The emotional Olympic highlight from a German perspective. Even Katharina Hennig (centre) could hardly believe that she had sprinted to team gold with her colleague Victoria Carl (left).
Foto: imago images/ITAR-TASS
»Our result is good. The team has achieved the goals.« Head of Mission Dirk Schimmelpfennig could hardly have answered the question about the record of the German winter athletes at the Olympic Games in Beijing more soberly. And yet it fitted in with this seemingly sterile Pandemic Olympics in China.
The objectives were formulated quite vaguely. When it comes to the number of medals, the athletes of the German Olympic Sports Confederation (DOSB) should settle somewhere between the low point in 2014 in Sochi (19) and the following high point in 2018 in Pyeongchang (31). If you stay that vague, something usually comes out in the middle: And so the team won 27 medals in Beijing. In the medal table it should be among the top three nations. And of course it became the second. The Norwegians were clearly better, but also set a record with 16 gold medals.
The DOSB should be happy that the debates from last summer will not be repeated. In Tokyo, the summer athletes had their worst result since 1992, and DOSB sports director Schimmelpfennig had to put up with questions about the professionalism of his association and the efficiency of sports promotion. Mainly thanks to outstanding results in the Yanqing ice track, things are quieter after the Winter Olympics. 16 of 30 medals to be awarded in tobogganing, skeleton and bobsleigh went to Germany, which provided nine of the ten Olympic champions. “We didn’t expect this dominance from the German Bobsleigh and Sled Association (BSD)”, even Schimmelpfennig was amazed. Above all, the two premiere titles in skeleton by Christopher Grotheer and the only 21-year-old Hannah Neise, who had never stood on a World Cup podium before, had not been planned. Surprises like these or the sensational gold of the cross-country sprinters Katharina Hennig and Victoria Carl now let the officials sleep more peacefully.
The fact that Schimmelpfennig wrote his own delegation only a “good” and not an “excellent” in the report is partly due to his stoically reserved manner. The curlers couldn’t even qualify for the Olympics, the ice hockey players didn’t even reach the quarter-finals despite their self-imposed medal goal, and not a single German athlete came close to winning a medal on ice skates.
In Pyeongchang, five other associations took part in collecting medals. Now there were only two: the BSD and the German Ski Association with combined athletes, alpine, biathletes and cross-country skiers. Nothing more was contributed from the snowboard, figure skating and ice hockey sections. »We have associations that have not met their own expectations. But others have completely lost touch with the world leaders, and we will analyze that,” announced the DOSB board.
The weakness of the former guarantors of success is striking: For the third time in a row, the German speed skating and short track community remained without a medal, so that the DESG now has to reckon with funding cuts. It also doesn’t help that the DOSB “not only wants to look at the Olympic result, but also the pre-Olympic season” before resorting to red pencils, because the DESG, which has been struggling with association quarrels for years, had hardly anything to show for the winter either.
Nor is there any talent emerging that could be built for the 2026 games in Cortina d’Ampezzo and Milan. With a view to the potential analysis system (PotAS) used in 2018, Schimmelpfennig had already announced to »nd« after the Tokyo games: »If there is no potential for medals at the next games, this means a rebuild in the youth sector, certainly with fewer resources. In the case of associations without an internationally competitive top, support in this area will be reduced.« This should now affect speed skating, figure skating, curling and the women’s ice hockey section.
Neise (21), bobsleigh pilot Laura Nolte (23) and cross-country skier Katherine Sauerbrey (24), who all returned home from their Olympic premiere with medals, proved that the focus on talent leads to success. Even if they couldn’t confirm it at the Olympics, snowboarders and ski freestylers have at least performed well enough in the World Cup to continue to receive elite funding.
In contrast to the aftermath of Tokyo, no one is talking about high dropout rates among the youngsters because young people are said to only be on their cell phones. Which is probably because that was never the real problem. Rather the much bigger competition in the summer. For comparison: runners from 59 nations took part in the 100-meter run in Tokyo, in the women’s bobsleigh there were only twelve.
