In the book, Dahlmeier describes in a very dramatic way how great her fighting spirit and will to succeed were. It even went so far that she collapsed after winning gold in the individual race at the World Championships in Hochfilzen in 2017.
“Unfortunately, I couldn’t really enjoy it at first because I was really knocked out. I didn’t give 100, but 102 or 103 percent in the race and was so empty that I could barely stand on my own heels. The effort doesn’t stop when you reach the finish, it just shifts from the cross-country ski trail to the area behind it: ceremony, press conference, interviews. Tuck, tuck, tuck, tuck, tuck, tuck. I was so empty that I had to be supported on the way back to the quarters,” said Dahlmeier. After a short break, however, the relay race was on again – and it would end really dramatically: with the next gold medal, but also with total exhaustion.
“So now I had to give it my all again in terms of running because I messed up at the shooting range. I didn’t want to be the one who messed up the relay, so I ran like I was running for my life and in the end I made it to the finish with a lead of six seconds. I don’t really know what happened after that,” describes Dahlmeier. “I really collapsed. When the girls from my team came to celebrate with me, I fell face first into the snow and was gone. What happened to this race didn’t matter to me at the time. I thought: “I have to make sure I survive this now.”
When she got back on her feet after a few minutes, Dahlmeier tried to take part in the usual victory madness, but: “After the first part of the interviews, it was finally over for me. The press conference had to take place without me, and when I took the medal photos I noticed how my body was sagging and my eyes were going black again. Our team doctor Klaus Marquardt put my knuckles up and tried to stabilize my circulation.”