Skeleton: Russian top athletes miss Olympics
The skeleton Olympics will be played without Russian skeleton medalists Nikita Tregubov and Vladislav Semenov. Both miss the games after positive tests. He has bad news, wrote 26-year-old Tregubow, silver medalist from 2018, on Instagram on Monday. A PCR test did not give a negative result, so there is no chance of making it in time. Semenow will also not take part and will be replaced by a teammate, said association president Elena Anikina of the Tass state agency.
Tregubow and Semenow had finished fourth and fifth in the overall World Cup this season and would have been opponents of Axel Jungk and Christopher Grotheer for a medal in Beijing. Jungk himself has to wait for further negative tests after a corona infection and hope that he can travel on Friday.
Putin flies to China for the opening ceremony
Russian President Vladimir Putin will attend the opening ceremony of the Beijing Winter Olympics on Friday (February 4, 2022). After the successes at the Summer Games in Tokyo, the Kremlin boss is hoping for a new shower of medals.
The 200 Russian athletes have 30 medals in their sights and want to finish in the top three in the medal table. “We have put together a good team that has many winners and medalists from world championships”, said the head of the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC), Stanislav Pozdnyakov. Only 111 Russian athletes were allowed to compete at the 2018 Winter Games in Pyeongchang (South Korea). 17 plaques were enough for 13th place in the medal table.
The World Anti-Doping Agency had actually banned Russia’s team from the most important sporting events in the world for four years. However, the judges of the Court of Arbitration for Sport halved the ban at the end of 2020. In Beijing, Russians are only allowed as athletes of the ROC line up Instead of the Russian anthem, Peter Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 is played, and the Olympic flag is hoisted as a flag.
Team Germany lifted off
Four days before the opening ceremony, a large tour group from the German Olympic Sports Confederation with numerous medal contenders made their way to the Winter Games. 40 athletes, including DOSB President Thomas Weikert, set out on the nine-hour flight from Frankfurt to Beijing on Monday afternoon.
In addition to the ski jumpers around Karl Geiger, the German biathletes with Franziska Preuß, who has recovered from a corona infection, and the Olympic luge champions Tobias Wendl/Tobias Arlt were also on board flight LH 724.
There was no happy farewell. Due to the Corona situation, no spectators and media representatives were allowed at the airport. The corona fear flies with everyone. Anyone who starts negatively in Germany does not necessarily have to arrive negatively. Sportschau reporter Claus Lufen, who is now in a quarantine hotel, also experienced this recently. ARD journalist Lea Wagner was not able to make the trip at all. The 27-year-old, who was mainly used in ski jumping competitions, tested positive for the corona virus before leaving for China.