Anaïs Bescond

Anaïs Bescond
Association	France
birthday	15th May 1987 (age 33)
place of birth	Aunay-sur-Odon , France
size	171 cm
Weight	70 kg
Career
society	SC Morbier Bellefontaine
Trainer	Frédéric Jean , Franck Badiou
Admission to the national team	2005
Debut in the European Cup / IBU Cup	2007
European Cup / IBU Cup victories	1
Debut in the World Cup	2007
World Cup victories	12 (1 individual victory)
status	active
Medal table
winter Olympics 1 × 0 × 2 × World Cup medals 1 × 6 × 1 × JWM medals 1 × 2 × 2 ×
winter Olympics gold 2018 Pyeongchang Mixed relay bronze 2018 Pyeongchang persecution bronze 2018 Pyeongchang Season  Biathlon world championships silver 2011 Khanty-Mansiysk Season silver 2012 Ruhpolding Season silver 2015 Kontiolahti Mixed relay silver 2015 Kontiolahti Season gold 2016 Oslo Mixed relay silver 2016 Oslo singles silver 2016 Oslo Season bronze 2020 Antholz Single mixed relay  Biathlon Junior World Championships gold 2005 Kontiolahti Season silver 2007 Martell Season bronze 2007 Martell singles bronze 2007 Martell sprint silver 2008 Ruhpolding Season
World Cup balance
Overall World Cup	7. ( 2017/18 )
Individual World Cup	5. ( 2015/16 )
Sprint World Cup	8. (2015/16)
Pursuit World Cup	6. (2017/18)
Mass start world cup	5th ( 2019/20 )
Podium placements 1. 2. 3. singles 0 2 1 sprint 1 1 1 persecution 0 2 1 Mass start 0 1 1 Season 11 13 9
last change: March 15, 2020

Anaïs Bescond (born May 15, 1987 in Aunay-sur-Odon ) is a French biathlete . Her greatest successes are the 2018 Olympic victory and the 2016 world championship title, both with the French mixed relay.

After success in the junior sector, Bescond has been a member of the French World Cup squad since the 2009/10 season and has been the most experienced biathlete on her team since 2018. In January 2014 she won an individual World Cup race for the first and so far only time. Since then she has won two individual medals at world championships and the Olympic Games, plus nine relay medals, including two gold ones.

Athletic career

Youth and junior area (until 2008)

Bescond was born in Normandy . Her family moved to Morbier in 1992 in the Jura mountain region , which in the 1990s was home to successful biathletes such as world champion Patrice Bailly-Salins and later Olympic champion Florence Bavarel . In particular, the celebrations of Bailly-Salins' title win in 1995, according to Bescond, aroused in her the ambition to win athletic medals herself. After starting skiing at an early age, she took up biathlon at SC Morbier Bellefontaine in 2002 . In the youth and junior sector, she quickly established herself in the French national squad, competed in races in the Junior European Cup from 2004 and became the youth world champion with the French relay team, which included Marie Dorin and Marion Blondeau next year . At the Junior World Championships in 2007 and 2008 she won further medals, including two bronze medals in individual competitions.

Promotion in the World Cup (2007 to 2014)

Bescond got her first appearance in the Biathlon World Cup in March 2007 at the age of 19 in Oslo, where she qualified as 60th of the sprint for the pursuit race after a faultless shooting, in which she was however lapped. In the following two winters she started in the second highest competition series for adults, the European Cup (from 2008/09: IBU Cup). In March 2008 she won the pursuit race in Cesana San Sicario in front of her teammate Marine Bolliet and finished seventh in the overall standings at the end of the season . After further good results in the IBU Cup, she was regularly nominated for the French Biathlon World Cup team from December 2009 and won her first World Cup points straight away as 29th in the Pokljuka individual. With the resignation of Sandrine Bailly and Sylvie Becaert after the Olympic winter, the national squad rejuvenated significantly in 2010: From the 2010/11 season , Bescond formed the tribe of the French relay team with Marie Dorin and Marie-Laure Brunet, who were about the same age . In 2010/11 Bescond took the position of start runner for most of the competitions, later she was used more variably. Together with Dorin, Brunet and Pauline Macabies , she was second on the podium of a World Cup in Oberhof in January 2011 , and in the same year the women's team - now with Sophie Boilley instead of Macabies - won the silver medal at the World Championships in Khanty-Mansiysk . In 2011/12 France won the overall relay world cup, for Bescond (as well as for their teammates) the success in Antholz in January 2012 meant the first World Cup victory.

