Quentin Fillon Maillet wins his first World Cup – Liberation

Already blessed with a sensational career at the Beijing Olympics, Frenchman Quentin Fillon Maillet won the Biathlon World Cup this Saturday for the first time in his career. The title returned to him at the end of the disputed mass start in Otepää, in Estonia, where he took 2nd place behind the Norwegian Vetle Christiansen.

Three races from the end of the season, the 29-year-old biathlete is guaranteed to finish at the top of the general classification and becomes the fourth Frenchman to win the big crystal globe after Patrice Bailly-Salins (1994), Raphaël Poirée ( 2000, 2001, 2002, 2004) and Martin Fourcade (from 2012 to 2018).

An exceptional season

This title comes to close an exceptional season for the Jura, marked by his five medals at the Olympic Games in Beijing (two in gold, three in silver). He also won eight times on the World Cup circuit, which he largely dominated. And it’s not over: in addition to the big crystal globe, Fillon Maillet also won the small pursuit globe and remains in contention to win those of the mass start and the sprint.

Long in the shadow of the five-time Olympic champion Martin Fourcade then the Norwegian Johannes Boe, triple winner of the big crystal globe from 2019 to 2021, Fillon Maillet, 3rd in the World Cup for the past three years, has taken on another dimension this season. . Before settling at the top of world biathlon this winter, he had won only six races on the circuit and had never been crowned individually in a major competition.

He made up for it by becoming the undisputed leader of the French team, striking the spirits at the Beijing Games with his five podiums (individual and pursuit titles, silver in the mixed relay, relay and sprint), a first for a tricolor sportsman for nearly a century. He is the third Frenchman to win five Olympic medals in a single edition of the Olympic Games, winter and summer combined, after archer Julien Brulé in 1920 in Antwerp and fencer Roger Ducret in 1924 in Paris.