For the third time in a row, after 2014 and 2018, the France cross-country ski team invited on the relay podium 4 × 10 km from the Beijing Olympics 2022.
Le Monde with AFP
The team of France won, Sunday, January 13, at the Olympic Games The Bronze Medal of the cross-country ski relay, overwhelmed by the Russians, bringing a ninth medal to the tricolor clan under the snow of Zhangjiakou. This is the third time the team of France invites on the podium of the relay 4 × 10 km, after the bronze of 2014 and 2018, behind the untouchables Russians and the Norwegians, that the Blues have doubted until at the end.
What does Mauritius Manifier, the last relayer and leader of the Blues, had to leave in the final the Norwegian Cador Johannes Klaebo, his teammates Clement Parisse, Richard Jouve and Hugo Lapelle exuted to his passage on the line.
Even if this third place of the relay began to look like a French property – since the blues were also on the last step of the podium of the world of 2021 in Oberstdorf – the fortnight had started with the tricolor founders.
But Maurice Manifier has confirmed its rise in these games. “Momo”, to the preparation disrupted by a pubalgia and then an injury to the ribs following a fall, had been set back in the first event, the Skiathlon of which he had ranked twenty-third, but had found colors in the 15th KM Classic Friday (12 e ). When Finnish, German and finally Swedish exploded in the prosecutors group, the Blues were holding.
Manifice, the now quad medalist bronze was the last of the rest of the world – excluding Russians and Norwegians – to crack in the Zhangjiakou blizzard, – 13 ° C at the thermometer and snow. Extreme conditions in which the Blues were surpaced.
“We are mountaineers, we are used to”
“Between the hard track, the cold plus the altitude [1,600 meters] and the wind that give sensations of lack of oxygen, the mind will be predominant”, predicted, before the start of the events, the director Teams from France cross-country skiing, Olivier Michaud. “This is a register that suits us, we are mountaineers, we are used.”
They had shown him in Ruka (Finland) in November: when the Norwegians, including Johannes Klaebo, but also the Finnish Iivo Niskanen had given up the pursuit because of the polar cold. Hugo LaPlus and Clement Parisse had taken the start. The signature mustache of Lapus (15 e ) had finished bleached by the gel in a cartoon image accentuated by its slight resemblance with Asterix.
“We are a really welded team, really strong, we work for each other, announced the founder of 23 years Tuesday, last born of a French cross-country skiing in full statement. There is really room for Doing something good, very good, he showed. There are teams that are not necessarily to their advantage here. They make medals, Norwegians, but they are not as imposing they were able to Being at the beginning of the season. This year, we can really pick them up. “
It took little, less than a dozen seconds. The Russians were out of reach, relegating Norge to more than a minute. Beyond the ultra-domineering Bolshunov, who wins a third medal in China after the gold of the Skiathlon and the classic 15 km silver, this new success draws a cross-country ski supremacy in these Olympics 2022.
After the victory of the Russian founders already in relay the day before, a seventh medal falls into the steep of the Russian Olympic Committee, Russia being officially excluded for institutional doping.