Cyril Burdet took over the reins of the French Women’s Team in 2022, immediately leading them to France’s first Nations Cup title in 27 years. Although always a power, since Burdet’s arrival the French women’s squad has become the unquestioned dominant force in biathlon.

Medals and Globes

Last season capped his first Olympic quadrennial in biathlon with the French team winning eight medals: Individual, Mass Start, Relay and Mixed Relay Gold plus three Silver medals and a Bronze medal.

Topping it off, Lou Jeanmonnot won the World Cup Total Score Crystal Globe as well as the Sprint, Pursuit and Individual Scores, Julia Simon took the Mass Start Score and the team carried home the Relay Score. Their only “failure,” came as Sweden took the Nations Cup away, 6956 points to France’s 6920.

Those achievements are pretty impressive, especially considering that prior to that, he coached cross-country regionally and, for the previous 8 years before moving to biathlon, the French Men’s Cross-country Sprinters. However, Burdet was no stranger to biathlon. “I competed in biathlon for five years until I was 20 years old and went to the 1997 Junior World Championships (finishing 22nd in the Individual). So, I know the sport and followed it.”

From Male Sprinters to Female Biathletes

Coming to biathlon was a challenge and a homecoming as shooting coach Jean-Paul Giachino was among the athletes Burdet admired in his youth.

Burdet knew the challenges, “I coached sprinters before and now the distances were different as are physiological changes. Secondly, training women in biathlon is different than training men in cross-country skiing, especially in the physiological and emotional. The first months were a little bit hard. I was used to making very hard training sessions and then Polo reminded me, ‘don’t forget we have to be focused on the shooting range.’ So, I had to change the level of the hardness!”

“Work on each athlete’s strengths”

Burdet admits he tries to focus as much on the mind and personality as the physical training. “My main goal is to help them go faster on the skis, but I also need to have a global point of view on what is going on in the team. I talk individually about the physical, but also the emotional part of training. I like the intellectual part of it which takes some time and energy, but that is part of the game.”

Burdet excels at getting already successful athletes to another level. “My philosophy is to work on each athlete’s strengths. The beginning is there. From there, I look at where is the margin to improve, which is different from one athlete to another. Some have a large margin to grow at the shooting range; some others in skiing. Biathlon is a combination of those and much more. The goal is to find out how to improve each athlete.”

“They all want to go to the top”

Much of the team’s success comes when highly successful IBU Cup athletes like Jeanmonnot and Oceane Michelon quickly transition into World Cup stars. “It is multi-factorial; not one thing or another. For sure, when you come here and see the thirteen athletes in the A and B teams, they know they have to be very fast on skis and very good on the shooting range.

"Everyone knows if you want to be in the World Cup, you have to be very good and to stay there, you have to be at the top every week. The spirit within the team, including coaches and technicians, to be better makes the group much better and the athletes individually much better. We are also very lucky to have a good generation of athletes, who choose the way they want to go and they all want to go the top.

"Part of this success is that we found a way to all go in the same direction from the regional clubs all the way to the World Cup. Of course, each coach has his own plan, but the goal for all is the same.”

“I am convinced we can do more”

The coming season will be different, but “how it will go, I do not know. That is part of the challenge. We have been really successful, but I am convinced we can do more, not only in race performance. Individually, all the athletes are looking for something to increase their level. We have some really young athletes coming up and it is interesting to see the challenge between the more experienced athletes who have won everything and the young athletes who want to take it away. It will be very interesting to be a part of this game!

“The importance of this year is to manage. It is not a reset, because what we have done, we have done. It is a new start, because if we think we are going to do the same result with the same methods, it will not work. So, we have one year to fix to see what we have to change to continue increasing our success.

“Every performance is singular. You can win one time and not be so good the next time. It is never over. If you think you are done (improving), you are wrong!”

Photos: IBU/Vianney Thibaut, Nordic Focus/Manzoni, Authamayou