after a difficult start, the French biathletes return to the race on the mixed relay

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10:47 : Ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch, Emilien Jacquelin had a calamitous standing shooting session, and will have to take a penalty round. Our Frenchman seemed to have trouble loading his rifle with the pickaxe bullets…

10:46 : @Mary 95 I was not consulted at the time of the design, but it makes the followers cringe.

10:45 a.m. : Why are French wetsuits not dark at the bottom as usual?

10:45 a.m. : Emilien “Lucky Luke” Jacquelin achieves a flawless performance on the shooting range. I didn’t have time to see if he had shot faster than his shadow, but our Habs found themselves 22 seconds ahead of their Italian pursuer.

10:39 : @Alexander Absolutely, it will be posted after the end of the race on france.tv. But what an idea to have a life during the Olympics 😉

10:38 : Tell me Pierre, for those who have a life on Saturday morning, is it possible to find these events in replay?

10:39 : The French team is in the lead, ahead of Italy, Sweden and the United States at the start of Emilien Jacquelin’s stint! We are 4 seconds ahead of the Italian competitor.

10:35 a.m. : Victory Simon nothing, I want to tell you 😉

10:35 a.m. : She could Wierer in the lead at halfway

10:32 : and then the gossips that were already burying the France team? That’s what I like about biathlon… Good. It only remains to hope that the gusts of wind will leave the men alone.

10:32 : ?? Julia Simooooon!

10:32 : Julia Simon manages a faultless standing shot, and finds herself in second position thanks to a rain of errors from the opposing competitors. Well, the gaps are very tight, let’s beware of declaring victory too soon.

10:30 a.m. : @Heater Considering the freezing conditions on the Beijing track, it’s not so bad to moisturize your cheeks with a patch of Vaseline, right? The Huff Post explained in 2018 the usefulness of these war paints.

10:26 : Hello athletes! What are the colored patches used by athletes in outdoor ski events (15km, biathlon, etc.) on their faces? Thank you and stay warm!

10:28 : It’s better for Julia Simon on the first prone shot, with two picks. The gap is closing, but the Frenchwoman is still 8th at the last score, 1’13 from the lead (Italian Dorothea Wierer, a star in the discipline).

10:23 : Do you think the snow makes a strange noise in this mixed relay event? Our comrades from France 3 Franche-Comté, the homeland of biathlon made in France, give you the explanation.

10:21 a.m. : With such a windy shooting range, 1’30 is not prohibitive, but it will take luck and exemplary torchbearers!

10:21 a.m. : In the first stint, Norway is ahead of Italy and Belarus, France is in eighth place, 1’25 from the lead. Julia Simon will have to do flawlessly to put the Blues within shooting range of a medal.

10:16 a.m. : A penalty lap already for France….CQFD!

10:15 a.m. : the lottery of one-day races… Vincent Jay Olympic champion in 2010 thanks to the bad weather. And there, the “luck” of the Italian who went to shooting between the bursts.

10:14 a.m. : Ouch, ouch, ouch, another complicated shooting session for Anaïs Chevalier-Boucher, who has to take a penalty lap. France finds itself more than a minute away from the big nations, such as Sweden or the ROC (the small name of Russia, banned from the Games).

10:10 a.m. : A clarification on the “bonus balls” used by Anaïs Chevalier-Bouchet: unlike individual races, the relay allows athletes to have more balls than targets to clear. For each shot, the biathlete has a magazine of 5 bullets. If he misses targets, he has 3 extra balls before having to take a penalty turn. But these balls must each time be loaded individually, which takes about ten seconds.

10:08 : Ouch, ouch, ouch, Anaïs Chevalier-Bouchet has already missed two targets from the outset, and had to draw on her reserve balls to erase the five targets. We are therefore 18 seconds from the lead, which is not totally dramatic, but hey, we had a better start.

10:05 a.m. : I specify, for those who intended to do something else with their morning (while there are the Olympic Games, what an idea!), that we have a big hour of racing for this mixed relay. Then you can resume normal activity.

10:04 am : It’s still very grouped at the start of this mixed relay, it’s like being on a flat stage of the Tour de France. The first skimming will take place after the first shot.

10:03 : Magic of this sport, the fact of not succeeding in slowing down your heart rate can also play on your shooting (it was very well explained in an article by Parisian a few weeks ago). If it is indeed random, on paper, the French are favorites.

10:01 a.m. : For biathlon you are already talking about disappointment. The wind is blowing hard in Beijing and anything can happen to shooting. The favourites, under these conditions, can also be missed.

10:02 : We explained it to you yesterday in this article: it is freezing cold in Beijing today, with a feeling of -23°C and very hard snow. Yesterday, training had been disrupted by a strong wind, which is apparently not the case this afternoon.

