The rifle can wait… for Emilien Jacquelin, the next chapter will be written on two wheels. Just months after standing on the Olympic podium at Milano Cortina, the Frenchman has decided to step away from biathlon for the 2026-27 season.

But this is not retirement. Instead, Jacquelin is throwing himself into a completely different challenge: professional cycling.

The 31-year-old confirmed the decision on September 22 in a video released by the French Ski Federation. “I’ve made the decision to continue cycling for the next few months and, as a result, not to do next winter with the biathlon team,” he said. It brings an end to months of uncertainty surrounding his future, but not to his ambitions on snow.

Jacquelin’s change of direction has been building since spring. After joining Decathlon-CMA CGM as a trainee, he spent the summer trading skis for a bicycle and pushing himself into the unfamiliar world of road racing. His professional debut at La Polynormande in August offered an early glimpse of what he could contribute, while appearances at the Tours of Limousin and Britain gave him a taste of racing at a higher level.

Yet the journey was hardly straightforward. A training crash on a wet, oil-covered road in May left Jacquelin with a broken collarbone and required surgery.

He recovered quickly, however, and soon returned to the bike. By the time he entered competition, the setback had become little more than another obstacle in an experiment he was determined to pursue.

Emilien Jacquelin’s love for cycling adventures

For Jacquelin, cycling is more than a temporary distraction from biathlon. It has become a test of what he can still discover about himself as an athlete.

One summer training ride captured the scale of that challenge. After seven and a half hours on the road, Jacquelin arrived home having covered around 190 kilometers and climbed more than 4,200 meters. His next concern was not rest, but food. With more than 6,500 calories burned during the ride, he estimated that he needed roughly 9,000 calories to fully refuel.

That physical demand has also brought an unexpected mental freedom. Jacquelin explained that cycling feels simpler psychologically than biathlon. On the bike, the task can come down to maintaining his pace and managing his watts. In biathlon, a poor shooting performance could consume his thoughts long after the race had moved on.

That difference matters because Jacquelin has spent years wrestling with the pressure surrounding his results. At Milano Cortina, he rediscovered something he had been missing: joy.

“When it is pure joy, I do not care if I win or lose,” he said, reflecting on the mindset that helped him reconnect with himself during his Olympic campaign.
That campaign eventually delivered a pursuit bronze and relay gold, giving Jacquelin his first individual Olympic medal while adding another major achievement to a career that already included two world pursuit titles.

Now, however, he wants to see how far the cycling experiment can take him. After not racing competitively on the road for 14 years, he knows training alone cannot answer every question. The peloton, positioning, and race-day pressure will present an entirely different test.

“I really want to push things as far as possible in cycling, to see how far and for how long I can continue in this world,” Jacquelin said.

There is also a bigger reason behind that pursuit. Jacquelin has never abandoned the possibility of competing at the 2030 Winter Olympics, which will be held in the French Alps. In fact, he believes stepping away now could help him rediscover the hunger required to make that dream realistic.

“The story with biathlon is not over. The goal, as I have always said, remains the 2030 Olympic Games,” he said. “Today, the path I’m taking is different, special, but I feel in any case that it is in line with what I want to do.”

For now, the Frenchman will watch his former teammates from the other side of the track. He has even invited fans to see them at the World Cup in Grand-Bornand in December.

His message to the biathlon world on Instagram summed up the feeling perfectly: “See you later.” Not goodbye.

Jacquelin is simply taking the long way around to find out what comes next.