Suddenly an Olympic candidate

Created: 01/17/2022, 19:08

By: Patrick Hilmes

It's good to smile: David Zobel celebrates his tenth place in the pursuit.

Now the man from Murnau can even hope to be able to travel to the Winter Olympics in China.

© Christian Einecke via www.imago-images.de

After his tenth place in the Ruhpolding pursuit, David Zobel can hope for an Olympic ticket.

Hanna Kebinger was also able to convince in her World Cup debut.

Ruhpolding –

The pressure to achieve something great. He has already thwarted various athletes on the home stretch. Even biathletes can sing a song about it. Many dreams are shattered at the last shooting. Often because my head was rattling too much because the dream was so tangible. So that the pressure doesn't overwhelm you, experience helps above all. Those who often get into such situations can deal with them better. David Zobel (SC Partenkirchen), however, does not have such a wealth of experience and has never found himself in the starting position of being able to achieve a top ten result in the World Cup. And yet he did it right away. Tenth place in the Ruhpolding pursuit. But how could he stay so coolhow did he become one of the few athletes to go through with just one penalty? Didn't he have a million thoughts before the final standing stage? The answer is extremely simple and is: no. "Because I was running at the limit, I probably didn't have enough oxygen to really think," Zobel suspects with a laugh.

"Because I was running at the limit, I probably didn't have enough oxygen to really think"

David Zobel

This is how he managed to jump into the top athletes of the world in what was only his second World Cup of his career.

His comment: "Great, great, great." The fact that his last shot, the 20th shot, was the only one that missed his target did not change anything, so he only achieved half the standard for the Olympic Winter Games instead of the complete one.

"Of course it annoyed me a bit.

But it cannot be taken for granted that I shot so well in the first place.” In addition, he was not aware during the race that he had fired the last cartridge a bit too quickly.

Nonetheless, the endorphins shot through his veins on the final lap.

"It was just incredible.

The level was really high, you had to fight on every lap.

I just caught a cream day.”

Absurd scenes at the start

At the beginning of the pursuit, the 25-year-old's emotional world looked very different.

“It was completely absurd, there was so much going on on the track.

After the start I looked back and saw 30 people behind me.

At first I thought: shit.

But then it was just great.” Zobel inspired it to cavort among the biathlon elite, to keep up with them and even to be able to leave some top athletes behind.

Four athletes compete for an Olympic ticket

But now it's rattling in his head, because now a topic has popped up that he hadn't dealt with before, that wouldn't have even occurred to him: Olympics. "I have to deal with that first, I hadn't speculated about it at all." And yet the Murnau native now has the chance to travel to Beijing. National coach Mark Kirchner can nominate six men for the Winter Games in China. Five have their tickets secured - Benedikt Doll, Erik Lesser, Johannes Kühn, Philipp Nawrath and Roman Rees. Four athletes are fighting for the one remaining place. In addition to Zobel, these are Philipp Horn, Justus Strelow and Lucas Fratzscher. The decision will be made in the coming days at the final World Cup before the Olympics in Antholz (January 20th to 23rd). All four are nominated.Zobel wants to tackle the races like the fourth shooting in the pursuit of Ruhpolding: "Don't worry too much."

Impeccable shooting: Hanna Kebinger shot clean in the Ruhpolding sprint.

© Frank Hoermann/SVEN SIMON via www.imago-images.de

This is also the plan of Hanna Kebinger (SCP).

Like Zobel, she is nominated for the competitions in Antholz.

She earned the starting place with a flawless shooting performance in the sprint last Friday in Ruhpolding.

Kebinger was the only German athlete to shoot clean, her third straight race (previously twice in the IBU Cup) in which all targets went white.

"I'm super happy about that."

Flawless shooting but still wasting too much time

Still, she didn't get past 66th place and thus missed out on chasing the top 60. “It's a bit frustrating.

But I think it's normal to be a bit timid and overcautious at your first World Cup.” Because Kebinger took a lot of time at the shooting range.

In addition, she was not able to use her potential on the cross-country ski trail and felt a little tired the day before.

But none of that clouded her positive overall résumé after her first World Cup of her career.

After all, she fulfilled her childhood dream.

“I got to run with the very best biathletes in the world.

That was just great.”