Biathlon: Emilien Claude heads for Antholz
So far, only two members of the French men’s biathlon team have pulled on a bib this summer: Eric Perrot and Emilien Jacquelin, who took part in the Blink Festival races with some success at the start of August.
While Jurassien Quentin Fillon-Maillet will be on the track with Peiserot on Sunday 31 August at the City Biathlon Dresden, Vosgien Emilien Claude won ‘t be long in returning to competition either.
At the same time, he will be taking part in the Italian summer championships in Antholz (Italy). On Saturday, after the Bessans course, I’m going straight to Antholz in my car,” he tells Nordic Magazine. I’ll be meeting up with Anna [Gandler, his partner, editor’s note] and Florent [Claude, his brother]. I’ll be doing a week’s training outside the federal framework before the weekend’s races.
Taking on his brother Florent Claude… but not only
For the man from Bassur, these few days in Alto Adige will have many objectives. “ First of all, it will be to finish the high altitude training begun with the fortnight in Bessans,” he says. Secondly, the opportunity to take part in the summer national championships on the site of the future Olympic Games was too good to pass up.
“There won’t be any particular objective other than to give it our all. The form will be what it will be because there will have been three weeks before the volume with the biggest month of training of the year”, says Emilien Claude, who will be competing in the Italian sprint/chase against the best locals, the Swiss, the Finns and his brother FlorentClaude .
He concludes: “The main aim will be to get back into the swing of things by doing races again, because up until now I haven’t had a Blink Festival or anything like that. For the moment, I’ve done very few maximum effort intensities, so the aim will be to go and do these races to start the second part of my preparation by increasing my intensity from this race weekend until the start of the season.
After this week spent in Antholz, Emilien Claude will then head to Innsbruck (Austria) before returning to the transalpine facilities on September 8 with the French team.
- “Very satisfied to finish ninth”: in the sprint of the Oslo-Holmenkollen finals, Emilien Claude scored his fourth individual top 10 of the season.
- Simon Fourcade on Emilien Claude’s 2024/2025 season: “It’s great to know that we can rely on a fifth boy of his quality”.
- Photo album of Fabien Claude, Eric Perrot, Quentin Fillon-Maillet, Emilien Jacquelin, Emilien Claude, Antonin Guigonnat and Oscar Lombardot training in Corrençon-en-Vercors
- “It’s great to win this title again”: Florent Claude becomes Belgian champion again before leaving for a training camp in Antholz, on the site of the Milan/Cortina 2026 Olympic Games.
