LFrench skier Benjamin Daviet won gold in cross-country sprint skiing (standing category) on Wednesday March 9 at the Paralympic Games in Beijing (March 4-13), bringing France a sixth medal. On the sunny slopes of the Nordic site of Zhangjiakou, the native of Annecy beat the German Marco Maier and the Ukrainian Grygorii Vovchynskyi.
With this medal, Benjamin Daviet, French flag bearer during the opening ceremony, is reviving after having failed the day before in a disappointing sixth place in the medium distance biathlon. “It’s just crazy,” reacted the champion after the finish line. “I had so much anger in me for having done anything wrong in the first two (Games races), that suddenly I unloaded everything today. He said he saw this gold medal as a reward after four years of sacrifice.
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“The gold medal is done (…) and it will really free me”
“I thank my fiancée for these four years of hell that I made her live. Because we only saw each other on the weekends, and all that to prepare for the Games”, he confided: “There, it’s just a magnificent reward that I can give him, as well as any my family, because I’m not easy to live with, especially when I’m preparing for big deadlines like that. Benjamin Daviet will contest three more races before the end of the Games on Sunday. “The gold medal is done (…) and it will really free me. I can’t wait,” he concluded.
France now has six medals (including four gold), which places it in 4e country ranking rank.
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