Biathlon: Simon Fourcade’s emotional reaction to France’s Olympic relay title
Tuesday 17 February 2026 is a day to remember for French biathlon. It was this afternoon that the French men’s team became Olympic relay champions for the very first time in their history.
An unprecedented triumph that naturally brought joy to the whole group. Speaking to France 2, coach Simon Fourcade was on the verge of tears. “We’ve been chasing it for a while now. We were already trying to get it when I was an athlete, but we never managed it,” he began. The shape of the race was incredible and we needed a bit of magic.
It was Emilien Jacquelin who made the magic happen. After a poor start from Fabien Claude, the man from Isère pulled off a legendary run to take over a minute from Norway, the leader at a quarter of the way through the relay. We call it champagne biathlon, and we had the magnum,” enthused Simon Fourcade. It’s very emotional.
“A relay medal means a lot to everyone”.
And he looks back on the difficult times we’ve had to go through to get to this point: “Two] years ago, we were here at the same time and we hadn’t had a single individual podium since the start of the season. We had a catastrophic mass-start, with four of the five starters finishing outside 22nd place. To be able to rebuild and go for a [gold] medal today is a great achievement.
I’m happy for the guys, but also for the whole team: a relay medal means a lot to everyone,” he continues. I’ve rarely seen the guys so happy. Yesterday, we said that whatever happened, we’d be back on Friday [for the mass start] to give it our best shot. If that’s taken any pressure off them… We’ve been chasing that for so long!
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