France’s biathlon men have always been among the defining athletes of the World Cup, with Martin Fourcade, Raphael Poiree and Quentin Fillon Maillet, the Grande Nation has three of the most successful ski hunters of all time. From the current squad, alongside Fillon Maillet, Emilien Jacquelin has already celebrated victories in the World Cup, while Fabien Claude, Éric Perrot and Antonin Guigonnat have also reached the podium at least once in an elite individual race. Things are currently going historically badly.
Now that the first three stations of the 2023/24 Biathlon World Cup are history, people in the Norwegian, German and Swedish camps in particular should be quite satisfied: DSV has already collected six podium finishes (3 wins), Sweden two (1 win) and unsurprisingly The Norwegians ended up on the podium a whopping 16 times (4 wins). What catches the eye, however, is that so far you have been looking in vain for a biathlete from France in the first three places. A circumstance that has historic proportions.
After eight individual races, the last time the French men’s team was without a podium finish was in the winter of 1996/1997. This is what “Nordic Mag” reveals.
France’s biathletes are as bad as they were 26 years ago
At that time, the Germans Sven Fischer and Ricco Groß, Pavel Rostovzev and Viktor Maigurov from Russia, the Italian Wilfried Pallhuber and a certain Ole Einar Björndalen (Norway) dominated the scene. Back then, only one Frenchman managed to make it onto the podium in the entire winter: the later “Mister World Cup” Poiree came third in the Antholz sprint in January 1997.
Striking: The surprising French lull can’t actually be due to the particularly challenging preparation of the skis this season due to the fluorine ban, because among the women, the French are the measure of all things with five wins and two further podium finishes.