Biathlon world champion Jacquelin: summer internship in cycling

WWhen winter goes, so do winter sports. The cross-country ski trails and toboggan runs are emptying, the World Cup circus falls into a summer sleep: regeneration, basic work, a few altitude training camps – that is the usual dramaturgy for winter sports athletes in the months between seasons. But if you want to be in the focus of the sports world even without snow, you have to get creative, like former biathlon world champion Émilien Jacquelin. The 30-year-old will begin an internship with the junior team of the Decathlon CMA CGM cycling racing team on May 1st.

Since he doesn’t ride for the World Tour Team, the first team, he is by far the oldest at 30 years old. The second oldest is 23-year-old New Zealander Nate Pringle. There Jacquelin gets the opportunity to try cycling – a discipline that, according to marketing director Jean-Baptiste Quiclet, is “one of the foundations of his biathlon training.” At the same time, Jacquelin is not under any pressure to be successful. Rather, he should test how well his endurance performance can be transferred from the cross-country ski trail to the asphalt.

Switching from winter sports to cycling seems to be a tried and tested model. The German shooting star Florian Lipowitz also comes from biathlon. His teammates Primoz Roglic, ski jumping, and Emil Herzog, cross-country skiing, have also found their way from the winter circus into the peloton. But Jacquelin doesn’t just want to switch from biathlon to cycling. Since the biathlon season ends when the cycling season starts – and vice versa – the Frenchman wants to do both sports. So neither hibernation nor summer sleep. How is that supposed to work?

“The idea is that he first recovers from his winter season,” says youth team manager Guillaume Bonnafond, “before starting the build-up with an anaerobic training block.” And after six months of cycling, we’re back on the cross-country ski trail and at the shooting range in November. Because the 2030 Winter Olympics in France will “remain a clear goal,” says Jacquelin. There, the Grenoblois native wants to use cycling to be fit enough for the games and for the top.

A “childhood dream” of Émilien Jacquelin comes true

Jacquelin has been one of the most successful athletes in biathlon in recent years. In 2020 and 2021 he became world champion in the pursuit, and in the following years he won three more world championship titles in relays. And recently at the Olympic Games there was a gold medal in the relay and a bronze in the pursuit. At the same time, he took many second places in the World Cup this winter, a total of nine. And now his excursion into the cycling scene should make him even more successful and strengthen his mentality – and work on the little bit that he was recently missing for first place. The training methods, the nutritional advice, the strict team structure, all of this will help him “develop and reach a new level,” believes Jacquelin.

Of course, this doesn’t come out of nowhere for everyone involved. “It’s a project that’s been brewing in the back of my mind,” says Jacquelin. He is said to have good contacts with the French cycling team: for example with sports director Sébastien Joly and driver Aurélien Paret-Peintre. He is also fulfilling a “childhood dream” because he had wanted to have a cycling career since he was a teenager. He can now achieve this goal.

He also showed his affection for cycling during the Olympic Games in Italy. During the competition, Jacquelin wore an earring from Marco Pantani, the Italian cycling legend from the high doping era, who died in 2004. It was also because of this earring that people called Pantani during his lifetime the pirate. The lucky charm, borrowed from Pantani’s family, has already brought Jacquelin two medals at the Olympic Games. Now he could follow in the footsteps of his great idol Pantani and also make a name for himself in cycling. However, it is still unclear whether Jacquelin could also borrow the earring from Pantani’s family for racing on the asphalt.