After a complicated season, where the Blues have not won any World Cup races, the coaching duo announced on Friday that this weekend would be their last at the head of the France team.
They say love stories always end badly. After a five-year collaboration, which began after the 2018 Olympics, Vincent Vittoz and Patrick Favre announced on Friday March 17 that they would leave the coaching staff of the men’s team at the end of the season. An end to the collaboration which takes the form of a brutal break, as evidenced by the words tinged with bitterness of the two coaches.
The latter indicated on Friday that they had reached “the breaking point” and show a certain fatalism in the face of the situation, as Vincent Vittoz explains. “Today, it is clear that we are no longer in tune with our athletes. We feel that they are not able to hear some of our speeches”. Appearing moved, the former pursuit world champion in 2005 does not hide the fact that he would have liked to continue the adventure: “We were ready to continue, clearly. But today, there is a break in this discourse”.
A year after the historic Beijing Games, marked by the exceptional performances of Quentin Fillon Maillet, the situation today is much more gloomy. Two races from the end of the season, the men’s team has still not won the slightest victory in the World Cup and the specter of a white season, the first since 1997, hovers over a group without an answer so far. For his part, Patrick Favre does not hide that the trust between the staff and his biathletes is broken. “Today we feel that this confidence is lacking, reveals Favre. Forcing things is not a good thing.“A desire not to go by force, which Vincent Vittoz also underlines,”When you feel a breaking point, you must not be stubborn. The France team must continue differently, we would have been a brake for the future.“
Fillon Maillet and Jacquelin singled out
While the arrival of Cyril Burdet brought to the French women’s team the novelty necessary to obtain big results, the contrast with the men is striking. Not helped by what he qualifies as “the bankruptcy of our two leaders“, Vincent Vittoz also wants to make certain things clear. As he emerged from a dream year 2022, with four Olympic medals and the big crystal globe, Quentin Fillon Maillet showed himself far from the level which was his this season.
Results that Vincent Vittoz explains by a poor apprehension of his new status. “Quentin never wanted to hear the warning messages [disant que] it wouldn’t be a year like any other. We tried to warn him. Our fault is perhaps not having had enough of an impact.”
“Quentin wanted to show everyone who told him that it was going to be a more difficult year that, for him, it wouldn’t affect him, because he’s a machine. He read it a little wrong.”
Vincent Vittoz, coach of the French biathlon teamat AFP
Supposed to be the second leader of the Blues behind “QFM”, Emilien Jacquelin also had a disappointing year, even preferring to withdraw from the circuit after the Worlds. For Vittoz, the problem goes far beyond: “A depressed athlete for a year and a half, whom we accompanied, we did more than we could, we put all our energy, maybe too much at times, maybe we tried too hard to try to get him back on the right track. Maybe we weren’t the right answers either, but we kept it going as much as we could.“The last days of the weekend in Oslo are likely to be long for the French men’s team.