Biathlon: first Olympic start for Chablais’ Camille Bened
Perhaps 25-year-old Camille Bened from Haut-Savoie had trouble getting to sleep last night. This Wednesday afternoon, the biathlete from Chablais Nordic is taking part in her first race of the Milan/Cortina 2026 Olympic Games: the individual event.
In front of her parents Frédéric and Valérie, as well as her boyfriend Hugo Pandolfo, a professional rugby player, the current world number eight will be performing with number 46 on her back.
Having arrived in Antholz (Italy) a week ago, Camille Bened has had a smooth start to her Olympic Games , with training sessions, participation in the opening ceremony and a presence in the stadium on the day of the mixed relay. That day, the Chablais native got a whiff of an Olympic race, just to give her some ideas.
“I want to go out there like I have done since the start of the season at the World Cup”.
In any case, Camille Bened is approaching her very first meeting with the Olympics in a straightforward manner, trying to detach herself from the event so as not to make a mountain out of a molehill.
“I want to go there as I have done since the start of the season on the World Cup. This individual race is still a biathlon race: it’s the same format and it’s the same people I’ll be meeting,” she explained a few days ago at a press conference attended by Nordic Magazine. I don’t want to be in a different frame of mind.
If she manages to repeat her exceptional performances behind the rifle since the start of the winter (five 20/20 results), Camille Bened shouldn’t be far off the mark… and an Olympic medal that was only a distant dream three months ago.
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- “If the first race goes well, it’s easy to follow it up”: the mixed relay, a golden opportunity for France to kick off the Olympic fortnight with a bang
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- Yvon Mougel, world medallist in 1981 and three-time Olympian, talks about the mixed relay: “The French team played in a dream race”.
- Olympic individual silver for Eric Perrot, Norway’s Johan-Olav Botn wins at 20/20
- Eric Perrot, third Frenchman on the podium in an individual event at the Olympic Games
- First reaction from Eric Perrot, silver medallist in the individual event: “Huge satisfaction to be an individual Olympic medallist”.
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