Compared to her teammates Brunet and Dorin (from their wedding in 2011: Dorin-Habert) Bescond was a slightly faster runner at the beginning of the 2010s, but a much worse shooter. In the 2011/12 season she had a hit rate of 74 percent (compared to 87 percent for Dorin-Habert and 93 percent for Brunet, which led the entire field of participants in these statistics). While her two teammates were more often second and third on the podium and also reached the top ten of the overall World Cup, Bescond usually placed in the upper midfield in individual races. Her best results were initially fifth in the Pokljuka sprint in 2010 and fourth in the Oslo mass start in 2013, two of the few World Cup races in which she shot clean. In the overall ranking of the World Cup, she was always classified between ranks 17 and 30 from 2010 to 2014. In the Antholz sprint in January 2014, Bescond won the race by six seconds ahead of Andrea Henkel, despite a shooting error, and thus celebrated her first World Cup success with her first individual podium result in the World Cup. After Darja Domratschawa, she ran the second fastest running time of the competition and after the competition she thanked her technicians for the preparation of her skis. After the competition, national coach Thierry Dusserre was convinced that Bescond had made the breakthrough with her victory and that her success gave the entire French women's team, which had previously been without a win for six years, self-confidence. The former biathlete Vincent Jay also attested her great potential as an expert on French television at the immediately following Olympic competitions in Sochi : Bescond was the best athlete on the team in terms of her physical requirements, in terms of muscles and lung volume, and also had a direct duel high assertiveness. In fact, Bescond was the best French woman in her first Olympic participation in every race and achieved two fifth places in the sprint and in the individual as the first result.

Extended world elite (2014 to 2018)

In the World Cup pursuit in Tyumen, Bescond (right) was only a few tenths of a second behind the winner, Kaisa Mäkäräinen .

In the winters after her first World Cup victory, Bescond did not repeat this success - instead, Marie Dorin-Habert was permanently among the best of the World Cup - but she increased her hit rate significantly (to 84 percent in the 2016/17 season) and stood from 2014 Until 2018 at least once on the podium in each season. This also included two individual medals at major events: In the 15-kilometer individual at the 2016 World Championships at Oslo's Holmenkollen , Bescond won the silver medal, twelve seconds behind Dorin-Habert. At the 2018 Olympics , after finishing 19th in the sprint in the pursuit, she improved to third place, making her the only French biathlete to win an individual medal in Pyeongchang , losing only a few tenths of a second to Anastasiya Kuzmina in the final silver sprint . In the overall World Cup, Bescond performed continuously better in these years than at the beginning of her career, with placings between ranks seven (in winter 2017/18) and fourteen (2016/17). In the 2016/17 season, she had health problems at the beginning of winter, which is why she only traveled to the World Championships in Hochfilzen as a substitute and received only one assignment. In March 2018, she missed her second World Cup victory in the pursuit of Tyumen by just 0.2 seconds when she lost to Kaisa Mäkäräinen in the final sprint .

After Marie-Laure Brunet's resignation after the 2014 Olympic Games, the French team had rejuvenated itself. Bescond and Dorin-Habert - who had a close friendship - were by far the most experienced athletes of the team now supervised by Julien Robert after almost ten years in the World Cup in the mid-2010s . In addition, there were significantly younger biathletes, such as Anaïs Chevalier, born in 1993, and Justine Braisaz , who was three years younger and made her debut in the World Cup in 2014 at the age of 18. These four athletes won the World Cup silver medal in 2016 (Bescond was the only one of the four to fail) and in 2018 the Olympic bronze medal for France. Previously, the women's relay around Bescond had already won the 2015 World Championship silver as the starting runner, at that time with Enora Latuillière instead of Chevalier. Bescond was also part of the regular cast of the mixed relay at major events: Here she won the world championship title in 2016 as a starting runner together with Dorin-Habert, Quentin Fillon Maillet and the multiple overall World Cup winner Martin Fourcade . With her individual medal and the two relay medals, Bescond was one of the four most successful participants in the World Championships in Oslo. At the Olympic Games in Pyeongchang, the mixed relay team came together again with a similar line-up ( Simon Desthieux replaced Fillon Maillet) and also won the title here. Bescond had won eight medals at major events between 2015 and 2018, six of them in relays.

