© DYLAN MARTINEZ / REUTERS
Merlin Surget
The retirement of Pierre Vaultier has left a big void. Which was expected, unfortunately. Even if the two-time defending Olympic champion had claimed to believe in Merlin’s ability to succeed him, it will still take time for the 22-year-old snowboarder to hope to put on the suit. «I know him very well, we’ve been riding together for a long time and I have one eye on him“, had confided to the Dauphiné Libéré Vaultier. «Merlin might have smashed all the podiums for already two years but he had a small delay in the ignition. He’s got the full toolkit, he’s changed a lot of things that have obviously helped his evolution and now we’re seeing him where he deserves to be.»
So many qualities that will not have been enough for Chamoniard to reach the final, the cleaver having fallen on his snowboard during a semi-final where he was edged by the Canadian Eliot Grondin and the Austrian Alessandro Hämmerle, Thursday mid-followingnoon at the Zhangjiakou site (China). Either the future first two of a final won Hämmerle for a few centimeters ahead of Grondin. Nothing shameful, so, especially that behind, Merlin Surget was able to recover to win the small final and therefore take the 5e place of these Beijing Games. Which also happens to be his World Cup ranking.
«There is a little joy to win this little final and a little sadness to watch the podium ceremony from afar“, he would analyze followingwards. «I wish I’d been there. But that’s only part of it. On these Games I have gained experience for future years. After having narrowly passed in 8th and in the quarters, I thought that my good star was going to follow me but I missed the train for the grand final. That’s the way it is, I have nothing to regret, I did with the shape of the day. In the semi-final, I think I missed the start a little bit. They went past and they made the hole.“Earlier in the competition, Loan Bozzolo and Léo Le Blé Jaques had made it through to the knockout stages, but then stopped in the quarter-finals.
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In a discipline where France has so far always managed to place one of its snowboarders on the podium – Paul-Henri de Le Rue and Tony Ramoin in bronze respectively in Turin in 2006 and Vancouver in 2010, then Pierre Vaultier in gold in 2014 in Sochi and Pyeongchang in 2018 – no hexagonal snowboarder will win a medal in Beijing. A disappointment, which shows that what biathlon is achieving at the moment with Quentin Fillon-Maillet, Olympic champion following Martin Fourcade, is exceptional. Nevertheless, the beautiful silver medal of Chloé Trespeuch the day before and the future mixed team event scheduled for Saturday which will offer a last chance to shine to the Blues, are likely to compensate for this delicate succession to be found.