One champion, one trainer: “Justine Braisaz is charismatic!”
The Caisse d'Epargne Rhône Alpes is supporting five athletes selected for the Beijing Olympics. For each of them, we asked one of their trainers to give a description of their respective athletes.
Born on July 4, 1996, Justine Braisaz-Bouchet is a biathlete who was trained at the Sports Club in Les Saisies, a ski resort in the Savoie department in eastern France. She won her first biathlon World Cup in 2017 in Grand Bornand. Since then, she was awarded a bronze medal in the individual event at the östersund World Championships in 2019 along with an Olympic bronze medal in the relay event in 2018. This Friday she won a gold medal in the mass start event in Beijing after thrilling us with an outstanding performance.
Richard Loosen, who coached her when she was young in the Les Saisies Club, which now boasts some 80 young people sharing the same enthusiasm for the biathlon, praised her extraordinary skiing abilities and her sparkling personality.
“Justine started with downhill skiing. It must be said that her father is an alpine ski instructor... In the Beaufortain region, our preferred discipline was downhill skiing. It should be remembered that Franck Piccard, who won a gold medal in super G and a bronze medal in the downhill event in Calgary, and a silver medal in downhill skiing in Albertville, used to be a member of our club. Most of the children would also start with alpine skiing and, if things didn’t go so well in that discipline, they would move on to Nordic skiing. Today, it's not like that anymore with the biathlon craze. Justine was doing very well in alpine skiing but I’d set up an initiation program in cross-country skiing with the school and she took part… and she liked it so much that she told her parents: either I do Nordic skiing or I stop skiing altogether! She already had a strong personality!
It was immediately obvious that she enjoyed greater potential than the other girls. She has, in particular, a high aerobic capacity and she’s naturally gifted on skis and boast an exceptional contact with the snow. Today, on the skiing track, she’s one of the strongest young women on skis. She’s kept this advantage.
She went through all the different steps for young high-level athletes. She’s always worked very hard or, more precisely, she’s always worked hard when she was obliged to take things seriously… but she also knows how to have fun with her friends. That's why she's such a great person to coach. She's also a really nice young woman, very friendly, naturally cheerful, charismatic, someone who attracts other people. And she has this extra thing: her simplicity, that way of showing interest in others. She’s also very loyal both to her friends and to her club.”
Justine Braisaz-Bouchet is a member of the group of athletes sponsored by the Caisse d'Epargne Rhône Alpes, a major partner of the French ski and snowboard teams for the past 25 years. Learn more about this commitment HERE!