The French stage of the biathlon world cup starts this Thursday in Grand Bornand in the Alps, with a large and warm audience to support the French in particular. For Franche-Comté Lou Jeanmonnot-Laurent, this atmosphere is special and very important. “It’s a little stressful, but it’s very cool” she confided to the France Bleu microphone before the races. “It’s already impressive the number of people who come just for training (…). It’s cool, it’s good to feel so supported”. This home run gives him both pressure and a lot of emotions : “It’s a lot of emotions at the same time. When I really concentrate on it, it eats up, it tightens my throat because it’s so powerful to feel so many people watching us, supporting us… and it’s is crazy. We love experiencing this because we love great emotions and here we experience beautiful ones.”
“We can’t hear each other breathing anymore!”
Sometimes there is so much atmosphere that the noise takes over. “We have encouragement to the point where we no longer hear each other! We no longer hear each other breathing, we no longer hear the pain, we go over it a little easily, as if it were constantly the last 500 meters of a race… and you can’t go at the speed of 500 meters every time” recognizes Lou Jeanmonnot-Laurent.
The yellow bib is “not its objective”
The Franc-comtoise approaches this stage of Grand Bornand with a new status, after a very good start to the season. And two victories under his belt in individual races. She points to the second place in the general classification behind the German Franziska Preuss. Lou Jeanmonnot-Laurent wore the yellow bib (leader’s bib in the general classification) at the start of the season before ceding it to her German rival, but does not put pressure on herself to aim for it as an objective. “No, it’s not a goal in itself. I prefer to have great races; and if that leads to a yellow bib, so much the better!”
The French stage of Grand Bornand takes place from December 19 to 22, with two sprints, two pursuits and two mass starts.
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