Selina Gasparin is Switzerland’s first Olympic biathlon medallist – she won silver at the 2014 Sochi Games.
In this 2017 documentary by Romansh television RTR, she recounts her long, difficult route to Olympic glory and the challenges of staying at the top as an elite athlete while juggling family life and a job.
Gasparin, who comes from canton Graubünden, had a difficult beginning to life – she was born with malformed legs. To help solve the problem, doctors suggested to her parents that she should take up sports as a young girl. She quickly caught the sporting bug: she started learning Alpine skiing in the Engadine region from the age of two and a half. A few years later she switched to cross-country skiing and aged 14 competed in her first international competition. It was while studying sports science in Norway that she got a taste for biathlon. Back in Switzerland, she trained more seriously, and her father converted an old firing range in Pontresina to help her improve her shooting skills.
After years of sweat and tears, in 2010 she became the first Swiss biathlete to qualify for the Olympics in Vancouver, Canada. But it was not until four years later in Sochi that she saw her dreams come true.
Since then, much has changed for Selina Gasparin. After Sochi she got married and had two children. She also continues to work as a Swiss border guard. But during this whole period, she has trained hard to try to stay at the top of her sport. “It will be difficult to stop one day,” she says.
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