Liv Grete Skjelbreid Poirée

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Olympic medal record
Women's Biathlon
Silver	2002 Salt Lake City	15 km individual
Silver	2002 Salt Lake City	4 x 7.5 km relay
Bronze	1998 Nagano	4 x 7.5 km relay

Liv Grete Skjelbreid Poirée (born July 7, 1974) from Hålandsdalen, Fusa, near the city of Bergen in western Norway, was a career biathlete. 167cm (5'6"), 61kg (134lbs, 9st 8lbs). On the 20th of March 2006 Liv Grete announced her retirement, effective at the end of the season which ended on March 26th in Holmenkollen. She said she was retiring because of her young daughter, Emma, her family and that she did not have the motivation to continue.

Contents 1 Family life 2 Early career 3 World Cup 4 Olympics 5 World Championships 6 Injuries 7 Trivia 8 Notes and references 9 External links

[edit] Family life

Liv Grete is married to French biathlete Raphaël Poirée. They first met at the 1992 Junior World Championships and began dating in 1996, marrying on May 27, 2000 in Norway. They have one daughter, Emma, born on January 27, 2003, and are expecting a second child. Emma had traveled with the Poirées to all of their biathlon events, with a full-time nanny (older sister Ann Elen) for the first two years. But Emma was sick several times over those two seasons, and the Poirées decided she should remain at home during the build up to the Olympic games in Torino, and only travel with them every third race weekend. So during the 2006 Olympic season Emma stayed with her maternal grandparents (Knut and Oddrun). The Poirées are adamant to keep Emma away from the press, wanting their daughter to have as normal a childhood as possible.

The family spend most of their time in Norway and have a house in Eikelandsosen, near Liv Grete's childhood home. They also keep a small apartment in Villars-de-Lans, France, site of the 1968 Olympic luge venue. Liv Grete and Raphaël initially lived in the 24 square meter flat in Villars de Lans, but when Emma was due Liv Grete wanter to be near her parents. She has said they plan on living there for at least four years.

Liv Grete has two older sisters, Linda Kristin, and Ann Elen. Ann Elen was also a biathlete. In fact Ann Elen skied the first leg of the relay in Nagano 1998 when Norway came third, with Liv Grete sking the anchor leg. Her brother-in-law is Norwegian biathlete Egil Gjelland. Liv Grete grew up on a dairy farm in Hålandsdal.

On July 7 2006, it was announced that Liv Grete was pregnant once more. In an interview with TV2 on her birthday she admitted that she was pregnant but did not know when the baby was due.^[1]

[edit] Early career

As a child Liv Grete spent a lot of her time with her older sisters, and consequently took part in the sports her sisters did. She played football, kayaked in the lake next to the family home, cross-country skied, and she used to run up to the family cottage up in the mountains, touch the wall and run back down.

Liv Grete excelled in football and biathlon, and first started competing in biathlon when she was nine. She borrowed her father's rifle for her first race. He also built a small shooting range on the family’s farm so his young daughters could practice. However as she was finishing high school, she was undecided as to whether continue with biathlon or to train as a hairdresser. She then received an offer from a new sports school, which developed young talent, based in Geilo, to train and study there, still she was undecided, but her friends and family succeeded in persuading her to attend the school, and that after the first year if she did not like it, she could then leave. It turned out that Liv Grete did enjoy the school, and was in the same year as Ole Einar Bjørndalen, and was tought by Odd Lirhus, who would become her coach between 2003 and 2006.

[edit] World Cup

Liv Grete won the IBU overall World Cup once, in the 2003/04 season, it was also the first for Norway since Anne Elvebakk won the event in 1988. She won the overall title by 95 points over Olga Pyleva, and took three of the four individual disciplines, the sprint, pursuit and mass start. She came fourth in the individual. Norway also won the relay. Her first season was in 1995/96, she finished 30th. In her next season, 1998/99, she shot up the table and came 5th in the end. The year after however she finished 21st. In 2000/01 Poiree finished the season in 2nd place, 217 points behind Magdalena Forsberg. She was 2nd in the sprint, pursuit and mass start, and came 3rd in the individual. Norway won the relay. She also came second the year after, again behind Forsberg, this time by 149 points. She was 2nd in the individual, sprint and pursuit, and 9th in the mass start. Norway came 2nd in the relay. Poiree missed the 2002/03 season because of her pregnancy. The year after however she captured the crystal globe of the World Cup. 2004/05 though was a poor year, Poiree had to retire from the season due to illness, missing the World Championships in the process. She ended up in 22nd place, 532 points behind Sandrine Bailly. She was suffering from a virus closely related to mononucleosis (glandular fever). The virus took away about 15-20 percent of her energy accourding to Lars Kolsrud, doctor for Norway's biathlon squads.

