Biathlon: Jean-Paul Giachino’s last season is coming up
For Jean-Paul Giachino, everything should have come to an end in the spring of 2024. After almost twenty-five years of loyal service as a shooting coach for the French biathlon teams, the native of Bourg-Saint-Maurice (Savoie) had decided to call it a day.
However, at the request of Stéphane Bouthiaux, the boss of Les Bleus, and his athletes, he changed his decision. Initially reluctant, he decided, as he explained in our columns, to send a letter to the authorities cancelling his application for retirement, which had been set for May 2024.
“I don’t want to have any regrets and say to myself, gosh, I wasn’t at the Games in 2026 and I regret it. For me, coming back in 2020, it wasn’t the girls who were at the top, but the boys. In the four years I’ve been in charge, I’ve done my bit to help the women’s team get back on its feet and become one of the best biathlon nations in the world today,” said the quiet shooting coach from Savoie at the time.
“It’s been a great joy
Jean-Paul Giachino, who began his career with the French national team in 2001 as a member of the men’s squad, is due to start the final winter of his rich career in a few weeks’ time.
It’s the last season, that’s for sure,” he said on Wednesday from Bessans (Savoie) during an online press briefing attended by Nordic Magazine. We’re recommitting ourselves to a four-year Olympiad, leading up to 2030. I wouldn’t have the energy to continue coaching a group at this level.
Jean-Paul Giachino, looking back on the countless years he has spent behind the binoculars, says he remembers “all the good times I’ve had, the rich encounters I’ve had with so many athletes with their own personalities and ways of working”.
“I highlight all our performances, but I also think about our failures. But I have no regrets; failures are part of a career, nobody succeeds at everything. Professionally, it’s been a great joy,” he says. I’m proud of my professional career.
He was a biathlete before becoming a coach… and a passionate golfer.
The man who took part in twenty-eight World Cup races between 1985 and 1991 also explains that his sport has “grown considerably”, taking on “phenomenal proportions”.
I’d never imagined it,” says this golf enthusiast. The International Federation is doing things right by introducing more spectacular race formats such as the pursuit and the mass-start. In these neck-and-neck confrontations, emotions run high. It’s become a spectacular discipline where the tables can be turned right up to the last lap.
- Jean-Paul Giachino extends his contract as shooting coach of the French women’s team by two years
- Jean-Paul Giachino, Les Bleues’ shooting coach, talks to Nordic Magazine after announcing his extension until the 2026 Olympic Games: “I don’t want to have any regrets”.
