The audience in the Capital Indoor Arena sat in their seats in a very civilized manner: every second chair was free and to start with they waved little red flags rhythmically to the music. No one fell out of line, no one danced hip hop in the grandstands like four years ago in South Korea. At the Beijing Pandemic Games, the guests are selected, invited and usually disciplined in an exemplary manner.
That doesn’t mean they don’t understand short rack: they used to, so did the newspaper’s great Wang Meng China Daily told her compatriots would have thought, “many winter sports belong to the Europeans”. In short track, however, the People’s Republic is a white power – thanks to Wang Meng, 36, China’s most decorated Olympian to date with four gold medals from Turin and Vancouver and 20 world titles. And when the wild hunt begins in the small oval, there is no stopping them in the venerable capital hall: hooting, shouting, waving flags on the opposite stand, now with large national flags instead of the small angle elements. Only the prescribed seat spacing remains.
So that was the setting in which Anna Seidel, Germany’s only short tracker in Beijing, wanted to sweep the laps. And after 1:50 minutes the magic was already over.
“I would love to stand up and run again,” says Seidel
Her 1500m quarterfinals in the second starting group of the evening started furiously, she had been looking forward to it for months. In the meantime she moved up to second place, fell back again and pushed past her rivals on the back straight. Then she lost her balance in a bend four laps before the end in the pack and fell. She got off the ice, kept running, reached the finish well after everyone else and was disqualified to make matters worse. The penalty resulted from the overtaking maneuver in which she illegally got in the way of the American Julie Letai, she said haltingly when she stood in front of the cameras and microphones half an hour later. The tears were still flowing.
“I’ve felt better before,” said Anna Seidel, 23 years old. She only had this one chance at the Winter Games, on the last day of the short trackers in the capital city hall. For all other distances, she was not able to qualify in time after her serious injury almost a year ago, when she broke her fibula and tibia just before the World Championships in Dordrecht, having just won three medals. The recovery took months until autumn, and she walked on crutches for a long time. Anna Seidel still walks with a metal plate in her leg, and walking – even if not gliding – sometimes causes pain.
There was also a fall among the men: Sun Long (right) falls, China only finishes fifth.
(Photo: Aleksandra Szmigiel/Reuters)
Under these circumstances, even being nominated for the Olympic team was an outrageous achievement. But Dresden’s Anna Seidel, who is in her third Winter Games in China and consistently underperformed at the Olympics, wanted more this time after two weeks of training in the Beijing hall. “I’d like to stand up and run again,” she said before leaving. Meanwhile, the hunt for runners just went on without them. The South Korean Choi Min-jeon won the 1500-meter race as she did four years ago in Pyeongchang.
And then things got really loud again when the men’s 5000m relay finals saw Team China step onto the ice. But the hosts felt the same way as Anna Seidel: One runner, Sun Long, fell in the crowd, leaving China only in fifth place. However, Sun Long had already conquered one of two short track gold medals for the People’s Republic with the mixed team last week. The audience left the hall before the ceremony for the victorious Canadians in exemplary discipline. Not a red flag remained.