It felt like we were back in February 2018, when the organizers of the Pyeongchang Olympics used the photo-finish to offer Olympic gold at the mass start to Martin Fourcade, author of a formidable sprint against the German Simon Schempp. Except that this Thursday, the French cross-country skier Jules Chappaz had to lose for a few centimeters, against the Norwegian Paal Golberg, at the end of the sprint of the Nordic World Ski Championships in Planica (Slovenia).


At the end of the suspense... Jules Chappaz wins a superb bronze medal at the World Classic Sprint Championships! đŸ‡«đŸ‡·đŸ‘Š #lequipeSKI pic.twitter.com/AqT9FesobB

— the channel L'Équipe (@lachainelequipe) February 23, 2023

Access to this content has been blocked in order to respect your choice of consent

By clicking on "I ACCEPT", you accept the deposit of cookies by external services and will thus have access to the content of our partners

I AGREE

And to better pay 20 Minutes, do not hesitate to accept all cookies, even for one day only, via our button "I accept for today" in the banner below.

More information on the Cookie Policy page.


Silver was at stake, so the 23-year-old French skier can still console himself with the bronze medal in a classic-style event won by the untouchable Norwegian Johannes Klaebo. Jules Chappaz is only the fifth Frenchman in history to win an individual medal at the Nordic World Ski Championships. It is even the first time that a Frenchman has climbed on a sprint podium at the world championships, while at the Turin Olympics in 2006, Roddy Darragon took the silver medal.

Richard Jouve gets through it

A major performance, while the interested party had signed the seventh time of qualifying, before winning his quarter-final and semi-final. In the final, he couldn't keep up with Johannes Klaebo, who led a hellish pace from start to finish. Second at the entrance of the final straight, he was overtaken in the photo finish by Paal Golberg... for only 2/100th of a second! At 23 years old, Jules Chappaz has no podium in the World Cup. This season, he reached for the first time in his career the final of a sprint event in Ruka (Finland), already in classic style, where he took sixth place, his best result so far.



Another Frenchman, Lucas Chanavat, who has 15 World Cup podiums, including two victories, reached the final in Planica on Thursday, and finished his race in sixth place. The big disappointment for the cross-country France team came from its leader Richard Jouve, winner of the Sprint World Cup last year, but eliminated in the quarterfinals, after a complicated qualification and the 19th time.

  • Sport
  • Ski
  • Cross-country skiing
  • World Championship
  • Slovenia