Dhe trip to St. Moritz would have been too expensive. When the bobsleigh elite whiz down the track in the posh Swiss winter sports resort in the hunt for world championship medals over the next two weekends, Deborah Levi will be sitting in front of the television in Frankfurt. Maybe her left leg is in a motor splint, because the 25-year-old shouldn’t be able to move it with her own muscle power.
One year after her Olympic victory in Beijing, together with pilot Laura Nolte, the sled pusher is about to make a new start. Shortly before Christmas she had to have an operation for cartilage damage on her knee. For six weeks, Levi is not allowed to put any strain on his joint, relies on crutches and rolls around the apartment on a chair at home. She should only be allowed to resume full training eight months after the operation.
“I like to give 120 percent”
A long way back into the ice chute, which strains the patience of the thoroughbred athlete badly. “I like to give 120 percent,” says Levi. Now her days consist of physiotherapy treatments, and when she exercises, she is only allowed to exercise her upper body while seated, or “remind her that she did competitive sports before” the muscles of her right leg.
Remain a carpool: Deborah Levi and Laura Nolte in Winterberg at the beginning of January
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Image: dpa
When the knee problems appeared in early November, not the training but the stair climbing afterwards hurt, Levi still harbored hope that this would improve after a few weeks’ break and that she would only miss the first World Cup races overseas. “But it has gotten worse,” says the Hessian, who won the national push-in test before the start of the season. Together with trainer David Corell, she chose the earliest possible surgery date. She was “almost relieved” when the end of the season was certain, as the ambitious athlete had previously put a lot of pressure on herself to be fit in time for the World Cup.
Now Levi is trying to make the best of the situation. She has tackled the 60-page work that the student teacher needs for her first state exam. Originally, she had wanted to write the essay on elite sports schools in the summer, although she will only complete the legal clerkship after the exam after her career.
But after returning from China, too much had hit the gold medalist. Receptions, honors, sponsor and media events were suddenly part of everyday life; in Siegbach-Oberndorf, where the daughter of a German father and a Nigerian mother, who was born in Dillenburg, grew up, a square was named after the people of Central Hesse.
Frankfurt ambassador of the European Football Championship
At the Europa League quarter-final match between Eintracht and FC Barcelona, to which Mike Josef had invited her, the head of the sports department offered his city’s sportswoman of the year the role of Frankfurt ambassador for the 2024 European Football Championship. Since then, she has been touring the country with Alexander Meier as an advertising medium and, in the former professional’s profession, feels more and more drawn to the Adlerträger. Although the SBU itself now has a bobsleigh group under its roof and the plans for a push-up track at the Niederrad sports facility have gained additional impetus, Levi wants to remain loyal to the Wetzlar sprint team in athletics and to SC Potsdam in winter sports.
Although there is a lot of competition among the brake women, many of whom like the sprinter come from the tartan track, and Nolte, second in the overall World Cup ranking, is also doing well with other partners, the convalescent is not worried about her place in the vehicle of the woman from Winterberg . The two are too good friends, already formed a duo when Levi first got into the back seat in 2018, and last year the driver herself moved to Frankfurt to sweat side by side with her athletic passenger.
“I have full confidence in her that she’s waiting for me,” says Levi. The partners exchange information via Facetime, and at the World Cup at the beginning of the month in Winterberg, which Nolte won with Neele Schuten from Gladbeck, the injured regular accompanied the races on site in a wheelchair.
Postponing the plan to secure a first world title after Olympic gold is “not so great,” says Levi. But she and Nolte would much rather celebrate the joint triumph on their home track in Winterberg than in the neighboring country. The 2024 World Cup will be held there, and then and also at the 2026 games in Italy, Levi hopes to race away from the competition again with his girlfriend.
