French biathlon star Julia Simon earned gold at the 2026 Winter Olympics following her six-month ban for alleged credit card fraud.
“I think we’ll all be relieved she can leave her wallet at home,” commentator Matt Iseman joked on Sunday, February 8, after Simon, 29, entered the gold zone to celebrate her victory. “She won’t be buying anything.”
Last year, Simon — who did not immediately address Iseman’s joke — was accused of repeatedly using bank cards belonging to her teammate Justine Braisaz-Bouchet and an unidentified Team France staff member to make purchases well over 2,000 euros.
“I can’t explain it,” Simon said during her October 2025 trial, apologizing for her actions. “I don’t remember doing it. I can’t make sense of it.”
At the time, Simon stressed that she had since entered therapy to “understand all this, to grow and evolve.”
“There is no financial motivation for my actions,” she said in her witness testimony. “Today, I am moving forward day by day because being in front of you will have consequences for my career. It’s ridiculous and derisory because I didn’t need it.”
Simon was found guilty of theft and credit card fraud and sentenced to a three-month suspended prison sentence and a $34,600 fine. The pro athlete was also banned from the sport for six months, which did not interfere with her participation in the 2026 Winter Olympics.
“It’s a new start for me,” Simon said in a Tuesday, February 3, YouTube interview with Biathlonworld. “With this Olympic year, I will put all my energy into training but after I will do some [woodworking] stuff for my house, like a table. It’s going to be a nice project to think about all the small details and to think about something else than the race.”
Simon further noted that making it to the Olympics has been her dream since “a long time ago.”
“When you have big goal like the Olympics, it’s easier to do more and more and more, and it sometimes it can be a bit tricky to stay focused on myself,” she continued. “My goal for the Olympics, I think it’s easy. All the athletes want a medal. It’s the only one missing for, so I want an Olympic gold medal. It’s going to be the first time that I come to the Olympics with a big goal.”
Simon added, “I think I know how to manage this pressure [and] I like this pressure, also. … It’s a lot of up and down, but [I’ve learned to] never give up and trust yourself.”
Simon further stressed that it has been “amazing to live [her] dream” as she wished for an “incredible” Olympics result.
Simon made her Olympics debut in 2022, where she won a silver medal in the Biathlon Mixed Relay.
“I tried to focus race after race and think about my biathlon and the next race and not about the total score,” she previously told Biathlon World of her racing mindset in a 2023 interview. “The most important thing was to try my best in the shooting range and be really focused. I’m very content with my much improved prone shooting accuracy.”
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