Poiree finished the 2005/06 season in 12th place, 511 points behind the overall winner Kati Wilhelm. She ended in 21st place in the individual, 64 points down on Svetlana Ishmouratova. She was 12th in the sprint, 190 behind Wilhelm. Her best standing was in the pursuit, where she finished the season in 9th place, 177 points behind Wilhelm, and she finished 13th in the mass start, with 90 points less than Martina Glagow. Norway were 4th in the relay.

Poiree was a steady shooter over the years. Her overall percentage was in the high 70% - low 80%. As with the vast majority of biathletes, her prone shoot was her best, avaraging mid 80% shooting, whilst her standing shoot gradually got better, from 65% in 1999/00 to 74% in the 2005/06 season. Poiree achieved 46 podium finishes, 22 in first place, 15 in second, and 9 in third place.

Liv Grete was coached by Rolf Sæterdal until 2003, when he died suddenly. She was then coached by Odd Lirhus until 2006, when she retired.

Poiree won the Holmenkollen ski festival biathlon competition four times with two wins each in sprint (2000, 2001) and in mass start (2000, 2004).

[edit] Olympics

Liv Grete competed in three Olympic games, the first in 1998 in Nagano. She has three medals, two silver and one bronze, two of them (one silver & one bronze) came in the relay (2002 & 1998), the other silver came in the individual in 2002. Her medal count, especially her solo medal count is quite poor for a biathlete of her calibre, though she did come fourth in both the sprint and the pursuit in 2002. Her 2006 results were poor, much in the same pattern as the Norwegian Olympic teem on the whole. She finished 9th in the individual, 12th in the sprint, 6th in the pursuit, 18th in the mass start, and 5th in the relay (although Poiree did run a solid anchor leg).

[edit] World Championships

Poiree has 11 World Championship medals, 7 gold, 2 silver and 2 bronze. She won four of her gold medals in a single Championships, in Oberhof in 2004, this is the first time a biathlete has won four golds in a single World Championships. Her first World Championship medal was a silver in the relay in Brezno-Osrblie, Slovakia in 1997. She then had to wait until 2000 for her next medal. She won two golds in Holmenkollen, in the sprint and the mass start. In 2001 in Pokljuka she won a gold in the pursuit, a silver in the individual, and a bronze in both the sprint and mass start. Her next Championships was in 2004, where she took the four golds. The one event she did not win was the individual where she finished eighth. She suffered from illness in the 2004/05 season, and came 37th in the sprint, and did not start in the pursuit. During the 2003/04 season Liv Grete was handed the wrong gold medal after she won Sundays 7.5km race. She was given the medal for the 15km event, which wasn't taking place until Tuesday.

[edit] Injuries

Poiree suffered a spate of injuries throughout her career. In the summer of 1995 she broke her wrist whilst swinging on monkey bars, then in the summer of 1997 she was jumping on a chair, fell and broke her elbow. She then broke the cast when she crashed while training on roller skis days later. She also sufferes from chronic inflammation, but she has said it had got better since she gave birth. There was also the illness that drained her energy and forced her to finish the 2004/05 season early.

[edit] Trivia

Liv Grete's father, Knut, helped wax the skis Liv Grete used to win her first World Championship title. Her father also waxed skis for the Norwegian biathlon team at the 1998 Nagano Games.

Poirée named Magdalena Forsberg in biathlon, Zinédine Zidane in football, and Bente Skari in cross country skiing from other sports as the most influential people in her career.

She enjoyes sailing and shopping, her favorite musicians are Pink Floyd, Alanis Morissette, and Sarah Brightman, her favorite food is pizza and drink: hot chocolate. She is a student, and can speak Norwegian, English, and some French and German. She said in an interview with Henne magazine in 2003 that she gets restless when she is by herself, she does not enjoy being drunk, and that her parents never forced her to do sports, she only did it for fun. She said her favorite discipline was the mass start and her favorite course is Antholz in Italy.

In an interview with Eurosport, Sandrine Bailly named Liv Grete Poirée as an inspirational figure, because of her ability and determination while racing, but when not competing is a very happy, and caring person.

[edit] Notes and references