Didier Bouvet
Didier Bouvet ( born March 6, 1961 in Thonon -les- Bains ) is a French former alpine skier. Bouvet was in the 1980s one of the strongest slalom skier in the French national ski team.
Biography
The trained customs officers could be placed in a World Cup race in the top ten in December 1980 as a 19- year-old for the first time. This remained for over two years in which injuries and form fluctuations influenced his athletic achievements, his only top result. It was only in January 1983 he succeeded in the slalom in Kranjska Gora again a one-digit placement. In the following race, stabilized its results.
In his Olympic debut in 1984 in Sarajevo him then sealed the biggest success of his career. Although he had until then retracted yet not a single World Cup podium, his coach Georges Coquillard and Jean Beranger gave him their confidence and let him go at the start. In the first round, in the excreting his teammates Michel Canac, Yves Tavernier and Michel Vion all, Bouvet drove to rank fifth in the second round he improved with a daring run up two places and got behind the two brothers Phil and Steve Mahre the bronze medal. The first Olympic medal for the French men's team for 16 years.
Again followed a phase of moderate results and in the spring of 1985, he had to wear because of a spinal disc damage a plaster corset. It was not until nearly two years after his Olympic success he achieved in the slalom in the Swiss Parpan the only World Cup victory of his career and first since a Frenchman Jean -Noël Augert 1973. During this season he reached the seventh place in the slalom overall standings of the World Cup. After the 1989/90 season he retired from professional racing. From 1982-1988 Bouvet had won five French league titles, four in slalom and one in giant slalom.