09:59 : How is a mixed biathlon relay going? The two torchbearers will leave first, followed by the two torchbearers. Each has two shots to make, one lying down, then one standing up. So eight shots.

09:57 : Five minutes from the start of the mixed biathlon relay, we’re going to raise the stakes together: to put it very simply, if France doesn’t bring back a medal, it’s a terrible disappointment. There was only one event of this type this year in the World Cup, and the Blues had ranked 3rd with a B team. This time, we brought out the heavy artillery with Quentin Fillon-Maillet and Emilien Jacquelin, our n°1 and 2.

10:05 a.m. : @Kevin There is a seven-hour time difference with China, so the races take place, French time, from 2 a.m. to 3-4 p.m. Do not hesitate to set your alarm clock, our sports friends follow all the events including those taking place in the middle of the night, and of course it is broadcast on the France Télévisions channels.

09:43 : Hello, with the time difference, the live events take place from what time to what time?

09:57 : No reduced “Johaug” for the Norwegian who therefore won the first gold medal of the Games in the little-known event of the skiathlon (cross-country skiing with ski changes along the way, basically).

09:31 : Meanwhile the Johaug promenade

10:07 : @Helen No judgment in what I wrote, but if Raphaël Poirée tipped French biathlon into another dimension in the years 1990-2000, he did it a bit alone, without any ripple effect on others, and at the media level, the rise in power remained slow. It was then, with Martin Fourcade, that biathlon became a truly unifying sport in France. A question of personality, which cannot be decreed. It is moreover in Norway that Raphaël Poirée became a real star that we stop in the street.

09:23 : Hello Pierre. I find you very harsh with biathlon. The couple of Raphaël Poirée with the Norwegian Liv-Grete and their “competition” to know who would bring back the most medals of the world championships, his rivalry with Björndalen (already there…) and the brilliant comments of Marc Mingoia already made this exciting sport.

10:09 : Practicing biathlon… in the crowded gymnasium of a college, in the North, it’s possible! I spoke with Clémentine Clerc, a PE teacher who loves biathlon in Lambersart, near Lille. “My students practice it at 28 in a gym in winter, and without snow, smiles this native of Cambrai. We share the rifles, we do 30 seconds of abs to replace the penalty laps.”

You no longer have an excuse to miss out on a discipline that was derided as “customs officer’s sport”. But that was before.

09:13 : A sign of galloping popularity, biathlon clubs have been springing up for several years… and not just in the mountains. Thus, Maël Croyal, who founded a club near Lorient, feels the wind of biathlon blowing on the plain of Armorican Brittany: “I receive calls from parents who tell me that their son plays Martin Fourcade every weekend in their garden!”

09:11 : “It was always in Germany that I was recognized in the street, never in France. I had to do three TVs after my gold medal, and I went back to my mountains to train in a parking lot in the summer..”

The 1992 Albertville Games, scene of the triumph of the blue women’s relay, could have gradually installed biathlon in the landscape. But it will be necessary to wait for Raphaël Poirée and especially Martin Fourcade to make biathlon a really popular sport in France.


(PICTURE ALLIANCE)

09:08 : For you, biathlon is a sport that is practiced with a rifle on your back, a lycra suit, cross-country skis on your feet, and in the end, France wins? Yes, but we were really starting from a very long way. I tell you the story of this sport in France, from the heroic times when it was a punishment to have to stick to the post-Martin Fourcade euphoria. With real System D pieces in it.

(ALEXANDER HASENSTEIN / BONGARTS)

09:06 : Did you raise an eyebrow when you discovered the identity of the last Olympic torchbearer, in this case a Uyghur skier? Voices have been raised denouncing the negligence of the IOC, but on Twitter, Michael Payne, who managed the marketing of the Games for decades, points out that “The IOC has no say in this matter, and very often, it discovers the identity of the last torchbearer at the last moment. It is a decision that is 100% up to the organizing committee. No one did not know about Muhammad Ali [à Atlanta en 1996].”

09:00 : Run the coffee, I take care of the point on the 9 o’clock news.

Serious things begin for the French team in Beijing with the first biathlon event, the mixed relay, where the Blues are the favorites. It starts at 10 a.m. and it will be to follow here! In the meantime, don’t hesitate to read our article on the improbable tricolor biathlon saga.

• Remote duel of far-right candidates, with Marine Le Pen and Eric Zemmour in a meeting this afternoon (one in Lille, the other in Reims) to reshuffle the cards of the race in the second round.

Emmanuel Macron will travel to Russia on Monday and to Ukraine on Tuesday. Our reporter Raphaël Godet preceded him and tells us about his stay in Kharkiv, a city located 20 km from the border and where many are ready to take up arms.

• Since Thursday, pharmacists can give you certain single antibiotics. On paper, it seems like common sense when the French throw away 1.5 kg of drugs a year. But on the ground, the professionals deplore “a false good idea”.

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