Challenges and Victories of the 2023-2024 Season
As I stood at the starting line of the Junior World Championships, I couldn't help but reflect on the tumultuous journey that brought me here...
As the winter fades and the last remnants of snow melt away, it marks not just the end of another season but a period of intense growth and unforgettable races. Reflecting on these past five months, where I lined up at the start 27 times, I've encountered every conceivable challenge and triumph that a biathlete might face. From the nerve-wracking selections in November to the exhilarating races at the Junior World Championships in Estonia, join me as I revisit these pivotal moments.
November decides everything
My goals were quite clear at the beginning of the season, I wanted to race on the IBU Cup circuit. Getting there would never be easy, with only 6 spots and loads of athletes on the start line. I was feeling good, training had been going really well and my results during testing were great but deep down there was a lot of stress and anxiety in me. I was scared of these races because they’d later go on and decide the rest of my racing season, I wasn’t allowed to miss this objective.
Sadly I would go on and finish outside of the top 15 in all three of the races, my skiing was not up to shape and my shooting scores were average. For me to be able to qualify, I needed to get on the podium at least once throughout the week. This was a massive disappointment for me because I was watching my teammates with whom I’d trained all year qualify for these races but I wasn’t going to be a part of it. Luckily a couple of weeks later a second weekend of selection races was being held this time for the IBU Junior Cup. This time only junior athletes are able to qualify with a total of 7 spots up for grabs. It’s much more open but the conditions in Bessans where the races are held are perfect, the snow is good and the wind is calm. Everything was looking good.
This second weekend of racing will end up being one of my worst weekends of racing in recent years. 41st and 20th, it was not fun. Mentally I was completely lost, during both of my standing shots I would go on and miss a total of 7 out of the 10 bullets. The worst part is I couldn’t figure out why. My trainer and I tried as much as possible to figure out where the problem came from but we had no idea, I wasn’t able to recall what I was feeling during each shot and this made finding the problem impossible. I was also very tired on the skis, being overtaken left right and centre pushing my morale to the lowest it’s been in a long time.
Fighting back pre-junior world championships
Staying at home has a lot of disadvantages mainly because you’re not participating in any international races but it also has a big advantage. TRAINING, and that is just what I did. I was able to head back to a shooting range, on my own and focus on myself and my training plan. No one else around me to disturb my training. It also allowed me to reach out to a mental trainer with knowledge in the biathlon space to help me find the problems surrounding my shooting and work on ways to eliminate them. This wasn’t easy because I struggled a lot when I had to talk about what I felt during my shooting and so on but after many video calls we’d narrowed it down.
I put in a lot of training hours during the end of December and the festive period, allowing me to build a good base before heading back to the French Cup. The next three weekends of racing in France were vital to me because they’d be the races which would be used as criteria to pick the two remaining spots for the Junior World Championships (the first two sports being taken up by athletes already on the international circuits). I approached these races with a new mind, rested and with a lot of will to succeed. This was my last opportunity to participate in international races this year, so mistakes were not an option.
And I’m happy to announce that they all went reasonably well, out of the 6 races only one was outside of the top 10 and I was on the podium for 4 of them. My shooting had greatly improved during the first weekend and this gave me the confidence during the next two to be able to shoot a little faster and find the extra seconds I needed to be in front. I was really happy, after a hard early part of the winter, finding my form again was very satisfying. But best of all, thanks to my great consistent results I was able to qualify for the Junior World Championships in Estonia. This would be the last time I could qualify for this event because next year I’ll no longer be a junior.
Racing against the world in Estonia
Before leaving for the event we had our team camp to get to know our younger teammates better and to get the final training dialled in ready for our big races to come. Now, I don’t know if you read anything about the snow conditions in France below 1400m this past winter but if not here’s a hint: there wasn’t any. So this made our training camp a little complicated, luckily our coaches had great shovelling skills and spent a lot of time shovelling snow onto our tracks to keep them usable. The worst part was on the shooting range where we’d end up lying down in massive puddles to shoot, it wasn’t very fun. There is a video on my TikTok account if you’d like some visual proof of our adventures. Our next great achievement was booking flights with Lufthansa who decided to pull a one-day strike on the day we were meant to fly out of Geneva airport, so we had to push our whole trip by two days which doesn’t sound very alarming but when your races are 4 days away is a little bit.
Luckily our travelling went alright and we made it safely to Otepää for the first official training days. The course in Otepää is amazing, it’s been used in the World Cup in the past and will host the World Championships in 2027 so it’s definitely world-class. The facilities around the track are great as well. It’s a very hard race course with two massive hills right after you exit the range, followed by two more progressive slopes further along the course, after that, you pretty much just turn round and it’s downhill all the way to the finish line. This makes for quite an easy arrival into the shooting range. Sadly it was also very windy, Estonia is a mountainless country so the wind speeds can get quite scary.
On the racing side of things though I participated in 4 different events, 3 individuals and the men’s relay at the end of the week. The first race went horribly wrong for me, I had the last bib on the course (102) and this meant I had a much slower track than anybody else, add to this some bad shooting and I finished way down in 62nd place. Only up from there though as I finished 15 in the sprint race and 11 in the mass start, those were some of the best individual results I’ve ever had at this level of racing so I was quite pleased. To end the week in the best way possible I was anchor leg in the men’s relay race. My teammates did such a great race that I started my leg off in first place, quite a stressful position to be in especially when the Norwegian behind me was a three-time winner already that week. Even though I shot well on the prone the Scandinavian missile whizzed past me on the skis to win the race and then after a penalty loop on the standing I let second place escape us as well so we finished third.
This was a great team result for France and ended a wonderful week of racing. The female French junior team also finished on the podium in the women’s relay so we were all very happy that evening. Our youth athletes managed great results throughout the week standing on top of the podium twice and mostly always finishing in the top 10. It’s important to thank our wax techs who did a wonderful job all week long. Personally even though in November I would have wanted an individual podium during this week of racing after everything I went through during the winter I’m very satisfied with my results during these junior worlds.
All over now
The winter is over now, it started off pretty much rock bottom with some bad races during the first part of the season and finished on a high in Estonia with some of my best-ever results and a podium in the men’s relay. (I returned to racing in France at the end of the season but fell ill and suffered a lot during the French Championships so we won’t talk about that). Another big achievement I’m very pleased about this winter is finishing second overall in the French Cup, not far from the win but sadly Ambroise who won finished the winter with some great performances.
Thanks a lot for keeping with me during this year. I’d like to take this opportunity to thank all my partners for their support either material or financial throughout the year. Thank you to my coaches and my teammates for pushing me during training and the winter races all year long and finally thank you to my parents and the rest of my family for their unmeasurable support. Racing at this level of competition is hard and without all these people behind the scenes supporting me, it would be impossible.