In Zangjiakou
“FIRST OLYMPIC MEDAL AHHHHHH!!! With a smile from ear to ear, not even a trickle of frozen drool on his lips (hat for the artist, given how we peeled our loaves at the level of the launch pad), Quentin Fillon Maillet’s cry comes from the heart and guts when crossing the finish line of this mixed relay in second position, this Saturday, after a first race of completely crazy bibi.
The joy is not feigned, and we understand it, because it is not only the first charm of the French team this winter in Beijing, but it is also and above all the very first Olympic medal for three of the four wags on track today, Anaïs Chevalier-Bouchet having already won bronze in the women’s relay in Pyeongchang. Be that as it may, this second place for the French team, after a crazy final sprint between QFM, Johannes Boe and Latypov, launches the French biathletes perfectly into the freezing cold of Zangjiakou.
A departure that smells of fir
However, everything had started very badly, with a completely failed first stint from Anaïs Chevalier-Bouchet and a handover to Julia Simon in a sad 6th place. The sequel was not going to give much more hope. It was indeed necessary to see the gestures of spite of the coaches of the Blues, located just in front of us, at the level of the shooting range, after the plantade of the second torchbearer (two new pickaxes) to understand that the day started by smelling badly the fir tree. And then, and then… And then everything changed as if by magic, with Simon’s faultless standing shot and the start of an intoxicating comeback as possible.
🤩 Huge standing shot from Julia Simon which totally revives the Blues in the race for the gold medal!
🇬🇧 Halfway through the race, the French are in the lead 🔥 #Beijing2022
▶ Follow the end of the race live: https://t.co/Bo6P38dLLx pic.twitter.com/ghdFBNKnPZ
— francetvsport (@francetvsport) February 5, 2022
Good, Emilien Jacquelin we still scared the hell out of us on the standing shot, reloading his pickaxe bullets like a granny looking for her loose change at the supermarket checkout while everyone is waiting behind, but the Blues had room and, on arrival, more fear than harm. Seeing him struggling with his paws, we thought that the cold had a lot to do with it. Bingo, the cold and the gloves, as he will explain in the process at the microphone of France TV: “At the time of the pickaxe, with this cold, we opted for bigger gloves and it was complicated to recharge. But we knew that the error was admitted, in the end, the first three made three penalty laps, we played with that and it passed. »
The Blues perfectly launched
It could even have gone even better if Johannes Boe had not found the flame that he generally missed at the start of the World Cup season. After the last standing shot, a brawl broke out between QFM, Latypov and the Norwegian, we just regret that the organizers didn’t give us western music that would have been in the best taste.
In the end, after a legendary sprint and friction worthy of a flat finish at the Tour de France, Boe settled their accounts with the other two, before being buried by the entire Norwegian team. A few meters away, a handsome player, QFM seemed to be satisfied with this fine second place for the tricolor, he who had lived through the Pyeongchang Olympics marked by family bereavement and the health problems of his partner.
On the big stage of the Zangjiakou press room, in front of hundreds of journalists, Fillon Maillet did not hide it: “For me, Pyeongchang will remain as a painful memory, I lost my father-in-law, the father of my wife, and my wife had cancer. Today I am very happy to have won because it is not only sport that is at stake, but also life. Pyeongchang 2018 was terrible, Beijing 2022 is off to a great start. “Today, he can exult, and with him the whole blue-white-red delegation: the Blues are perfectly launched and the party has only just begun.