Everything came together this time: at the end, but especially at the beginning. In the tough parallel races, ski racer Linus Straßer recently said that it was essential to survive the first knockout round well. Then a pull is often triggered that can carry you far, Straßer has often experienced it himself. He won his first World Cup in a parallel individual in 2017; he also testified how the German ski racers failed bitterly at major events in the team event (2015 at the World Championships in Vail) or embellished their track record (bronze 2021 in Cortina d’Ampezzo).
And now: The delegation of the German Ski Association (DSV) had the last chance on Sunday to still get a medal at these winter games – in the second attempt after the organizers had moved the event from Saturday to Sunday morning, it was so strong the wind thundered across the site. The enthusiasm of the teams about this detention initially tended towards “zero”, as DSV sports director Wolfgang Maier said: “Because everyone has had enough now and is looking to get out of here.” Kira Weidle, for example, as a reserve runner in the squad, had already left on Sunday, and training for the World Cup in Crans-Montana is scheduled for next Thursday in Switzerland.
But the enthusiasm of the colleagues was at the boiling point again at the latest after the team event.
Fivefold success: Emma Aicher, Julian Rauchfuss, Lena Duerr, Alexander Schmid and Linus Strasser (from left to right) celebrate their first Olympic medal in Alpine skiing since 2014.
(Photo: Harald Steiner/Gepa/Imago)
The DSV team had lost the final – adding up the best times, they were 19 hundredths of a second behind the Austrians after each team had won two duels. For Lena Dürr, Emma Aicher, Linus Straßer, Alexander Schmid and Julian Rauchfuss, the silver rank was still left – and thus the first Olympic medal for the DSV-Alpinen since 2014. That also compensated for all the fourth, seventh and eighth places in the last few weeks. “It’s a huge satisfaction,” said Alexander Schmid, before he left for the (densely occupied) plane home.
For Mikaela Shiffrin, the team event ends with another disappointment
Not much would have been missing, and the wind would have swept away the last alpine race of these games on Sunday. But at the Olympics, the organizers’ pain threshold is always a little higher, because it’s about the really big TV money and sponsors. The slope workers drilled holes in the goal flags so that the wind would not push them onto the lanes, and helpers put thick blankets on the athletes at the finish. The DSV selection seemed unimpressed by all this, they cleared the first hurdle, the biggest for the head, with a 3-1 win over Sweden.
Then the Swiss, the defending champions from 2018, were already waiting in the quarter-finals when the parallel format made its Olympic premiere. Aicher and Straßer did not finish, Dürr and Schmid won their duels. Because the Germans’ combined time was faster than that of the fastest man and woman on the opposite side, they advanced to the semifinals. An opponent was waiting there who was also looking for consolation: the USA with Mikaela Shiffrin, the most successful driver in recent years, in Beijing in five starts so far without a medal. And that didn’t change in the sixth attempt either. Dürr defeated Shiffrin, and in the end it was 3-1 for DSV. The USA also later lost the bronze medal small final, against Norway.
In the final, Straßer decided not to play in favor of Rauchfuss. Strasser said later that he struggled on the very twisting course, Rauchfuss, a specialist for the further goal distances, could represent him at least equally. A side effect: If Rauchfuss hadn’t played in the final either, they wouldn’t have given him a medal (unlike what is usual at world championships). “A very questionable decision,” said DSV board member Maier; one only found out about it the evening before. In any case, Rauchfuss drove, narrowly lost his duel, then saw how Dürr scored, Aicher was eliminated and Schmid beat the combined Olympic champion Johannes Strolz – but by a small margin. gift. “The two weeks were very, very bitter,” said Schmid, “but we always said we’d pull it out in the team event. That’s the cool thing, that we withstood the pressure.”
He is proud of how his athletes presented themselves, says Wolfgang Maier
Wolfgang Maier was also “very happy” with the silver-plated walkout, but didn’t forget to put the preliminary work into a more thoughtful framework. He didn’t want to attribute the fact that his athletes had gathered next to the podium to bad luck – with the possible exception of Weidle, who had apparently been blown into fourth place on the descent in the final part. He was very proud, said Maier, of how his athletes presented themselves in Beijing, coped with their defeats, and stood by their performances – especially in times “when the loss of values is enormous”. But you don’t have a merciless character in the squad who might force your way to success. Perhaps, according to Maier, in the future we will have to “develop the racing pig in the racing driver even better”. Even if this ruthlessness can quickly turn into the opposite, as he himself noted, in falls and hospital stays, for example.
Perhaps a key lies in promoting the parallel formats even more in the future than they are already doing in the DSV; with youth camps and competitions from U14 upwards, for example. In these duels, Maier once said in an interview, it’s less about how far you bend your hips in the giant slalom swing, but about defeating the opponent on the side track, nothing more. That might also promote a certain racing driver gene. On this windy Sunday in Yanqing, at least that didn’t go so badly.