Biathlon: Jean-Pierre Amat’s first Grand-Bornand with the French team
This Thursday afternoon, probably in the rain at Grand-Bornand (Haute-Savoie), Jean-Pierre Amat will experience his first home race as the French team’s shooting coach. All this at a time when his athletes have just made a magnificent start to the season, with two relay victories and four men on the individual podium.
“It’s a continuation of what happened at the end of last season, says the wise Savoyard shooting coach. It didn’t come out of nowhere. The start of the season was very difficult, then it only got better with a more than interesting end to the season and, as I said, it’s a continuation. We’re happy to see that, but not really surprised.”
It has to be said that last winter, the French worked on their shooting speed. “In a three-year project leading up to the 2026 Games, being able to shoot fast and well is one of the fundamentals, explains Jean-Pierre Amat. At the start of the season, they were getting their feet stuck in the carpet because the confidence and automatisms weren’t in place. Gradually, that started to happen, but it wasn’t very stable.”
The group lives well
Having gone back to basics and the fundamentals of precision last summer, Les Bleus are now looking to combine quality with speed. And, as the saying goes, “the group lives very well together”.
“It’s a small detail, but it’s important, says Jean-Pierre Amat. They need to be together and have a collective ambition. Anyone who follows biathlon knows where the benchmark lies, with our Norwegian friends, but we’re not making a complex of it. The idea is to say that we can match them. Overall, they may be stronger than us, they have more athletes, but we can do it.”
With victories for Emilien Jacquelin and Eric Perrot at the start of the season, the Tricolores were able to show the world what they were capable of. From Thursday onwards, they will be out to prove it to their fans in Le Grand-Bornand. “There’s plenty of room, especially in the four-shot races,” promises the French coach.
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