Kira Weidle finishes 15th in the lunar landscape

Created: 02/11/2022, 20:02

By: Michael Baumgartner

As far as possible, Kira Weidle stayed 15th in the Olympic Super-G on Friday.

However, the 25-year-old from Starnberg is aiming for a medal in the downhill on Tuesday.

© Michael Kappeler/dpa

There was no big surprise, but Kira Weidle lived up to expectations in her first race at the Winter Olympics in Beijing.

In the Super-G, the skier from Ski-Club Starnberg took 15th place on Friday.

Starnberg/Beijing

– Kira Weidle started the Olympic Winter Games in Beijing with an acceptable result.

At the Super-G early Friday morning on the Xiaohaituo mountain in Yanqing, which was purely prepared with artificial snow, the ski racer from Starnberg finished 15th and was anything but dissatisfied with that.

"I got along quite well," said the 25-year-old.

And indeed, 15th place after twelfth place three weeks ago at the World Cup in Cortina d'Ampezzo was her best result so far this winter in her weaker discipline.

So Weidle remained completely within the scope of her possibilities.

Helge von Hirschhausen agrees.

The President of SC Starnberg goes even further and says: "Actually, Kira set an exclamation mark with this result.

She has shown that she has strong nerves of steel and is able to fulfill her potential.

After all, Super-G is not her favorite discipline.” The gap to the Swiss Olympic champion Lara Gut-Behrami was not too big at 1.15 seconds.

She was 0.85 seconds behind on bronze, which Michelle Gisin (Switzerland) grabbed.

Silver went to the Austrian Mirjam Puchner.

In the descent, Kira Weidle is one of the favorites

Even before the race, Weidle was aware that she would normally have nothing to do with awarding the medals.

"The Super-G was there more for me, so that I could find a good feeling for the descent and get a feel for the track," she said in an ARD interview after the race.

Her focus is clearly on her special discipline, the downhill, which will take place next Tuesday (4 a.m. CET, live on ZDF and Eurosport).

The 25-year-old, as the reigning vice world champion and currently sixth in the World Cup rankings, is one of the extended circle of favourites.

Kira Weidle thinks the spread is "super cool"

And even if she compares the Xiaohaituo alpine skiing center, around 100 kilometers away from Beijing, with a "moon landscape" ("The gondola mountain station also looks like a UFO has landed"), she found the race track to be a pleasure on Friday .

“The track is super cool with lots of waves to play with.

The snow is top notch, better than I thought,” said Weidle.

The anticipation for the next four days is correspondingly high.

From this Saturday, until the Olympic race, there are still three downhill training sessions in which Weidle can get used to the track.

"Let's see how the course is.

That's still new territory for us," said the Starnberg resident.

Above all, it will be important “that you drive super clean and don’t skid for a millisecond because that slows you down”.

Small mistakes would be punished immediately in these special snow conditions.

And Kira Weidle made one or two too many of these at the Super-G for a medal.