Biathlete Anaïs Chevalier-Bouchet became Olympic vice-champion of the individual (15 km) Monday evening on the site of Zhangjiakou (China), beaten by about ten seconds by the German Denise Herrmann, crowned at the Olympic Games from Beijing. With second place in the mixed biathlete relay on Saturday (in which she also participated) and that of Johan Clarey on Monday in the downhill, the queen event of alpine skiing, Anaïs Chevalier-Bouchet brings France its third medal, the third of silver, from the 2022 Olympics.
The penultimate missed shot of the Frenchwoman costs her gold
The bronze medal went to the favorite, the Norwegian Marte Olsbu Roeiseland, the fastest on skis in the group of contenders for gold, but penalized by two shooting errors and therefore two minutes on her time. Roeiseland finished 15 seconds behind Hermann. On the shooting range, Chevalier-Bouchet was almost perfect, achieving a 19/20, but this tiny mistake, on the last standing shot at the penultimate target to clear, cost him the Olympic title.
“The palette has moved, no luck,” said the shooting coach of French biathletes, Jean-Paul Giachino, after the last passage of Chevalier-Bouchet. Without this “cord” (in biathlon jargon a shot that hits the edge of the target, which does not land on the right side), she would have become the second French biathlete to adorn herself with gold in a solo race, after Florence Baverel in the sprint of the Turin Games in 2006.
A hot start for the French biathlon team
However, she became the sixth French medalist at the individual Games after Anne Briand (2nd in the individual at Lillehammer in 1994), Baverel, Marie Dorin (3rd in the sprint in Vancouver), Marie-Laure Brunet (3rd in the pursuit at Vancouver in 2010) and Anaïs Bescond (3rd in the Pyeongchang pursuit in 2018). Unlike Saturday’s mixed relay, the Chinese site was much less windy and a little less icy (around -12 degrees at the end of the race).
Without its megastar Martin Fourcade, who retired two seasons ago, French biathlon is however in a position to achieve its best result at the Olympic Games, which dates back to 2010 and the Vancouver Games, the very ones who had seen the outbreak of Fourcade.
With the two best biathletes in the world for men (Quentin Fillon Maillet N.1 and Emilien Jacquelin N.2), and still nine races on the program, the record of six podiums in Western Canada is within rifle range. Fillon Maillet and Jacquelin, accompanied by Simon Desthieux and Fabien Claude, will try from Tuesday (5:00 p.m. local, 10:00 a.m. French) to ride this positive wave for the Blues during the individual (20 km).