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Justine Braisaz-Bouchet on February 16, 2022
This time the head followed. “I remained calm, surprisingly calm”, reacted Justine Braisaz-Bouchet after her gold medal won on Friday in the mass start women’s biathlon at the 2022 Winter Olympics. The first Frenchwoman to win this event, the young 25-year-old Savoyard was not however the No. 1 asset of the Blues in Beijing. Blame it on his emotions.
The first results were hard to take: 40th in the individual, 48th in the sprint, non-starter in the pursuit. “I’m really disappointed. These were races that were close to my heart, and I didn’t do my job,” she lamented on February 11. As for the mixed event, which opened the fortnight, Julia Simon and Anaïs Chevalier-Bouchet were preferred to her. And until then, the women’s relay, only 6th, had not been able to save the day, as was the case in 2018. Because in Pyeongchang, for her first Games, her personal record had been terrible with 25 shooting errors in five tests.
Very fast on skis, to the point of being considered one of the best on the circuit in this area, Braisaz-Bouchet has too often suffered from shortcomings with the rifle. “She can still evolve physically, but her big margin for improvement is at the level of shooting”, also recalled Jean-Paul Giachino, the national coach at the microphone of France TV.
“Someone spontaneous and ultra-emotional”
But its difficulties are not only technical. They are mostly mental. “She does not have phenomenal concentration,” lamented her former coach Franck Badiou. On the world circuits since 2014 after impressing among young people, to the point of being “in front of the boys” until she was 11, Justine Braisaz-Bouchet apparently had trouble digesting her rapid rise. “Everything went too fast for Justine, recently analyzed Jean-Paul Giachino. She lost time. She went almost directly from the junior category to the World Cup. She did not learn to play in front, to win” .
Described as atypical, with remarks often considered lunar or enigmatic, the former biology student is a difficult character to pin down. Stéphane Bouthiaux, boss of French biathlon, said before the Ostersund Worlds in 2019: “We always have the impression that she is absent. When we talk to her, she listens, but I’m not sure she hear”.
This observation, she confirmed in an interview with the World: “When I arrive on the target, I don’t know if stone is the right word, but there is not this excitement that I have in training. I have the impression that only my body moves, my head doesn’t think anymore. (…) I’m a spontaneous and ultra-emotional person, I’m not sure I’ll be able to regulate myself. On certain races, I have the impression of not being able to pass the 6th, to tell me ‘let go and trust yourself'”.
“Awareness”
In recent months, a mental trainer has helped the biathlete from Les Saisies, when she previously did not want to “put time into it”. The good results came back. Just before the Olympic Games, she returned to winning ways, winning the individual in the 7th round of the World Cup in Anterselva. This 4th success in his career put an end to a scarcity of 58 races (which had resulted in only two podiums). “There was an awareness, as much thanks to the mental preparation as thanks to myself, she confided in December. I grew up, as much in biathlon as on the rest. I have a more serene vision. I feel much more liberated. Before I was chasing after a result and I was very frustrated”.
Before the victorious mass start on the snow of Zhangjiakou, however, a relapse was felt. “There are a lot of emotions, a lot of stress,” she said after the sprint fiasco. Which left her skeptical for this last opportunity, which she considered “compromised”.
Eventually, these setbacks freed his mind. “I told myself that I had nothing to lose, everything to gain. (…) This is perhaps the first race of the Games where I did not focus on a result. I was just happy to run. I had mourned the sprint, the individual, the relay. This morning, I said to myself: ‘Girl, you’ve been to the Games twice, you have a fantastic chance'”. A chance that she seized and allowed her to be the first French biathlete to win in an individual event since Florence Baverel-Robert in 2006.