Torment one last time: Erik Lesser wants to say goodbye properly.
Photo: imago images / Tomi Hänninen
With its demanding course, the biathlon facility at Holmenkollen is one of the most difficult in the World Cup – so it’s exactly the right course for the international elite to say goodbye to their holidays after the last races of the Olympic winter. Franziska Preuss, for example, thinks the varied course on Oslo’s famous mountain, with its climbs, curves and descents, is simply »cool«. This is immediately the right keyword for Erik Lesser. Sometimes he got along well with the requirements there, sometimes less well, reports the Thuringian – and presents his plan for the upcoming weekend. “I’m trying to stay as cool as possible at my last World Cup,” says the 33-year-old, who has already taken part in a number of season finals in the Norwegian capital since his World Cup debut in March 2010.
Now that after the final chord in Scandinavia there will definitely be no more for Lesser, it is clear to Lesser: “My last race should not be a Halligalli, game, fun and suspense competition.” At the final triad in Oslo with the sprint on Friday , in which he finished fifth, the pursuit on Saturday and the mass start on Sunday, so he really wants to torture himself again. Before life after competitive sports begins for him. The fact that Lesser himself skipped the 2023 home World Cup in Oberhof is not only a decision against further suffering of a competitive athlete, but also a thank you to his partner Nadine Neuber – who retired professionally after the birth of their daughter. Little Anouk turned three in January. And her dad, one of the top performers in the German biathlon team for a decade, says full of anticipation: “I just want to enjoy taking my daughter to kindergarten and picking her up.”
Before Erik Lesser devotes himself intensively to family life, he wants to stay as cool as he did during his career highlights for three races. At the 2014 Olympics, he secured the only German individual medal with his second place in the classic over 20 kilometers – and also won silver in the relay. A year later in Kontiolahti, Lesser was at the top of the podium when he became world champion with his victory in the pursuit. And the native of Suhl not only proved to be a rip-off athlete on the track, but also always a downright humorous fellow. Lesser offered the best entertainment at the press conference after his Olympic silver run in the singles in Sochi, when he chatted about his two grandfathers, among other things.
When he talks about his planned career after his career today, the relay world champion of 2015 also has a rogue on his neck. Lesser has known for a long time that he wants to pursue a coaching career. Accordingly, the Oberhofer, who repeatedly denounced the doping practices in the industry and spoke out in favor of a lifelong ban in the event of a positive test at a fairly early stage in his career, has also given some thought to how he would like to deal with his future eleven . In order to clarify his basic attitude, at the beginning of the season he told »nd« a »great story« about one of the physiotherapists on the German team. »He got into trouble as a junior in cross-country skiing because he hid in the forest with colleagues with cameras and scattered flour on the course. That inevitably leads to extreme falls,” Lesser said happily. »You have made a descent at 40 km/h – and then the ski simply stops completely because of the flour. When you ski over it, you feel like your binding is ripping out of your ski. Not the shoe from the binding.”
Something like that is of course exaggerated, Lesser explained, but at the same time referred to the quintessence of the anecdote: “You just have to do a bit of nonsense.” Lesser says he wants to be a modern coach for whom discipline is important – but life is important to him also viewed with a winking eye. »Our main training usually starts at nine o’clock, it has to run smoothly. I don’t really care about anything else,” said Lesser, who can also imagine the job of national coach in perspective. Of course, you shouldn’t go running again in your free time, but you should also be able to do nonsense, he then added.
National coach Mark Kirchner once described Lesser as “an athlete who is very creative and also brings his own ideas to the training”. This is one of the reasons why Lesser’s long-time roommate Arnd Peiffer, who mothballed his skis and rifle a year ago, believes that his former partner will one day be a very good coach. Lesser wants to get his coaching license in Cologne next year.
In addition to one or two jokes, his future students can also look forward to a coach who likes to look beyond the ski tips and the shooting range. In the German team, Lesser has developed into the athlete with the sharpest tongue in recent years. Around the Winter Games in Beijing, he very clearly criticized the choice of venue, the gigantism and the lack of sustainability of the Olympic spectacle. And he let IOC boss Thomas Bach say that he would have “wished that a president with a decent backbone would have been more critical towards the Chinese government”.
Whenever there was a need, Lesser, who was elected to the athletes’ commission of the world association four years ago, also spontaneously helped out: He lent the Russian Eduard Latypov sporting equipment during his quarantine period at the January World Cup in Oberhof. After this relief effort, Lesser got 30,000 new followers from Russia on Instagram – a third of whom recently said goodbye. The reason: After the Russian invasion of Ukraine, he made his channel available to the Ukrainian biathlete Anastasiya Merkuschina. “So that more people in Russia can get real news,” explained Lesser, who later gave his account to Ukrainian tennis pro Sergei Stakhovsky.
However, the winner of a total of seven World Cup medals does not want to get involved in sports politics any further – because he thinks he will wear himself out. The situation is different with possible appearances as a television expert. After all, Erik Lesser didn’t just fall for his mouth. “I can imagine that,” he says, thinking about future comments in front of the camera, “quite well.”
