Berlin – Exhausted, Leonie Walter fell on her back just behind the line – but when it became clear that the 18-year-old biathlete had won Paralympic gold, there was no stopping her. “I looked up all the time and asked myself: Where is the time?” Walter said on Tuesday with a trembling voice: “Then everyone jumped up and I knew I had it.”
In the team circle, Walter and her roommate Linn Kazmaier, who is three years younger than her, are only called the “chick flat share”. And it delivers reliably at the Paralympics in Beijing. But nobody would have expected this golden coronation from Walter.
Walter manages the ten kilometers with remarkable coolness
The student mastered the ten kilometers in the visually impaired class on the Zhangjiakou cross-country ski run with remarkable coolness. When she made a live call to mother Renate in the Black Forest during an ARD interview, she was speechless. Laughing and without comment, she listened to her mother calling out to her how “unbelievable” and “incredible” it all was. And that “the whole of St. Peter is now waiting for you.”
With silver for flag bearer Martin Fleig and bronze for Anja Wicker, there was even a complete set of medals for the German Disabled Sports Association (DBS) on the rest day of the alpine athletes. But the second gold after Anna-Lena Forster in the super combination from the day before eclipsed everything on Tuesday. And was the culmination of the performance of Leonie Walter and her roommate Linn Kazmaier, who was spared this time. After two silver medals for 15-year-old Kazmaier and two bronze medals for Walter, the visually impaired teenage duo from the “chick flat share” has now won five medals.
“This is beyond all expectations,” said DBS President Friedhelm Julius Beucher. The 75-year-old was out of breath in the interview, he ran alongside Walter on the finish line to cheer her on. “And now I’m beaming with the sun,” he said. “First I brought beer into the wax cabin,” reported Germany’s Chef de Mission Karl Quade. Deserved, as national coach Ralf Rombach thought. “It was also a matter of material,” he said: “But the way Leonie keeps her nerves at such a young age is very special. It’s just a cool sock.”
The fact that Kazmaier, who had always placed directly in front of Walter, took a break on Tuesday was not a mistake, everyone asserted. “You have to be careful what you expect of a 15-year-old body,” said Beucher. Quade explained that you couldn’t have an athlete that young start six times. “Who knows what you’ll destroy with it in the long term,” he said. And Rombach immediately promised the next surprise: “Linn wanted to have a lot of grains for the sprint on Wednesday.”
Things hadn’t gone well for the experienced Nordic athletes until Tuesday, but redemption followed. Wicker was greeted by Oksana Masters at the finish line. The American seemed almost happier about the bronze medal from Stuttgart than about her silver. Because Wicker had snatched Bronze from four Chinese women running in after her. And their classification had been questioned by Masters these days.
Fleig is super happy
The special jubilation was “certainly related to it”. As for the criticism of the classification, “I’m with her too,” said Wicker, who, according to Beucher, was “strong as an ox”. Fleig’s performance was also “sensational”: “Even after he had been so disappointed up until now.” In the first two races, the man from Freiburg took fifth and ninth place. Wicker had finished fifth once and had skipped the second start. The bronze medal in Beijing is her third Paralympic medal after gold and silver in Sochi 2014.
Fleig therefore also explained that he was “super relieved and super happy. Before today I was as proud of our team as Harry was because I was super happy for the boys. Being on the podium now is also very cool.”