Women's World Cup – Le Grand-Bornand – Girls, it's sparkling

Let's start with what stings. What tingles, let's say. The Blues ended this long weekend at Grand-Bornand missing a new podium by a hair. For nothing. And it's not a picture. Jeanne Richard held this third place until five meters from the finish line, before being swallowed up by the Slovak Paulina Batovska-Fialkova. Missing out on a first career podium by that little should have left her devastated. “But I have no regrets, I gave everything, I couldn't do more“, breathed the Benjamine of the tricolor group.

After Lou Jeanmonnot, Julia Simon, Sophie Chauveau and Justine Braisaz-Bouchet, we will have to wait a little longer for a fifth different French woman to reach her podium this winter. Jeanne Richard's turn will come very quickly, it cannot be otherwise. That of Océane Michelon, a time on Sunday to achieve this objective before a first standing shot of the harvest, will also arrive in the short or medium term.

So, despite Sunday's disappointment, the French remain on a very enviable trajectory. Even if everything wasn't perfect. We could almost say “because everything hasn’t been perfect”. Lou Jeanmonnot, second in the general classification after the first two rounds of the World Cup, arrived in Grand-Bornand with legitimate desires for a yellow bib. But the pressure, to which she seemed impermeable, buried her in the Alps. Results: 35th in the sprint, 18th in the pursuit, 14th in the mass start.

But if it's bad news for her, since she fell to third place in the hierarchy and her ambitions as a big crystal globe took a hit, it was the perfect opportunity to measure once again that when the leader gets through it, the collective remains particularly solid. A Jeanmonnot stalls? A Braisaz-Bouchet (re)wins. A Simon gets her cherry redone. A Richard bursts. That’s France. Here, no tree hides the forest. The forest is constantly enriched with new trees.

This is why Cyril Burdet, the new coach of the French women's team, quickly got rid of the slight disappointment of the outcome of this weekend at home. “The results are inevitably tinged with a little disappointment because we always want more!he confided to our colleagues at Nordic Mag. But with hours of rest, we will be satisfied. We are off to a very good start to winter“. On Jeanne Richard, he prefers to keep the promise than the missed podium of the day: “I tell myself that we still have some good players in the team.”

It was only the second time this season, in eight races, that the Blues failed to get on the podium. And it was for a matter of tenths of a second. Of course, Franziska Preuss's cavalcade is so crazy that the German will probably be hard to beat, or even compete for, the big globe this winter. But it is just as satisfying to see this team evolve: there are now six of them, at each race, who can aim for at least the podium, or even more if there are similarities.

The French women (re)pass the baton from weekend to weekend, from race to race and, better, all have room for improvement for various and varied reasons. A hint of life for Richard and Michelon. A shot found for Braisaz-Bouchet. A physique to consolidate for Simon, even if there is improvement. A consistency to be gleaned for Chauveau. A status to be better assumed for Jeanmonnot. Everyone can therefore go even further this winter.

But as it stands, apart from the Germans, impressive since the start of the 2024-2025 campaign, everyone can envy the Blues. They are at the end of the year break in 3rd (Jeanmonnot), 4th (Simon), Braisaz-Bouchet (7th) and 8th (Richard) places in the general classification. So rather than grumbling about Jeanne Richard's soaring podium, we must look at the whole of this start of the season with some haughtiness. Telling yourself that it was already very good. And there are good reasons to believe that the best is yet to come.