Ejust wake up in the morning and don’t think about the next training session. Instead ask the children: What do we want to do today? Not having a plan and enjoying exactly that is how Eric Frenzel imagines the first day after his last day as an active Nordic combined athlete. The most successful athlete at the Nordic World Ski Championships ends his sporting career. After the two remaining World Cups in Oslo and Lahti, it should be over at the end of March. “It’s a nice moment to resign now,” says Eric Frenzel of the FAZ
A week and a half ago he won his 18th World Championships medal in Planica – no one else has ever won that many medals. Silver with the relay. As the German starter, he started the trail 23 seconds behind the leading Norwegians and completely caught up the gap. “This medal,” says the 34-year-old, “was my last sporting goal. In Planica, things came full circle for me.” In 2007 – the year he started in the World Cup for the first time – he won his first international medal there in Slovenia: gold at the Junior World Championships. So now his last. “In the end everything came together again,” says Eric Frenzel. “Now it’s good. I don’t need any more validation.”
In Beijing like in a bad movie
After three Olympic victories, seven World Championship gold medals, five overall World Cup victories in a row and 54 triumphs in World Cup races, the Saxon’s extraordinary career came to an end. For him it was a time full of successes and beautiful experiences, but also a time of constant questioning, with pressure to perform and great expectations. He never missed a major event due to illness or injury. He always brought home at least one medal. Sport has always been something fair for him, says Frenzel: “You get back everything you invest through success.”
There have also been setbacks. Frenzel describes the time he had to spend in quarantine at the Beijing 2022 Olympic Games because of a positive corona test as an emotional low point. He felt like he was in a bad movie. After twelve days he was “released”. Just in time for the team competition in which he contributed to winning silver – his seventh Olympic medal. He quickly got rid of the time he had to spend locked up in the hotel room.
“He didn’t waste any energy dealing with things that didn’t go so well at one time,” says Frank Erlbeck. The 62-year-old is a trainer at the federal base for Nordic combined in Oberwiesenthal, not far from Frenzel’s home town of Geyer. He has known Frenzel since 2000, when he came to the elite winter sports school in Oberwiesenthal at the age of twelve. Erlbeck remembers a “slender, always polite boy” who made up for his physical disadvantages with an irrepressible will, great training diligence and the ambition to always want to be the best.
“Sometimes we had to stop him,” says Erlbeck, looking back on a situation at the end of a rainy day in late summer when he sent Frenzel off after an intensive week of training. “Eric then said: But there are still 30 kilometers of rollerskiing on the plan. So I said to him: That’s enough now, Eric. Clever training also means regeneration.”
“By my side in difficult times”
For Eric Frenzel, who now lives in the Upper Palatinate, the best form of regeneration was and is spending time with his family. His parents, who were enthusiastic about winter sports, brought him to the “NoKo”. His father accompanied him as a trainer in his first years in the club. He saw the step of going to sports boarding school as something big and important. Frenzel describes his home trainers Jens Einsiedel and Frank Erlbeck as very formative confidants who have shaped and supported him over the years: “They made me the athlete I am. Even in difficult times, they were always by my side.”
