Eric Frenzel, three-time Olympic champion and five-time World Cup winner, is one of Germany’s great hopes in Nordic combined again this season. In his column for sport.de, the exceptional athlete has now looked at the first World Cup weekend in Finland. In focus: regeneration for the upcoming competitions in Lillehammer, Norway.
The first competitions of the season have been fought and have given me a position that I am satisfied with, but which at the same time can be expanded. My top ten results are pleasing, the jumping is already at a good level, as I said, with some room for improvement. I actually had to struggle with small physical problems on the cross-country ski trail – a small shoulder problem that I couldn’t pull through with my usual strength. Therefore, the following also applies to the cross-country ski run: expandable.
On a day off, the team spread out over the whole wonderful wooden chalet, which is the second time we have lived in the team; everyone has their own single room, everyone has an oversized living room with a fireplace and the highlight of such a chalet, how could it be otherwise in Finland, is a spacious sauna that we could move into as a team.
We rest and the care of the body is in the foreground. A first competition weekend in the World Cup is always particularly hard on your bones. We have set up a lounger in front of the fireplace and there everyone is ‘worked on’ by the physiotherapist one after the other. Next to the lounger, a teammate sits at the table and waits while he studies his jumps again on TV; another sits in a rocking chair-like structure and reads with headphones on his ears and no longer reacts to violent waving and shouting.
Some have retreated to their rooms, phoning their families back home, dealing with correspondence by e-mail or posting the ski jump from above on Instagram for the fortieth time. It’s quiet, not a word is spoken, only occasionally sounds come from the lounger that lie in the entire spectrum between well-being and pain.
I myself am completely fixated on the sauna and will now treat myself to two courses at 95 degrees – that could also be good for my shoulder, about the problem of which I also spoke at length with therapists today. The status quo will then also be responsible for the fact that I can’t dare a head dive into the Finnish snow after the sauna. Protection is the order of the day.
This also meant for me this morning that I trudged Nordic Walking through the snow to go out instead of doing it on skis.
However, the mental processing of the competitions was in the foreground; I’m really satisfied, I have a good basis in jumping and running that I can build on.
Tomorrow is travel day to Norway. Lillehammer can come.
With kind regards
Eric Frenzel