Respectively second and fourth in the Grand-Bornand pursuit, Emilien Jacquelin and Eric Perrot recounted their final sprint, which saw the older of the two overtake his compatriot in the last bend.
If Johan-Olav Botn won the Grand-Bornand pursuit without trembling, the fight raged behind the Norwegian for the places on the podium. Emilien Jacquelin and Johannes Dale-Skjevdal overtook Eric Perrot in the last corner to finish second and third after a furious sprint. At the microphone of The Channel L’EquipeEmilien Jacquelin (30 years old) remembered his cycling lessons.
“There was a space on the right. I tried not to make Eric fall. I’m glad my cycling lessons helped me today. This is what Pogi (Pogacar) would have liked to do against Ganna and Ven der Poel in the last Milan – San Remo (smiles). At the very beginning of the descent, I lost a meter or two, and I said to myself “I know how I’m going to get them, I’m going to do it smartly, like on a bike”. Sprint takes off, you leave two meters, you gain the extra speed which means that the others cannot take the skis, quite simply. Thanks to the cycling school! »
Perrot: “I was a little too gentle on this bump”
A little later, Eric Perrot (24 years old) admitted that he had been too kind to his compatriot: “Basically, I planned to stick to the right so as not to let anyone pass. And when I start to squeeze, I see that it’s Emilien and I have a little mixed feeling because I want to send the person who is overtaking me on the right into the barrier, which I technically have the right to do in a cordial way, that is to say by doing it before he passes. And at the same time, when I see that it’s Emilien, I don’t want to do that. I’m not saying that Emilien wasn’t better than me today. He was better than me today. But I was a little too gentle on this bump. » Sunday’s mass start will perhaps be an opportunity to take revenge…