In competition with younger athletes (from 2018)

Bescond 2020 in Oberhof

At the beginning of the 2018/19 season, various media (and also the Biathlon World Association IBU ) described the now 31-year-old Bescond as a "veteran" in their season preview, who now de facto lead the French team after Marie Dorin-Habert also did her had ended active career after the Pyeongchang Games. Bescond rejected the ascription as “leader” and emphasized that this was an honorary title awarded by the media with no practical relevance, that “the girls” were not dependent on them. In the period between 2018 and 2020, she generally maintained her level of performance: With hit rates of over 80 percent and running times that were almost three percent faster than the average, she was one of the 40 best shooters and the 20 best runners among biathletes. In the overall World Cup, she finished 22nd in 2018/19 . Your thus could be attributed also to worst result in this rating in seven years that they had to make the end of the season because of an asthmatic bronchitis several weeks of competition break, in which they, the counting for the World Cup World Championships missed. In the summer of 2019, she sustained a knee injury that affected her pre-season training. Nevertheless, Bescond was on the podium in three World Cups in 2019/20 , was 15th in the overall World Cup (as the third-best French woman behind Braisaz and Julia Simon , who each won one race) and won the bronze medal in the single mixed relay at the World Championships with Émilien Jacquelin .

Personal

Anaïs Bescond grew up with two older siblings. When she was a young girl, her father described her to the daily Ouest-France as being extremely ambitious, and always wanted to do the same thing as her siblings. The assessment of her friend and teammate Marie Dorin-Habert was similar, who Bescond described as her "engine" and as "solid as a rock" (in French: "roc imperturbable").

Like many winter sports enthusiasts, Bescond has been a member of the military since September 2007, where she serves as “Caporal-Chef” in the land forces . In this role, she also took part in the World Military Championships, where she won biathlon titles in 2014 and 2015. She dedicated her Olympic relay medal from Pyeongchang 2018 to the relatives of two French soldiers who had recently fallen in Mali . In 2016 she graduated from the University of Grenoble , where she dealt with sports and tourism, among other things.

statistics

World Cup victories

Single race

Relay race

No. date place discipline 1. Jan. 16, 2014  Antholz sprint

No. date place discipline 1. Jan. 21, 2012  Antholz Season 1 2. Feb 10, 2012  Kontiolahti Mixed season 2 3. Nov 30, 2014  Ostersund Mixed season 3 4th Jan. 24, 2016  Antholz Season 4 5. March 3, 2016  Oslo ( World Cup ) Mixed season 5 6th March 12, 2017  Kontiolahti Mixed season 6 7th Jan. 7, 2018  Oberhof Season 7 8th. 17th March 2018  Oslo Season 8 9. Dec 2, 2018  Pokljuka Mixed season 9 10. Jan. 19, 2019  Ruhpolding Season 10 11. Jan 25, 2020  Pokljuka Single mixed season 11 1with Marie-Laure Brunet , Sophie Boilley and Marie Dorin-Habert 2with Sophie Boilley, Jean-Guillaume Béatrix and Vincent Jay 3with Anaïs Chevalier , Simon Fourcade and Martin Fourcade 4thwith Justine Braisaz , Anaïs Chevalier and Marie Dorin-Habert 5with Marie Dorin-Habert, Quentin Fillon Maillet and Martin Fourcade 6thwith Marie Dorin-Habert, Simon Desthieux and Quentin Fillon Maillet 7thwith Anaïs Chevalier, Célia Aymonier and Justine Braisaz 8th with Anaïs Chevalier, Célia Aymonier and Marie Dorin-Habert 9 with Justine Braisaz, Martin Fourcade and Simon Desthieux 10with Julia Simon , Justine Braisaz and Anaïs Chevalier 11with Émilien Jacquelin

World Cup placements

The table shows all placements (depending on the year, including the Olympic Games and World Championships).

• 1st - 3rd Place: Number of podium placements
• Top 10: Number of placements in the top ten (including podium)
• Points ranks: Number of placements within the point ranks (including podium and top 10)
• Starts: Number of races run in the respective discipline

placement	singles	sprint	persecution	Mass start	Season	total
1st place		1			11	12
2nd place	2	1	2	1	13	19th
3rd place	1	1	1	1	9	13
Top 10	8th	23	12	14th	58	115
Scoring	17th	75	65	40	60	257
Starts	30th	92	68	40	60	290
Status: end of season 2019/20

winter Olympics

Results at Olympic Winter Games:

	Individual competitions				Relay competitions
	sprint	persecution	singles	Mass start	Women's relay	Mixed relay
Olympic Winter Games 2014 | Sochi	5.	12.	5.	10.	DNF	6th
Olympic Winter Games 2018 | Pyeongchang	19th	3.	31.	17th	3.	1.

