Biathlon: Lou Jeanmonnot, second place despite fear and stress
A few minutes before the women’s sprint at the Biathlon World Cup in Ruhpolding (Germany), Lou Jeanmonnot was not at her best. I was very stressed before the start of the race because I absolutely had to shoot well,” she explained after the race during a video conference attended by Nordic Magazine. It was something that was stressing me out a bit. I was almost inhibited because it was fear.
“It was there in the morning, when I got up and prepared for the race. I go for my jog and it’s already set in a bit,” she says. We’d seen with Cyril [Burdet] that I don’t want to go into a race in a bad frame of mind and I didn’t debrief with him.
“It was about almost putting off the problem of this shooting mindset by concentrating on the moment.”
That’s how Lou Jeanmonnot naturally went to meet her coach. Overall, and this is what’s really cool, is that I only go to him when I don’t understand how I can get rid of the problem of the day,” she says. He told me something that worked well for me in this sprint. It was to almost put off the problem of my shooting mindset by concentrating on the moment. You have to do things in their own time and adapt.
With a 10/10 score on the shooting range at the Chiemgau Arena and only beaten by Sweden’s Hanna Oeberg at the finish, Lou Jeanmonnot was able to complete a World Cup race that she says she is “proud of”. More than ever, this makes her a favourite for Olympic gold in three weeks’ time.
“I’m the sort of person who takes things one day at a time. There’s the pursuit on Sunday, then the stage in Nove Mesto and then we’ll be at the Games. It’s a bit like the shooting that was stressing me out today, there’s no point stressing out too early for the Olympics,” she concludes.
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