German Olympic champion could no longer feel his leg

Injury shortly before the games

German Olympic champion could no longer feel his leg

Bobsleigh pusher Thorsten Margis expanded his impressive gold collection in Cortina. A treacherous injury a few weeks before the games almost cost him his participation.

Germany’s four-man bobsleigh pilot Johannes Lochner was the big favorite for gold – and they delivered. Lochner and his pushers Thorsten Margis, Georg Fleischhauer and Jörn Wenzel became well-deserved Olympic champions with an outstanding performance across all four runs.

However, just a few weeks before the games began, it suddenly became completely uncertain that this team would even be able to start in this formation. Because: Margis suffered a treacherous injury: “Around Christmas I suddenly had a herniated disc. My leg was numb. Then I thought: That was it!”, reports the 36-year-old to “Sport Bild”.

But he got fit again in time. “We saved it with the physios,” said Margis. And so the former decathlete won his fifth gold medal at the Olympics in the last race of his career, two of which came in the four-man bobsleigh and three in the two-man bobsleigh. “It’s over for me now. There’s no better way to stop. What an absurd dream.” Which almost burst before it even started.

Like Margis, his pilot Lochner also quits. The 35-year-old: “The last run of my bobsleigh life was to be enjoyed and for eternity. I had hard years of training and often had to live with second places. But at some point I turned the corner. It is the best end to my career that I can imagine.”

For Margis’ pusher colleague Georg Fleischhauer, it was his first Olympic Games at the age of 37. In addition to the foursome, he also won gold in the twosome with Lochner. He dedicated both medals to his mother, who died in 2022: “She was there indirectly and hopefully saw that I had achieved what I always dreamed of. I had a picture of her in my racing suit with me.” Unlike Lochner and Margis, the former hurdler doesn’t want to stop yet, says: “I’ll keep going, but I’ll look from year to year. We’ll see who I’ll be in the bobsled with.”

Maybe with Jörn Wenzel, the fourth man in the team? At 21, he was by far the youngest of the gold quartet and announced: “I will now try my hand at being a pilot and test how the steering cables work in Oberhof and Altenberg.” The native of Saxony says about the Olympic victory with the over-30 group: “I am grateful that the boys took me on this journey and that they trusted me.”