Bankruptcies, breakdowns and a lot of bad luck: the German ski team is still waiting for a medal at the World Cup. Finally it was almost grotesque. The chances of improvement are manageable.
After crossing the finish line in Saalbach-Hinterglemm, Lena Dürr was visibly eaten. She peppered one of her ski sticks in the snow and shed a few tears-a melange of anger and disillusionment. “I’m really disappointed. If you pull someone else in, it hurts twice,” it broke out of the 33-year-old slalom specialist in the interview a little later.
The reason: As the second last starter of the team combination at the skiing championship, the experienced athlete had slipped away within sight of the goal and thus awarded the medal that was believed to be safely.
Thanks to a furious preceding downhill run, her team partner Emma Aicher had exemplified with second place and only 0.23 seconds behind the US team. But Dürr slipped the concentration and thus the podium.
A few minutes earlier there was a duplicity of the results: The second German team in the competition suffered a similar fate when Jessica Hilzinger, which started at number five, also affected the strong departure work of her fellow campaigner Kira Weible-Winkelmann with a decisive mistake. And compared to Dürr, which was still saved as 17th, even completely left.
The race symbolically stands for the performance of the athletes of the German Ski Association (DSV) at the most important strength of the skiing year 2025 near Salzburg.
After six out of eleven World Cup competitions, the German team is still there without a medal. Regardless of whether in the team competition, in the Super-G or in the departure: While hosts Austria and neighbor Switzerland celebrate one podium party after the other, the German team keeps going empty.
Schwaiger’s analysis was relentlessly: “It remains that we have not been one of the best athletes.” For the German Speed Specialists, a top 10 placement was the “realistic goal”, but at least a placement of the top 15. “That was not utopian,” the trainer announced. The German gentlemen had not already made it in the top 15 in the Super-G-an at least moderate sporty disaster.
The women did not look that bad beforehand, but these also struggled in sometimes difficult slopes – and mostly ranks far far from the medal ranks.
“It’s disappointing-but I think I have to trust my skiing. It was not bad,” analyzed Kira Weide-Winkelmann after her twelfth place in the departure on Saturday. “It is of course a shame that it is such a strange descent at a World Cup,” the Vice World Champion from 2021 pushed.
Only the only 21-year-old top talent Aicher ensured positive surprises with two sixth places in Super-G and departure, with the latter appearance in particular convincing. Because: The Aicher, born in Sweden, succeeded with the highest possible start number 30 with a crazy slope almost the big coup.