Myriam Bédard

Myriam Bédard
Association	Canada
birthday	22nd December 1969 (age 50)
place of birth	Neufchâtel, Canada
Career
society	Courcelette Québec
Admission to the national team	1989
Debut in the World Cup	1990
World Cup victories	5
status	resigned
End of career	1999
Medal table
Olympic medals 2 × 0 × 1 × World Cup medals 1 × 1 × 0 ×
winter Olympics bronze Albertville 1992 singles gold Lillehammer 1994 singles gold Lillehammer 1994 sprint  Biathlon world championships gold Borovets 1993 sprint silver Borovets 1993 singles
World Cup balance
Overall World Cup	2. ( 1990/91 , 1992/93 )

Myriam Bédard (born December 22, 1969 in Neufchâtel, now a district of Québec ) is a former Canadian biathlete and two-time Olympic champion. In addition, with her successes at the Biathlon World Championships in Borovets in 1993 , she was the only woman so far to win medals at a Biathlon World Championship for Canada. Before Susan Dunklee won the silver medal in the mass start at the 2017 Biathlon World Championships in Hochfilzen, Austria , she was also the only woman from North America who could win a medal at the Biathlon World Championships .

Life

Myriam Bédard has a daughter together with former biathlete Jean Paquet . After divorcing her first husband, Myriam Bédard married Iran- born painter and photographer Nima Mazhari .

Biathlon career

Bédard learned to shoot when she was 14 when she became a cadet in the Canadian Army . At the age of 15 she took part in her first biathlon competition. At 18 she became Canadian junior champion. In 1990 in Ruhpolding , Bédard became the first Canadian ever to win a biathlon World Cup .

At the 1992 Winter Olympics in Albertville  - when women were allowed to take part in biathlon competitions for the first time - she won the bronze medal over 15 kilometers. The following year she won her first major title when she became world champion over 7.5 km; in the race over 15 kilometers she came second. At the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer , she was both over 7.5 and over 15 kilometers Olympic champion. In the overall World Cup she was able to finish the 1990/91 and 1992/93 seasons in second place.

She temporarily withdrew from competitive sports because of the birth of her daughter. Bédard's comeback was not very successful as it was hampered by injuries. In 1998, Bédard resigned from biathlon. She later announced that she wanted to start as a speed skater , but did not pursue this goal for too long. Bédard was a member of the Executive Council of the International Biathlon Union for some time and served as Vice President.

Results in the biathlon world cup

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	2	2				4th
2nd place	3	1				4th
3rd place	2					2
Top 10	13	11			1	25th
Scoring	16	15th			9	40
Starts	25th	32	3		9	69

(Data possibly incomplete)

Affairs

Shortly after the resignation of Prime Minister Jean Chrétien in December 2003, Canada was hit by an election fundraising affair involving the Liberal Party of Canada and numerous large Canadian companies. On February 27, 2004, Bédard publicly announced that she had to give up her marketing job at VIA Rail in 2002 after criticizing the opaque business relationships with the advertising company GroupAction. This statement led to the resignation of the President and Vice President of the Society a week later. In the course of the affair, implications from GroupAction to the closest employees of the former prime minister became known.

At the end of March 2004, Bédard made another affidavit, which, however, met with skepticism. She alleged that she was told that GroupAction was involved in drug trafficking and that her partner personally persuaded Prime Minister Jean Chrétien not to send Canadian troops to Iraq . She also stated that Formula 1 driver Jacques Villeneuve is said to have received $ 12 million to wear the Canadian flag on his racing suit. Villeneuve strongly disagreed, calling this claim "ridiculous". An investigation report later concluded that Bédard had left VIA Rail voluntarily.

Kidnapping her daughter

In a nationwide manhunt in 2006, she was wanted for the alleged kidnapping of her 11-year-old daughter Maude. Her ex-husband called on the police for failing to comply with custody requirements. The background to this was that Bédard and her current husband defended themselves against allegations that he had stolen twenty paintings by the Canadian artist Ghitta Caiserman-Roth. The couple then fled to the USA and from there complained in letters to institutions and well-known personalities that the Canadian authorities were hounding them against them. The "terrorisme bureaucratique des fonctionnaires canadiens" ( bureaucratic terrorism of Canadian administrations ) threatened her and her husband. After her arrest and surrender to the Canadian authorities, she was found guilty of child abduction in September 2007. She was sentenced to a two-year suspended sentence for violating custody and can no longer perform her duties in international biathlon.

The affairs and contradicting statements of Bédard were perceived by a wide public and made them the subject of parodies and ridicule, but also pity. Since she is still very popular, voices were raised that her husband Mazhari was her guru and that she was completely under his influence, that he was an unreal conspiracy theorist and that he was manipulating her.

Awards

• 1994 Canadian Athlete of the Year ( Lou Marsh Trophy )
• Canada's Best Female Athlete 1994 (Bobbie Rosenfeld Award)
• Outstanding Canadian Athlete 1994 (Velma Springstead Trophy)
• Honorary Member of the Royal Military College of Canada
• The Myriam Bédard Training Center in Saint-Gabriel-de-Valcartier is named after her

Web links

• Myriam Bédard's website and blog
• Myriam Bédard in the IBU database (English)
• Myriam Bédard in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Un mandat de perquisition dans un immeuble de Myriam Bédard radio-canada.ca , June 15, 2004, accessed on September 3, 2008 (French)
2. ↑ Arrest warrant issued for Myriam Bédard CBC News Canada , December 14, 2006, accessed September 3, 2008
3. ↑ Bedard guilty of child abduction CBC News Canada , September 20, 2007, accessed September 3, 2008 (English)
4. ↑ Myriam Bédard devrait éviter la prison canoe.com , September 22, 2007, accessed September 3, 2008 (French)
5. ↑ Former Olympian Myriam Bedard gets conditional discharge ( Memento of the original from May 6, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. canada.com , October 9, 2007, accessed September 3, 2008 
6. ↑ Bedard gets conditional discharge, probation CBC News Canada , October 9, 2007, accessed September 3, 2008