As much as Lena Dürr fought back, her tears kept coming.
“You should never give up,” the 31-year-old from Munich repeatedly emphasized on her lucky day: “It always comes back somehow.” There were days when Dürr might have thrown everything away. Her World Cup victory in 2013 in the parallel competition in Moscow was by no means the big bang she had hoped for, in the association they had temporarily given up hope: in 2019 she lost her squad status for a few months.
UPDATE YESTERDAY AT 4:06 PM
With Dürr, everything took a little longer. “I took a lot of detours,” she said – the medal didn’t just fall to her either: she lived through a nail-biting thriller. Fourth following the first run, she took the lead in the final – by 0.02 seconds. But she knew: three more to come. “I thought to myself, I can’t regulate it anymore anyway, everyone else has it in their hands now.”
Dürr in the Eurosport interview: “Proud to have made it”
Dürr is spared deja vu
Immediately we went haywire. First, the sensational Canadian winner Laurence St-Germain shot past Dürr. The German alpine boss Wolfgang Maier already thought: “Shit, only fourth once more”, Wendy Holdener and Mikaela Shiffrin still came. But the Swiss threaded a. Shiffrin just saved silver, her 14th World Championship medal.
Dürr was spared a déjà vu like last year at the Olympics, when she went from first to fourth in the final, 0.07 seconds off the podium. Yes, she said, it’s “a shame” to benefit from the misfortune of others, though: “Probably that’s the day I get my hundredths back from the Olympics.”
Alpinchef Maier confessed to being “a bit flashed” because everything had turned out for the better. “Sometimes the love of God is a German skier,” he said – and once more praised Dürr and their development. And he didn’t stand up and say: I knew it. Because: “I just didn’t know.”
Dürr, twice third at the World Championships and second at the 2022 Olympics with the team, did not want to decide before her drive home on Sunday morning whether the summer of 2019, which initially forced her to take more personal responsibility, was the turning point in her career. Maier is convinced: “It was crucial in many things that she is the way she is now. And now she’s great.”
(SID)
Big moment: Dürr gets the bronze medal at the World Championships
Ski World Cup
With precision landing to bronze: The Dürr feature film on the medal
UPDATE YESTERDAY AT 2:29 PM
