Wendy Holdener has a big Handicap: their opponent. Which is perhaps the best Alpine skier ever. She has broken records and will break almost all, or even approximately so: Mikaela Shiffrin.
23 the American, is successful as anyone at the end of the career. She is four times world champion, two-time Olympic champion, soon to be three-times overall world Cup champion, winning 56 times in the world Cup. To go against you, it can demand, but above all, overwhelming. Almost always, the competition fails to the athlete who sets new standards.
A victory rider – actually
This is true for many. For Holdener but this Attack has a particularly bitter aftertaste: she was in her specialist discipline: Slalom 20 times on the world Cup podium 16 times, of which they lag behind Shiffrin, 7 times you had behind your Second. She won two silver medals at a major event, in 2017 at the world Championships in St. Moritz and the 2018 Olympic Games in Pyeongchang. However, Holdener has never won. The 25-year-old Schwyzerin a best brand is a little notable: So often, yet no one managed to do it in a discipline on the podium, to win without. The Austrian Hubert Strolz this feat in the giant slalom 18 times – he remained until the end of career, in 1994, without a Triumph in his favorite division.
Holdener is not made to spend your life as a skier in the shadow of others. It is a victory rider. She proves in other disciplines – a parallel race, combinations of two she has won in the world Cup. She is a two-fold combination of world champion and led Switzerland with a gloss rides in the team competition to Olympic and last this week to world Cup Gold. You can meet the expectations, pressures, often. Only: In the Slalom is such a thing.
In this it follows the Triumph for years, since the 2. Rank in Ofterschwang almost six years ago. To remain patient and to continue to believe in the really big breakthrough, is a huge mental challenge.
Holdener struggled against her head, tried this, Shiffrin easy to hide, to focus on. But it was at the Start, was the necessary looseness of rarely – and never in two runs. She says: “It was always so, that I wanted nothing to lose. But if I risk nothing, I gain nothing. I’ve never had two perfect runs, because I gave in a little.” Now you dare hinüberzu squinting at the one that seems to be doing everything better than the Rest. Holdener looks to Shiffrin, look at where the American woman makes all the difference – often in the last gates before the finish. You can take out things for themselves, the most Important remains of the head.
The knowledge in the Super-G
How to go about it, showed her the Super-G in Crans-Montana, directly after the nerve-wracking weeks in South Korea. Holdener started without any expectations in one discipline, in the above a 19. Rank as the best result stood. Then, she came in third. “With pleasure, with pleasure,” she hazards, “the goal is that I approach the race basically. I don’t want to, me that the pressure applies the brakes.”
Today, Holdener is one of the favorites in the Slalom. The expectation is there. Pressure but less. You would win for the first time, would be the biggest success of your career. First and foremost, but it would be a wonderful end of the world Cup, the was medals for the now highly successful, with two gold. This can give peace of mind.
With a Shot on the plane
And maybe that helps her that she knows since a few days, that even long-term champion, Shiffrin is not superhuman. Since they traveled together in a private jet to Are, the downhill world champion Ilka Stuhec had organized to come as quickly as possible from the world Cup resort of Maribor to Sweden. With the Shot in the plane. Holdener, Shiffrin, Stuhec and Federica Brignone talked for the first time in detail: “It was a matter of who has bought an apartment, who has what plans,” says Holdener. And a vacuum cleaner, the mother Shiffrin for grandmother Shiffrin in Holdeners Sponsor wants to get. Maybe you’ll bring these over in Vermont, says Holdener.
The looseness compared with Shiffrin, she has found in the Private – or, better, in a private jet. The can also have for the battle on the slopes of a reliever. (Tages-Anzeiger)
Created: 16.02.2019, 09:02 PM
