Nicole Gontier

Nicole Gontier
Association	Italy
birthday	17th November 1991 (age 28)
place of birth	Aosta , Italy
Career
society	CS Esercito
Debut in the European Cup / IBU Cup	2009
Debut in the World Cup	2012 (World Cup)
status	active
Medal table
World Cup medals 0 × 0 × 2 × JWM medals 0 × 2 × 1 × JEM medals 0 × 0 × 1 ×
Biathlon world championships bronze 2013 Nové Město Season bronze 2015 Kontiolahti Season  Biathlon Junior World Championships bronze 2009 Canmore Season silver 2011 Nové Město Season silver 2012 Kontiolahti Season  Biathlon Junior European Championships bronze 2012 Osrblie singles  Summer biathlon world championships silver 2013 Forni Avoltri Mixed relay
World Cup balance
Overall World Cup	35th ( 2014/15 )
Individual World Cup	31. (2014/15)
Sprint World Cup	36th (2014/15)
Pursuit World Cup	31. ( 2018/19 )
Mass start world cup	23. (2014/15)
Podium placements 1. 2. 3. sprint 0 0 1 Season 0 2 3
last change: June 8, 2020

Nicole Gontier (born November 17, 1991 in Aosta ) is an Italian biathlete . She made her debut in the Biathlon World Cup in 2012 . With the women's relay, she won bronze medals at the world championships in 2013 and 2015.

Career

Gontier came to biathlon through her father and grandfather, who supervised the sport in the Aosta Valley . She trains in the sports group of the Italian Army ( Centro Sportivo Esercito ).

As a young biathlete, Gontier took part in five successive youth and junior world championships from 2008 to 2012 . Her best individual result was a sixth place in the sprint at the Junior World Championships 2012 in Kontiolahti . With the Italian women's relay she won the bronze medal in 2009 and the silver medal in 2011 and 2012. In the three-person season, she ran together with Alexia Runggaldier , who was about the same age ; the third runner was Dorothea Wierer in 2009 and 2011 and Giulia Collavo in 2012 . At the junior races of the European Championships in 2012 , Gontier won the bronze medal in the 12.5-kilometer individual race behind Marion Rønning Huber and Olga Galitsch . In 2010 , Gontier competed in her first races in the IBU Cup , the second highest competition series in the adult division, in Martell , finishing in 43rd and 32nd place. In the 2011/12 season , she achieved her first top spot with a fifth place in the pursuit in Haute Maurienne. Ten result in the IBU Cup. At the end of winter she was nominated for the 2012 World Championships in Ruhpolding, where she was 68th in the individual and 79th in the sprint, and with Wierer, Runggaldier and Katja Haller reached 12th place in the relay race.

Gontier at the World Cup in Oberhof 2018

In 2012 Gontier was part of the Italian A-squad for the first time and from then on started regularly in the World Cup. She achieved several podium results, especially with the relay, twice at World Championships: both at the 2013 World Cup in Nové Město (with Dorothea Wierer, Michela Ponza and Karin Oberhofer at Gontier's side) and at the 2015 World Cup in Kontiolahti (with Lisa Vittozzi , Oberhofer and Wierer) the quartet won bronze and thus the first medals for Italian biathletes at world championships. When she took part in the Olympics for the first time in 2014 , Gontier finished sixth in the women's relay. In addition, she won the silver medal with the mixed relay at the 2013 Summer Biathlon World Championships in Forni Avoltri .

Gontier achieved her best results in individual races in the winter of 2014/15 : She placed in the top ten in four competitions and was third on the podium for the first time in the Oberhof sprint in January 2015. After a faultless race, she was 19.1 seconds behind the winner Veronika Vítková and a good ten seconds behind her team-mate Wierer. After the competition, Gontier emphasized that Wierer - the most successful biathlete in the country since 2014 - is an important benchmark for her in training. In the following years, Gontier did not build on the results of the 2014/15 season, which she finished in 35th place in the overall ranking of the World Cup. Although she was one of the above-average runners in the field, her shooting performance - with hit rates of around 70 percent - was much weaker than that of her teammates. After she had already been downgraded to the IBU Cup team several times between 2015 and 2017, she was not considered in the Italian team for the 2020 home World Championships in Antholz . The younger Michela Carrara was nominated in her place . Gontier then explained her weakness in shooting, among other things, with the expectations that she had of the season after good training results were too high. In spring 2020, the Italian federation no longer assigned them to the A-team, but to the lower-class observation group as part of a squad rejuvenation.

statistics

World Cup statistics

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
2nd place					2	2
3rd place		1			3	4th
Top 10		3	1	2	22nd	28
Scoring	4th	17th	13	5	29	68
Starts	15th	51	24	5	29	124
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	54.	49.	45.	-	6th	-
Olympic Winter Games 2018 | Pyeongchang	44.	48.	38.	-	9.	-

Web links

Commons : Nicole Gontier  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Nicole Gontier in the IBU database (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Nicole Gontier: The Interview! at biathlon23.wordpress.com. October 25, 2019.
2. ↑ Restructuring of the A-team in Italy on biathlonworld.com. May 14, 2012, archived January 18, 2013.
3. ^ Biathlon, Mondiali: storica medaglia di bronzo per le staffettiste. In: Repubblica. February 15, 2013.
4. ^ Biathlon, Coppa del mondo: Wierer e Gontier insieme sul podio. In: Repubblica. January 9, 2015. "Sono davvero felice di avere fatto il mio primo podio dietro a Dorothea perché per me è una gran fortuna potermi allenare semper con lei e avere un riferimento importante."
5. ↑ IBU Biathlon Guide 2019/20, pp. 228–231. Available as PDF .
6. ↑ Biathlon - Nicole Gontier: "Guardare il Mondiale da fuori è stato bruttissimo, ma i tecnici hanno preso la decisione giusta" on fondoitalia.it. April 5, 2020.
7. ↑ Karl-Heinz Merl: Dorothea Wierer and Lukas Hofer lead the much younger biathlon team in Italy on biathlon-news.de. May 13, 2020.