Biathlon: no podium for Les Bleues in the Kontiolahti sprint
Last winter, fans of the French women’s biathlon team were treated to caviar throughout the season. Specifically in the sprint, the caviar became royal, as the French women claimed a whopping eleven podium finishes in eight races contested in this event. These included five victories: three for Justine Braisaz-Bouchet, one for Julia Simon at the Worlds and another for Lou Jeanmonnot.
On Saturday afternoon, in the Finnish night of Kontiolahti (Finland), the three expected French leaders failed to turn up. Firstly, Lou Jeanmonnot, wearing the sublime yellow bib, missed her standing shot, losing concentration and missing two targets. With a score of 8/10, the Doubiste from Olympic Mont d’Or came seventeenth.
Beaufort native Justine Braisaz-Bouchet (8/10) lost her way in the prone shot. Missing two bullets in a row and then taking a long time to clear the last target, she left a lot of time to waste. Despite this, she finished fourteenth at the finish line.
As for Julia Simon (7/10), there was nothing between a very average ski time 1 minute behind the best and a missed shot. In the end, she finished in an anonymous forty-seventh place, her worst since… December 2021.
Océane Michelon still in the top 10
It was during this period that Czech rider Marketa Davidova (10/10) last won on the World Cup circuit. The Kontiolahti sprint saw the 2021 individual world champion make a comeback.
With a perfect shot and in the right tempo on the track, the 27-year-old biathlete won 8.8 seconds ahead of Sweden’s Elvira Oeberg (8/10), the new yellow bib, and 11.9 seconds ahead of Finland’s Suvi Minkkinen (10/10), for the first time at a similar event.
Franziska Preuss (9/10), just a tenth off the podium, Karoline Knotten (10/10) and Julia Tannheimer (10/10), aged just 19, completed a ceremony of flowers from which the Frenchwomen were ejected.
The first of these was Océane Michelon (9/10). Wearing her blue bib, she had a very high level race and finished tenth, her second consecutive top 10 in a World Cup race. Her room-mate in the hotel in Joensuu (Finland), Jeanne Richard (10/10), followed in twelfth place.
Finally, Chablais’ Gilonne Guigonnat (8/10) was thirty-eighth and Sophie Chauveau (7/10) fiftieth.
Full results
- The full programme for the Kontiolahti World Cup, the first stage of the 2024/2025 season
- Corinne Niogret: my best memory of… Kontiolahti
- Top 3 nations cup target for France: the hunt for Olympic quotas for Milan/Cortina 2026, the other key issue of the 2024/2025 season
- World Cup overall leaders celebrated: this season, the IBU is introducing a yellow bib award ceremony
- After the opening relays, what is the programme for the second week of the Kontiolahti World Cup?
- Kontiolahti: where does Emilien Jacquelin’s “Night Night” celebration at the relay finish line come from?
- “I can’t wait to see how he performs”, “He’s progressed, he deserves it”: Emilien Claude’s return to the World Cup is a source of great joy to those close to him, Anna Gandler and Fabien Claude.
- “It’s time for me to come into my own and become the biathlete I was a few years ago”: Fabien Claude, the winter of affirmation at last?
- Kontiolahti: Endre Stroemsheim, at 20/20, beats Johannes Thingnes Boe in the individual short, Quentin Fillon-Maillet and Eric Perrot with the flowers
- Kontiolahti: for the first time in his career, Endre Stroemsheim will don the yellow World Cup leader’s bib
- “My best race ever”: Endre Stroemsheim and the Norwegians put everyone in agreement at Kontiolahti
- “With a full house, we could have been ahead…”: satisfaction, but also frustration for Quentin Fillon-Maillet and Eric Perrot, in the top 6 of the individual short in Kontiolahti.
- Ukraine’s Vitalii Mandzyn, sensation of the individual short with his fourth place: “I hope this is just the beginning”.
- “A dream come true”: ninth in the individual short in Kontiolahti, Thierry Langer scored his first World Cup top 10 finish
- “It’s performances and results that count”: in Kontiolahti and Hochfilzen, the seven girls in the French team are fighting to take part in the Grand-Bornand World Cup.
- Lou Jeanmonnot is about to embark on the season of all possibilities: “Playing the globe honestly, trying to keep a jersey and manage the pressure”.
- Kontiolahti: Julia Simon undergoes an MRI scan early this afternoon
- Kontiolahti: still uncertain about Julia Simon’s state of health on the eve of the individual short race
- Kontiolahti: despite injuring her left calf on the relay last Sunday, Julia Simon is taking part in the individual short race.
- Kontiolahti: on cloud nine with a 20/20, Lou Jeanmonnot dominates the individual short and gets her season off to an ideal start
- Kontiolahti: after wearing it for the first time in Hochfilzen in December 2023, Lou Jeanmonnot takes the yellow bib once again
- Kontiolahti: in Saturday’s sprint, Océane Michelon will become the first Frenchwoman to wear the blue number
- Lou Jeanmonnot’s satisfaction after her success in the Kontiolahti individual short: “I’m relieved to see that I’m not out of my depth”.
- “I didn’t feel any pain”: despite a modest 31st place in the Kontiolahti individual short, Julia Simon was reassuring about her left calf.
- “Beyond anything I could have imagined”: Ella Halvarsson, tears over her first World Cup podium in the individual short in Kontiolahti
- “I still can’t believe it”: the joy of Poland’s Natalia Sidorowicz, fourth in the individual short at Kontiolahti
- Frozen fingers, rifle problems, 92nd at the finish: Anamarija Lampic had one problem after another in the individual short at Kontiolahti.
- “It’s good for my head”: Anna Gandler explains why she does juggling sessions before her World Cup races
- Kontiolahti: Emilien Jacquelin, with a 10/10, takes the sprint and wins the World Cup for the first time in almost three years
- Kontiolahti: Emilien Jacquelin takes the red sprint bib, Johannes Thingnes Boe in yellow
- “There’s nothing exceptional about it”: after his magnificent success in the Kontiolahti sprint, Emilien Jacquelin is not getting carried away.
- Emilien Jacquelin tells Nordic Magazine after his resounding victory in the Kontiolahti sprint: “On the podium, I saw myself again three years ago in Le Grand-Bornand…”.
- “A private joke with a friend”: after the relay’s “Night Night”, Emilien Jacquelin celebrated his success in the Kontiolahti sprint with a finger on his mouth.
- “I had tears in my eyes”: Ole Einar Bjoerndalen was marked by Emilien Jacquelin’s return to favour
- “It did me good to get away from group A”: Antonin Guigonnat returned to the World Cup top 10 in the Kontiolahti sprint
- Kontiolahti: fourth in the sprint, New Zealand-born American Campbell Wright came close to pulling off a huge coup
- “Make it my strength, not my weakness”: Lou Jeanmonnot’s state of mind as he tackles the Kontiolahti sprint with the yellow bib on his shoulders.
