Biathlon: a historic victory for Les Bleus in Antholz
On Tuesday 17 February, it was time for the French men’s biathlon team to make history. Never before crowned Olympic relay champions, they had the opportunity to do so at the Anterselva Biathlon Arena in Antholz (Italy), decked out in their finest finery and packed to the rafters.
I think French biathlon has waited long enough for this accolade,” explained Gilles Marguet in our columns this morning. It’s not a glass ceiling that needs to be broken, it’s something that needs to be achieved. At 2.30pm, when the starting gun fired, it was Fabien Claude who launched the group and, unfortunately, things took a very bad turn from the outset as the man from Bassur turned once on the penalty ring in the standing shot.
Coming out of his extra 150 metres in twentieth and last position in the race, 46 sec 3 behind the leader, Fabien Claude still managed to make up seven places in the final loop to leave Emilien Jacquelin 50 sec 3 off first place. It looked as though the title was going to be hard to come by, and that the curse affecting the French relay had once again fallen on the French team.
A legendary relay, full of panache, from Emilien Jacquelin puts France back in the game
But Villardien’s Emilien Jacquelin put in an incredible performance. Offensive as he often is on skis and author of a fast 5/5 on the dismount,he came back to within 10 seconds of the lead before taking sole control of the race following a one-pick upright. Stratospheric on this relay, the Dauphinois raced back to the stadium in the company of Finland and Sweden , where he dropped Quentin Fillon-Maillet with a margin of around fifteen seconds over the Norwegian favourites.
The man from the Jura region missed once on each of his shots and, in the end, it was Sweden’s Martin Ponsiluoma and Norway’s Sturla Holm Lægreid who ended the third relay. So much for that, you might have thought. Opposed to Sebastian Samuelsson and Vetle Sjaastad Christiansen in the final of this Olympic relay, Eric Perrot from Savoie gave his all and, from the prone shot, made the difference with a 5/5.
Alone in the lead at the start of the standing, he missed two targets before recovering magnificently to keep the lead. Despite this, Vetle Sjaastad Christiansen came out at 8.5 seconds and was still a threat with 2.5km to go. That’s when Eric Perrot went into war machine mode to get back to the stadium as quickly as possible… which he did at the cost of an incredible effort.
France therefore became Olympic relay champions for the first time in their history , ahead of Norway(Martin Uldal, Johan-Olav Botn, Sturla Holm Lægreid, Vetle Sjaastad Christiansen) and Sweden(Viktor Brandt, Jesper Nelin, Martin Ponsiluoma, Sebastian Samuelsson).
On the podium, it was Martin Fourcade, who has never won an Olympic relay medal despite his immense list of achievements, who handed the gold medal to Les Bleus.
The race in video
Full results
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