You’re less alone with lights, at least that’s how it can feel. The trees are adorned with chains of lights for miles, and the fences have also been given glowing decorations in Zhangjiakou. Tuesday evening, 8:24 p.m. in the Olympic bubble, Denise Herrmann’s award ceremony is coming up. The Medal Plaza is spacious, they have prepared a huge stage for the athletes, it looks like an ice tunnel. If you look at the stage, you can see Herrmann, the gold winner in singles, she looks tiny compared to the blue backdrop. Later, when the gold medal is already hanging around her neck, she says what it was like up there: “It feels like being in heaven.”
Zhangjiakou’s sky swallowed Herrmann and filled him with deep satisfaction, he made the bare patches in front of the grandstand disappear. A few groups of people stood there, volunteers with rattles and glow sticks, many photographers – and above all: the teammates. They cheered her, and Herrmann was elated. “What does that do to you when you’re standing on this Medal Plaza…”, she said and then couldn’t find any words. She reviewed the past few hours, and what touched her the most was the others: “How many people are happy. It’s so nice that sport can convey such emotions.”
Herrmann feels it all the more intensely now because she was often a long way from a race this season after she could say: everything is fine now. She last made it into the top 15 in mid-December, the results outside of the relays afterwards: 38, 26, 41, 24, 23. Herrmann could have despaired at times on the shooting range, she had six penalties in the pursuit of Annecy, eight even in that of Oberhof. “If there is no sense of achievement, at some point it will eat away at the psyche,” she said now. She was patient, didn’t want to force anything. Friends and family encouraged her. “But it’s still not easy every day,” said Hermann, “there were a few tears, even if I’m not the emotional type.”
You felt a flow, said Herrmann, which went through the whole team
Over Christmas she went back to the altitude training camp in Davos, Switzerland, which has almost become a tradition. “I’m someone who reacts very badly at height,” said Herrmann, even as a cross-country skier she had problems with competitions at higher altitudes, “that’s why I have to deal with the topic”. In Zhangjiakou she still had heavy legs in the first few days, but the problems then disappeared in the individual competition.
They carried them through a long evening, and then there was a bit of partying in the Olympic village. At the accommodation, her colleagues showered her with confetti. Everyone who reached her hugged and congratulated her. You felt a flow, said Herrmann, who went through the whole team: “You noticed that it was kind of a liberation.”
There was gold for the best individual athlete, but Denise Herrmann had a number of teammates with whom she could share her joy.
(Photo: Ben Stansall/AFP)
And of course, now the hope is there: that this was just the beginning of “really cool games”, the next race is on Friday with the sprint. It wasn’t just Herrmann’s surprising triumph that excited the troupe. It was also fourth place for Olympic debutant Vanessa Voigt, Vanessa Hinz’s increase with 14th place, and Franziska Preuß also did not have to despair with 25th place after an eight-week break – and a corona disease.
Herrmann had a restless night after her gold run, “I was very upset, but with positive emotions,” she said. Like some other German athletes, the biathletes brought their own mattresses to the games, “I have a nice bunk,” said Herrmann. In recent years, sleep has become more and more important for the regeneration of the 33-year-old, after all things don’t go as smoothly as they used to.
Despite everything, Olympic feelings are there
For Herrmann it is already the third Olympic Games, the second as a biathlete. She knows the special experience when everyone comes together in the Olympic village, from Sochi in 2014 and from Pyeongchang four years ago. In South Korea, at the beginning of the games, they celebrated Laura Dahlmeier’s Olympic sprint victory, in the German house with a stage, music and good food. Even if the possibilities in Zhangjiakou are limited, Herrmann enjoys the time. Despite everything, Olympic feelings are there. “If you walk through the village, everyone looks and knows what happened – that’s exactly what Olympia is all about,” she said.
Herrmann has already experienced a few ceremonies, with crowds at the World Championships in Antholz, in a cozy setting in Östersund and also in Sochi, after Olympic bronze with the cross-country relay. “Sure, there were a few more spectators in Sochi,” she says now, but all the comparisons don’t matter now, including the scenery. She was already world champion, she became Olympic champion for the first time, that surpasses everything, “that stays with you forever”.
When she was called up as “Olympic Champion”, she looked again in disbelief at Anaïs Chevalier-Bouchet, the silver winner. Do they really mean me? Hermann had painted his nails to match the medal, then saw the flag being hoisted, the Olympic rings shone on the horizon. “That was really the crowning moment of your career,” she said later, “when the anthem sounds for you, it’s brutal, you get goosebumps. That’s exactly the moment that makes all the work worthwhile.” And that was just the start of these games.