It’s not an ideal start to the season: the athlete who won the combined World Cup is accused of fraud

The accusations against him come from within the house, that is, from within the team, and this may have unexpected consequences for the next season.

We are accustomed to the fact that among sports athletes we find a relatively large number of athletes who practice elite sports within the framework of a sports federation of some state body. In this way, the presence of a military or police uniform at a biathlon training camp does not send your heart rate sky-high, but is merely a gray everyday occurrence.

However, the situation is different when the policeman knocking on the door of the training center is not one of his teammates, but rather an official body conducting the investigation and looking for a specific person.

This completely different feeling of life struck the members of the French biathlon team that was preparing in Albertville that day, because on Tuesday 24 October, some representatives of the French police visited them. Julia Simon searching for. In addition to the combined World Cup, the athlete who also collected the crystal ball in the team pursuit and start competitions was visited by police because his name had emerged as a suspect in connection with a credit card fraud case.

The story is also colored by the fact that one of the defendants in the fraud case is also an athlete, citizen, and teammate as well. Justine Brezaz Bouchet.

The 2022/2023 World Cup winner denies these accusations and defends himself by saying that a person used his personal data to make purchases on his behalf, and pay with the card of his colleague and a crew member.

So the case is not new, but it is not entirely clear why Simon’s interrogation took so long. All we know for sure is that after Praysaz Bouchet noticed the problem, he filed a complaint within the club, i.e. with the local federation, and asked for an investigation into the matter. However, since he did not see any tangible progress, he took the matter to a higher level by reporting his colleague to the French police.

All this happened in the summer of 2023, and although the whistleblower clearly named Simon as a suspect, French police were only recently able to question his compatriot who showed great form in the 2022/2023 season.

“This is a completely normal occurrence during criminal proceedings.” – Christian Borel.

“They recorded his confession, everything went well, and then he was free to leave. The investigation is ongoing, and we don’t know more than that at the moment. Julia has presented the facts on which she has claimed her innocence from the beginning.”

The police’s actions were extremely poorly timed to prepare Simon, not that confession is fun, especially when the man’s name comes up as a possible suspect. The French biathlon team’s final training camp before the World Cup season begins on October 31, so the biathletes are preparing to move to the final stage of their preparation.

After Simon was released after testifying, the story was short-lived. The athlete was able to return to his teammates, and there is a good chance that nothing will threaten his participation either in the training camp or in the World Cup series starting in Östersund.

The other question is what the atmosphere will be like within the French national team, which is going through somewhat difficult times. Internal disagreements arose within the leadership of the federation, as a result of which, at the end of the previous season, the entire coaching staff of the men’s biathlon discipline thanked, as it were, their predecessors and left the team.

The girls seemed at peace, but the Simone-Presaz-Bochet affair has now destroyed the cohesion within the team forever. We can already get the first answers to questions about what the far and near future will bring for the French in less than a month in Östersund.