A blink of an eye past gold
Alpine team sensationally wins silver
02/20/2022, 04:47 am
On the last day of the Olympic Winter Games in China, the German ski racers, who have been so unlucky so far, still win silver in the mixed team competition – and only very narrowly miss out on gold. It is the first alpine medal for Germany at the Olympics in eight years.
In the end only a blink of an eye was missing to gold. The hitherto unlucky German ski racers won silver in the mixed team competition on the final day of the Olympic Winter Games in China. In the final they lost by 0.19 seconds once morest Austria with a score of 2:2 in the addition of the best times. Emma Aicher, Lena Dürr, Alexander Schmid, Linus Straßer and Julian Rauchfuss won Germany’s first alpine medal at the Olympics in eight years.
“There was no question that we were motivated. The medal is extremely good for us,” said sports director Wolfgang Maier on ARD. “From my point of view, we had made good preliminary performances, we were often just off the mark. That has a certain bitterness for everyone, especially for the athletes, when you finish fourth and fifth and can only watch how the medals are awarded to others”, he accounted for.
The competition had been postponed by one day due to wind. But even on Sunday there were sometimes violent gusts on Xiaohaituo Mountain. After a confident 3-1 win once morest Sweden, the Germans defeated Olympic champions Switzerland in the quarter-finals. Aicher and Straßer did not finish, but the addition of the individual times of the best man and the best woman gave the score of 2:2 in favor of the German Ski Association (DSV) team.
Straßer voluntarily waives the final
In the semifinals, this then defeated the USA with exceptional driver Mikaela Shiffrin 3:1, who only finished fourth with her team and thus remained without a medal at the Beijing Games. In the final, Straßer decided not to play in favor of Rauchfuss because, according to his own statement, he had had problems with the low speed and the changing course.
“I think the event has shown that it has a certain class, that it’s extremely exciting. The hundredth issue is haunting us. But we’re extremely happy that we didn’t go home without a medal and also our contribution to it Team D were able to do,” said sports director Maier.
Previously, the best results of the German Alpine at the games in China were the fourth places of Dürr in the slalom and Kira Weidle in the downhill. As in 2018 in Pyeongchang, they threatened to go completely empty-handed. In 2014 in Sochi there were still three medals for the German alpine team. Back then, Maria Höfl-Riesch won gold in the combination and silver in the super-G, Viktoria Rebensburg won bronze in the giant slalom.
