“Basically a disgrace”
Olympic heroine Laura Nolte with an urgent appeal
Updated February 25, 2026 – 7:05 a.mReading time: 2 minutes
Won gold – and still worries: Olympic bobsleigh champion Laura Nolte warns of problems in German winter sports. Without sponsors it could be difficult to stay at the top of the world.
After her successes in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Olympic champion Laura Nolte made an urgent appeal: German bobsleigh sport is under great financial pressure – and is at long-term risk without sponsors.
In a column in “Bild”, the 27-year-old describes how great the strain is on the athletes away from the Olympic stage. Many athletes have to “literally clean doors” to finance their careers.
There are high costs in bobsleigh: pushers have to be paid, plus there are expenses for vans, hotels and materials such as runners. “That alone easily costs more than 50,000 euros a year,” writes Nolte. She is “infinitely grateful” to her sponsors because their support “really cannot be taken for granted.”
At the same time, Nolte criticized the low media visibility of her sport. Although ARD and ZDF will broadcast every minute of the Olympic Games, in the years in between, many Olympic disciplines can only be seen in live streams, if at all. “We bobsleigh athletes are by far the most successful medal winners, but we hardly have any TV presence and are therefore dependent on almost selfless sponsors. That’s basically a shame,” she writes.
It may be a matter of time before it becomes difficult to stay at the top of the world in this “wonderful sport”. “Besides all the hard training, it’s also a lot of idealism that keeps the bobsleigh running.”
Nolte has been the dominant pilot in the two-man bobsleigh for four years. Since her breakthrough in Beijing in 2022, she has won the overall World Cup four times and one world title in the pair. In the current season she won five of seven World Cup races.
In Italy, Nolte won gold in the two-man bobsleigh with Deborah Levi and silver in the monobob. She actually wanted to quit after the games. “I think we’ve both changed our minds a little bit now. It’s still a lot of fun,” she said after the Olympic Games. A possible goal is the 2030 Winter Olympics in La Plagne – a place with special significance: the duo once celebrated their first World Cup victory there.
