A shooting fault by Justine Braisaz-Bouchet: Why France was disqualified from the relay

The genesis: prone shooting

When Justine Braisaz-Bouchet took over, the French team was in eighth position. As a reminder, a seventh ensured him the globe of the specialty. The recent Olympic mass-start champion had a difficult prone shot as she needed three pickaxe balls to get away without a penalty round. But this bed will have consequences for the future. First, Braisaz-Bouchet had to use all his pickaxe balls, we will come back to this. Secondly, she had another concern that will weigh.

“We are allowed three pickaxe balls per shotshe recalled at the microphone of La Chaîne L’Equipe. I lost one while trying to take another. She fell in the pit, I couldn’t get her back“. To fully understand, we asked our consultant Sandrine Bailly to explain to us where these balls are: “Each athlete has their own system. Hanna Öberg has a bar where she has her six balls. Others have holes in the cross and put the balls directly in. You can lose them when you fall“.

The fatal mistake: shooting standing

Exit 9th after the lying shot, Braisaz-Bouchet arrived on the standing with the possibility of taking places since her predecessors had had difficulties. Problem, on a bad shooting day, she made three new mistakes. Her first two pickaxe balls cleared the targets but since she had lost one of them on the bench, only two remained in her cross. She then elected to engage an additional magazine to fire a bullet. What is prohibited.

“Safety level, she does things well since after firing, she disengaged the loader“, analyzes Sandrine Bailly. A biathlete can leave his magazine engaged only if he has fired his five bullets, which happens 99.9% of the time. Justine Braisaz-Bouchet thought she was in the right place by putting her magazine back in its place. “She should have taken a bullet out of that magazine with her fingers“, regrets our consultant. So simple after the fact…

Why it’s a surprise: an extremely rare situation

We have said it: the Frenchwoman thought she was within her rights. And for good reason, according to Sandrine Bailly, few biathletes know the rules inside out and this mistake could have been made by others. “It’s a combination of bad circumstances,” she breathes. What is it? First, losing a ball can happen but it’s not that common. Second, and perhaps most importantly, needing 16 bullets (10+3+3) to blank all ten targets is highly unusual. If Justine Braisaz-Bouchet had only made one less fault, lying down or standing up, she would not have needed a sixth pickaxe ball, the one he missed and which pushed to take an extra one to compensate.

The pickaxe ball system has changed for a few years now: “At the very beginning of the relays, the pickaxe balls were above the chargersgives Sandrine Bailly. We emptied them into a small cup when we arrived at our shooting position. But it was not very practical for the volunteers who had to remove them every time. It’s much more fluid now, there are no more parasitic gestures.” This Thursday, Justine Braisaz-Bouchet would no doubt have preferred the old method.