Efinally snow. Winter sports in winter dress. Successes here and there for the Germans, victories, good placements in the alpine, tobogganing, bobsleighing. Off to Beijing, to the Winter Games in early February? The President of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) invites you to attend. Thomas Bach is certain that the Olympics will “definitely” take place, he says in an interview with “Welt am Sonntag” with a view to China’s “zero covid policy”, while Omikron is conquering the world with a kind of lightning infection. Bach does not challenge that – outwardly. As if it were an advantage that the People’s Republic was “very, very strict and strict”. Bach assures improvement after the bad experiences not only for Germans during the test competitions in China. “It was sometimes overshot, and not all protocols for the games were applied, but stricter rules. The criticized measures will be corrected. “
Whatever is in the world that is threatened by athletes and officials alike, to overshadow the concentration on a new discipline that spans all sports: just don’t get positive. Maybe that’s harder than winning Olympic gold. Which sports fields you look at these days: positive tests everywhere. Two more cases at the Biathlon World Cup in Oberhof, after the Russian star Eduard Latypow and the Swiss top ski hunter Benjamin Weger missed the qualification due to their quarantine. The international association quickly announced hundreds of tests on Sunday before the entourage moved to Ruhpolding, at best in a bubble. The virus caught the Austrian bobsleigh pilot Benjamin Maier in Winterberg: journey home. Despite the booster.
In the ski racers’ camp, the American Olympic favorite Mikaela Shiffrin and the world champions Lara Gut-Behrami (Switzerland) and Katharina Liensberger (Austria) had to sit out due to positive results. “At first we were tested every 72 hours, now every 48 hours. To do this, we do internal rapid tests. We try to keep everything as close-meshed as possible, “reported the Alpine Director of the German Ski Association (DSV), Wolfgang Maier:” I don’t know how to do it any other way. “And yet the World Cup is” hanging by a thread ” FIS race director Markus Waldner quotes: “If we should make it through to the Olympics in February and all the world’s best athletes are at the start, then it borders on a miracle.”
Fear of arbitrariness
Who will make it to Beijing? In German ice hockey, four out of 15 teams are currently out of the game due to Corona, only three out of seven games took place on Sunday. “I’m going to lock myself up at home for the next two weeks,” announced national goalkeeper Mathias Niederberger from the Eisbären Berlin champions to the German press agency. The national team should meet in Mannheim in three weeks and leave for Beijing on February 2nd. If the rate of infection continues in the ice hockey league, the Olympics could be in danger for some players. But it is no longer just a matter of worrying about achieving your dream goal after many years of hard work. “I find it irresponsible to send us there under the current conditions,” says Alpin Director Maier: “I already demanded in the autumn that clear regulations be required as to the Ct value from which a test is rated as positive or negative. But we do not receive any information on this. In the daily on-site tests you are exposed to arbitrariness, so to speak. “
Why is? The degree of infectivity is derived from the Ct value of a sample. According to the RKI, a person with a value of 30 and more is no longer at risk of infection. The institute then recommends “de-insulation”. However, the British have found that this was still the case for 35 for eight percent of the samples examined. For the Chinese, says Thomas Schwab, the board of directors of the Bobsleigh and Sledge Association for Germany, the exemption only applies from a Ct value of 40.
The International Luge Federation sees no evidence of manipulation, for example for the benefit of Chinese athletes in competition. The President of the German Ski Association, Franz Steinle, also waved it off: “We have no knowledge at all.” But the toboggan faction, shaken by positive cases from Germans in China, has sought expert advice. “We were told that the process could lead to contamination and someone would have a Ct value of 39.9 instead of 40. It’s very hairy. In any case, we need clear rules. There is a fear that someone will be considered infected and that all the work would have been in vain. This is an awful situation. I don’t have a solution either. But we should keep calm. “
The IOC referred on Sunday to the rules defined for taking and evaluating tests in China. Bach told the “Welt am Sonntag” that, compared to the Tokyo Summer Games, the measures were “on the one hand stricter”, but dealing within this closed circle would be “on the other hand more carefree”. A top German official dared to question the FAZ on Sunday whether Omikron would allow himself to be kept away from the Olympics in the interests of the Olympic Peace: “The whole world is coming. I’m curious what happens if we have fifty or sixty cases in the Olympic Village. “
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