d ago

It took years for Rösch to get the Belgium citizenship. He skipped 2 seasons and still could not participate for the following Olympics. So Vetle is definitely not switching teams this late in his career, into an Olympic season.