Valérie Bellenoue

Career Bellenoue started out as a successful 19-year-old junior in 1994, when she became the World champion in air rifle shooting at Milan, Italy.

Shortly after her Olympic debut, Bellenoue's rapid improvement arose when she recorded a brilliant 499.0 to take her first ever air rifle title at the 1997 ISSF World Cup final in Lugano, Switzerland.

Bellenoue's noteworthy achievements had culminated her in a selection of being one of favorites vying for the Olympic medal in the 10 m air rifle at her succeeding Games in Sydney 2000, but she slumped out of the final round to an eight-way tie for twentieth place with a qualifying score of 391 points. Bellenoue also competed in the 50 m rifle 3 positions, where she found some relief from her troubled air rifle feat by shooting a total of 575 (194 in prone, 189 in standing, and 192 in the kneeling series) to finish jointly with Germany's 1996 Olympic silver medalist Petra Horneber and Switzerland's Oriana Scheuss in seventeenth position.

At the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, Bellenoue qualified for her third French team, as a 29-year-old, in rifle shooting. She had registered a minimum qualifying score of 396 to secure an Olympic berth for France from her outside-final finish at the World Championships two years earlier. In the 10 m air rifle, held on the first day of the Games, Bellenoue fired a modest 392 out of a possible 400 to force in a massive draw with six others for twenty-second place. Nearly a week later, in the 50 m rifle 3 positions, Bellenoue marked a brilliant 198 in prone, and 188 each in both standing and kneeling series to close her Olympic run out of the final in the sixteenth position with a total of 574 points.

Olympic results