Web links

Commons : Anaïs Bescond  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Anaïs Bescond in the IBU database (English)
• Anaïs Bescond's website

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Anais Bescond. Eurosport , accessed February 23, 2020 . 
2. ↑ ^{a b} JO 2018: Anaïs Bescond, une militaire normande en bronze on leparisien.fr. Released February 12, 2018. Accessed April 3, 2020.
3. ↑ IBU Biathlon Guide 2012/2013, pp. 212–214.
4. ↑ AFP : Biathlon: le jour de gloire est arrivé pour Bescond à Antholz on la-croix.com. Published on January 16, 2014. Accessed on April 3, 2020. "" Anais a fait tomber une große barrière, pour elle et pour le groupe qui n'avait encore jamais gagné ", s'est réjoui le coach Thierry Dusserre. [...] Pour le coach, le succès de Bescond "tombe au meilleur moment avant les JO car cela permet d'engranger de la confiance, ce dont on avait besoin et qui nous avait manqué pendant des années". "(In German roughly: "Anais has overcome a big hurdle, for herself and for the group that had never won", says a delighted coach Thierry Dusserre. [...] For the coach, Bescond's success comes "at the best moment before the Olympics, because that allows us to find the confidence we needed and which we have lacked over the years. ")
5. ↑ Anaïs Bescond, la tête et les jambes on sport.francetvinfo.fr. Published on February 9, 2014. Accessed on April 3, 2020. “[…] parce quelle [sic] est très forte à la bagarre. Si une nana passe à côté d'elle, elle saute dans les skis et elle s'accroche. "(In German, for example:" [...] because she is very strong in tussles. If any chick wants to overtake her, she lays down again properly and bites firmly. ")
6. ↑ Philip O'Connor: Biathlon: Germany's Dahlmeier cruises to pursuit gold on reuters.com. Released February 12, 2018. Accessed April 3, 2020.
7. ↑ Anaïs Bescond: Season 2016/2017: mon bilan on anaisbescond.com. Released April 30, 2017. Accessed April 3, 2020.
8. ↑ AFP: Mondiaux de biathlon: Dorin-Habert et Bescond, l'amitié récompensée on ladepeche.fr. Released March 9, 2016. Accessed April 3, 2020. "" Marie, c'est quelqu'un qui m'aide à avancer ", raconte Anaïs Bescond. C'est une amie, quelqu'un avec qui j'ai partagé des moments faciles et des moments moins faciles. " , one with whom I shared the easy and the less easy moments. ")
9. ↑ Martin, Simon Desthieux, Anais Bescond and Justine Braisaz: A role model for France on biathlonworld.com. Released November 22, 2018. Accessed April 3, 2020.
10. ↑ Cédric Callier: Anaïs Bescond, leader malgré elle du biathlon français on sports24.lefigaro.fr. Released December 3, 2018. Accessed April 3, 2020.
11. ↑ IBU Biathlon Guide 2019/2020, pp. 400–402. cloudinary.com (PDF)
12. ↑ Sophie Courageot: Mondiaux de biathlon: atteinte de bronchite, anaïs bescond est définitivement forfait on france3-regions.francetvinfo.fr. Released March 11, 2019. Accessed April 3, 2020.
13. ↑ Anaïs Bescond, blessée, doit adapter son entraînement on ledauphine.com. Released July 14, 2019. Accessed April 3, 2020.
14. ↑ Gaëtan Briard: Jeux olympiques. Pour Anaïs Bescond, que la montagne est belle on ouest-france.fr. Released February 9, 2018. Accessed April 3, 2020.
15. ^ Sophie Courageot: "Anaïs Bescond, c'est mon moteur ... mon roc imperturbable" on francetvinfo.fr. Released March 9, 2016. Accessed April 3, 2020.
16. ↑ Jeux olympiques 2018: Anaïs Bescond rend hommage aux soldats morts au Mali on leparisien.fr. Released February 22, 2018. Accessed April 3, 2020.
17. ↑ Anaïs Bescond décroche le bronze aux championnats du monde 2020 de biathlon on univ-grenoble-alpes.fr. Published on February 21, 2020. Accessed on April 3, 2020. The university describes its degree as “master Loisir, environnement, sport, tourisme”.