This is an anomaly in the tricolor biathlon record: the Blues have never been crowned Olympic relay champions.

They have never even done better than 3rd (1994, 2002, 2006) while their teammates have amassed five medals in eight editions since women's biathlon has been on the Olympic program, including a title (1992) and a silver medal (2010).

Another curiosity of this curse of the Olympic men's relay: Fourcade, however considered by many to be the best biathlete in history, has never won the slightest medal over the distance when he was crowned Olympic champion in the mixed relay in 2018 .

But the past, Fillon Maillet takes pleasure in freeing himself from it, as he has shown since his arrival in China.

Full of confidence, on tracks that suit him perfectly, the Jura player exorcised the memory of his poor 2018 Olympics to collect four medals, including two titles (individual and pursuit).

His worst result in four races at Zhangjiakou?

Second, in mixed relay and sprint...

"Other Planet"

"He is on another planet", summarizes Simon Desthieux who is his roommate in the Olympic Village and who will be one of the four Blues in the relay.

The French relay, made up of Fabien Claude, Émilien Jacquelin, Simon Desthieux and himself, "clearly has a chance of a medal" and "will try to go for gold", insists "QFM" which has set itself as an objective to make a full box.

"I tell myself after four out of four, now why not six out of six," he said.

Frenchman Quentin Fillon Maillet receives the biathlon pursuit gold medal on February 14, 2022 at the Beijing Olympics Tobias SCHWARZ AFP

Before the day on Tuesday, the French team has already collected eleven medals, including three titles and five on credit in biathlon, which earned it 9th place in the medal table, dominated by Norway.

Tess Ledeux's contribution stopped with her big air silver medal: tired after qualifying the day before, she finished 7th in the slopestyle event, won by the Swiss Mathilde Gremaud, ahead of the Chinese Eileen Gu.

Gu in silver

The calm after the storm for Kamila Valieva?

At least for the duration of his short program, the 15-year-old Russian prodigy will be able to ignore his resounding doping affair which is upsetting these Olympic Games-2022.

The Court of Arbitration for Sport confirmed on Monday that the Russian anti-doping agency was right to lift its provisional suspension for doping.

A certainty for the 2022 European champion, big favorite for the Olympic title: if she were to finish among the first three on Thursday evening after the free program, there will be no medal ceremony, as long as a decision on the consequences of the positive doping control will not have been taken.

Chinese Eileen Gu during the slopestyle ski final on February 15, 2022 at the Beijing Olympics Marco BERTORELLO AFP

The first of the nine titles awarded on Tuesday returned in big air snowboarding, as in 2018, to Austrian Anna Gasser with a score of 185.50 points, ahead of New Zealander Zoi Sadowski Synnott, crowned in slopestyle, and Japanese Kokomo Murase.

Another highly anticipated moment of the day, the women's downhill, initially scheduled for 11 a.m. local (04 a.m. French) was delayed by 30 minutes due to strong gusts of wind blowing over Yanqing.

© 2022 AFP