Slalom ace Lena Dürr got stuck at the top of the world last season. In the discipline ranking, only Petra Vlhova and Mikaela Shiffrin were ahead of her. For the new season she is still hoping for ease at the start.
The new season starts after the cancellation of the parallel slalom in Lech for the technical specialists at the weekend in Levi, Finland (Live streams of the races on Saturday and Sunday in the BR24 Live Center). She is ready, says Dürr. “I need two perfect runs,” said the 31-year-old. Then “let’s see if it’s really going to be a good start”.
Good season 2021/22 behind you
If she can take the momentum from last season, the current one can also be successful. She was on the podium four times and in the overall slalom ranking the Upper Bavarian finished third behind the stars Petra Vlhova (SLO) and Mikaela Shiffrin (USA). The specialist for tight courses in the DSV had never done so well in her career.
Finally the switch has flipped
“I’ve struggled for years. And I’ve never been where I knew I could be and where I just wanted to be.” To see that it’s just about skiing and “that I’ll go down there as fast as possible for a minute and just have fun at the same time”. It was necessary “to question everything completely again. And then a switch somehow flipped.”
A good start brings ease
The fact that the years of training paid off last winter “was something I would never have thought of at the beginning of the season”. A good start to the new season of competitions would be ideal now: “If the season starts well, I think it’s all the easier to simply take the lightness with you.”
The basis has been laid: “We trained really well this summer,” Dürr said before the originally planned season opener in Lech. The first race, a parallel slalom, was canceled due to lack of snow. Dürr had actually hoped that she could take a lot of momentum with her like last year”. Then, at the start of the slalom in Levi, she was free to drive up.
Dürr: “I was so free”
In any case, Dürr wants to take it easy: “I’m not stressing at all. I know what I have to do”. The 31-year-old is hoping for the good feeling she had regularly last year: “I was at the start and I was so free”. She wants to come back to this mode. “And then I think everything should fit.”
Slalom field moved closer together
For her, the focus is not on the placement, “but that my skiing is right,” she added just before the first showdown in Levi. In order to have something good in the end, “I just have to get my two runs down optimally”. Especially in the last year you have seen that the slalom field has moved together significantly. “We had an incredible number of close races where I finished fourth and fifth with a few hundredths.”
As an athlete at the bottom of the chain
The topic of winter sports in times of climate change and the energy crisis is of course also an issue for Dürr: “It’s not just a problem since last year, where is it all going,” says Dürr. As an athlete, however, you are at the bottom of the chain” and of course you try to make a small contribution. “Of course you can question it. But in the end it’s our job. And we’re happy, no matter where, that we can race and show what we’ve been working on all year.”
Source: BR24 11/16/2022 – 6:30 p.m
