It doesn’t get any better! France’s biathlon star Anaïs Chevalier-Bouchet ended her career with a win on Sunday. At the end of the Comité du Dauphiné, the 30-year-old won the relay alongside two young biathletes.
In fact, it looked like Anaïs Chevalier-Bouchet would have to settle for second place in the last race of her glittering biathlon career. After a clean standing stage, the 30-year-old went into the final relay of the Comité du Dauphiné trailing behind teammate Lou Jeanmonnot. There the seven-time World Cup medal winner performed magic one last time.
Chevalier-Bouchet gained meter by meter and finally passed Jeanmonnot – and then ran up and away. The 30-year-old didn’t give her World Cup colleague a chance and was the first to cross the finish line with a lead of 21.1 seconds. The perfect end to an extraordinarily successful career.
The race means a lot to her, emphasized the Frenchwoman after she returned from the award ceremony together with Alisse Dusserre and Anaëlle Bondoux.
“It was important for me to be here again and to win,” said the future biathlon pensioner, who, according to her own statement, approached the races in Bessans without any great emotions. “I was pretty relaxed. The emotions were mainly in Oslo,” she explained, referring to her World Cup farewell last month.
Just over a year ago, Chevalier-Bouchet celebrated the biggest success of her career when she won two silver medals at the Olympic Games in Beijing – one in the mixed relay, the second in singles. Four years earlier she also celebrated winning the bronze medal in the relay in Pyeongchang. The 30-year-old has also regularly cleaned up at the World Cup in recent years. Her CV includes three silver and four bronze medals.