Despite all the anticipation, alpine ace Linus Straßer is looking towards the Olympics with a queasy feeling.
“It would now be a lie if I said I was not afraid or had no respect for being tested positive in any way, even if it was falsely positive,” said the slalom specialist in the “RTL / ntv interview”. The stories of the German tobogganists were adventurous: “That’s not something you want to experience as an athlete.” In the Olympic tests, for example, Olympic champion Tobias Arlt had a false positive test, in his room in the quarantine hotel there were bugs, among other things, he felt like a prisoner.
He accepts the situation and tries to make the best of it. “Of course it’s crazy what conditions we have and what they all want. There’s this extra Olympic app, where we feel like we have to upload half our lives. Where you think, what exactly does that have to do with competitive sport or to do with the Olympics. They are tough as nails,” said Straßer in the direction of the Chinese organizers. “It says upload or you just won’t be activated and your app won’t switch to green, it just stays red. And then you won’t fly to China.”
Straßer was the first German to win the night slalom classic in Schladming. Suddenly, the 29-year-old from Munich is considered a medal candidate at the Winter Olympics in Beijing (February 4 to 20). “Everyone wants to be in the top three, you can’t buy anything else,” said Straßer. Alongside Norway’s Lucas Braathen, Austria’s Manuel Feller and Sweden’s Kristoffer Jakobsen, Straßer is the only one who has already raced onto a slalom podium twice this season.