Para biathlon: Anthony Chalençon and Florian Michelon win silver on their first outing of the World Championships
At midday on Thursday, 34-year-oldAnthony Chalençon won his twelfth world medal. Second in the sprint at the Para Biathlon World Championships in Pokljuka (Slovenia), the Morzinois got his competition off to a perfect start. However, during the race, the blind para-sportsman suffering from retinal degeneration was not feeling his best.
“We had a good first lap, then it started to get a bit tight. It was hot and the snow was a bit soft, so it didn’t feel great,” he explained to Nordic Magazine afterwards. I didn’t have a very good feeling, but I had a good shot. I picked myself up a bit on the last ball of the first shot. It took me a little while to release it, but I got myself together, calmed down and it went in.
With a score of 10/10 and a decent ski time, Anthony Chalençon and his guide Florian Michelon finished the sprint in second place, taking the silver medal.
It’s a great medal, but I’m sure they’ve both still got a lot left in the tank,” says Anaïs Bescond, the French team’s shooting coach. It was a race to kick off their world championships on a track they didn’t know until a few days ago.
The ambition and determination to beat Oleksandr Kazik in the last two races
“What’s really good is that we won this medal in the first race. It’s a bit of a relief. We’re really happy to have a medal and now our goal is to go for a title. We want to do better in the sprint pursuit and the individual race by going after [Oleksandr] Kazik,” continued Anthony Chalençon.
It has to be said that the 28-year-old Ukrainian is the scarecrow of the visually impaired category. Faster than the Frenchman in both shooting and cross-country skiing, he won with a margin of 25 sec 3 despite a 9/10.
But Les Bleus don’t think it’s impregnable: “We’re going to go for it in the last two races,” says Florian Michelon. This medal will take a weight off our shoulders and focus us on our real objective: going for the title. And that’s all we can wish for the reigning world individual champion duo.
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