The biathlete Quentin Fillon Maillet is the first French champion to have won five medals in the same Winter Olympics. It was last February in Beijing. A few days later, on March 12, he also became the fourth French biathlete, after Patrice Bailly-Salin, Raphaël Poirée and Martin Fourcade to win the general classification of the World Cup by winning the big crystal globe.
At the microphone of Bixente Lizarazuthe champion looks back on an exceptional start to the year and tells in particular how he prepared to achieve his exploits.
An iron mind to win gold
Introduced to skiing from an early age, Quentin Fillon Maillet developed a passion for biathlon, a winter sport that combines two disciplines: cross-country skiing and rifle shooting. “The beauty of this sport is to combine two opposite sports, where you need a lot of energy and liveliness on the skis, and, on the other hand, a lot of calm, serenity and lucidity for shooting. »he says.
To succeed in moving from one event to another, biathletes are trained to bring the heart rate down after skiing for regain lucidity on the firing line. Added to this is some pressure to deal withespecially when seeking excellence, as Quentin Fillon Maillet testifies: “To get the crystal globe and the Olympics, you have to manage the media pressure and all the issues that there may be in biathlon and in a competition. I was just missing that little trick that Martin Fourcade had at the time to win almost all the time: having an iron mind and scaring his opponents. »
My childhood dream was to become the best biathlete in the world. – Quentin Fillon Maillet
To cultivate this desire to win, Quentin Fillon Maillet has mentally prepared using different people. “I had an exchange with the GIGN to see a bit about their approach to stress in extreme situations with a lot of unknowns”, he explains. He also approached the alpine ski champion Jean-Claude Killy : “In his speech, I found a lot of things there because he was a hard worker like me, where he needed to work a lot to achieve the result. I found information there that was fundamental throughout the season. »
Quentin Fillon Maillet is convinced of the benefits of mental preparation : “That’s what makes the difference, sometimes, between victory and second place. I wanted to explore all this even further to understand how I work, how the human body works and how we manage to link the head and the body to create exceptional things. » The only difficulty, according to him, is to succeed in finding the people and the discourse that suit. “It’s a difficult search, but the benefit is there”he assures.