MSome memories cannot be made to sparkle even years later with a gentle look. When a Chinese reporter asked Giovanni Malago, the head of the organizing committee of these Winter Olympics, which moment from the Winter Games four years earlier in Beijing was particularly valuable to him, almost two weeks ago, Malago said bluntly: “I remember my room.” He hadn’t been allowed to leave for weeks because he was stuck in Covid quarantine.
Four years later, these times seem like memories from a bad fever dream. However, the speed skater Finn Sonnekalb gave the official Giovanni Malago more competition in Milan than Sonnekalb would have liked. At the beginning he didn’t want to leave his place because he didn’t want to get sick, he recapitulated his first Olympic experience on Thursday, and when he actually got sick, “I actually just wanted to be inside and recover.”
:Young, impatient, explosive
Finn Sonnekalb, 18, is already considered a great German hope in speed skating at his Olympic premiere. About a talent who hit the scene.
Nevertheless, the 18-year-old managed to adequately classify the two lukewarm performances that followed him: twelfth place over 1000 meters, 13th place on Thursday over his stronger route, the 1500 meters: “If someone had told me at the beginning of the season that I would be very dissatisfied with two top 15 placements here, I probably wouldn’t have believed it,” said Sonnekalb.
The Olympic champion distances the big favorite by almost a second
Around two years ago, his father had considered his son’s participation in the Olympics to be so unlikely that he vowed that if he did, he would travel from his home in Thuringia to Italy by bicycle (which he did). It is difficult to say how large a role this bet played in the fact that Sonnekalb set off so stormily this winter; In any case, he moved into the world elite with three podiums and several top ten places. Over the 1500 meters in the thin air of Salt Lake City he even improved the German record and the junior world record. This promptly raised hopes for the Games, especially since the German speed skaters have been waiting for an Olympic medal since 2010 and the men have been waiting for an Olympic medal for 24 years.
Shortly after the opening ceremony, Sonnekalb was in bed with fever, chills and body aches. It was hardly surprising that he barely got up to speed over the 1000 meters; The fact that he was already “simply blue” after 300 meters over his favorite longer route on Thursday and only reached the finish after 1:45.64 minutes was a bigger mystery to him. He recently felt better in training, even if he certainly didn’t reach “100 percent” creativity. Maybe the long season is already taking its toll. He also learned, said Sonnekalb, that he shouldn’t approach the whole thing in such a cerebral way in the next games. But at least he now has “anger in his stomach, and I think that’s what I need for the next four years.”
In the end, what his teammate Patrick Beckert (who came seventh with the team in what was probably his last Olympic race) had said about Sonnekalb before the games came true: “He is a beacon of hope, he is the future. But he shouldn’t bear the burden of having to win medals here.” When the ARD reporter asked Sonnekalb for a look into this future after the 1,500 meters on Thursday, he at least managed to elicit one of his sayings: “It definitely hurts when you have to wait another four years until you become an Olympic champion,” said Sonnekalb. He could barely suppress his laughter.
The 1500 meters also ended a little differently than planned for another sky-striker, even if he is in a different price range than Sonnekalb. After opening the games as expected with gold in the 1000 and 500 meters, the American Jordan Stolz surprisingly only finished in silver on Thursday, around seven tenths of a second behind the Chinese Zhongyan Ning. He improved the Olympic record by almost a second in 1:41.980 minutes, on the same route where Stolz had won every World Cup so far this winter. “He probably did the race of his life and I just didn’t have the legs today,” said Stolz. He didn’t really know why that could be – and he sounded as casual as if he were talking about an umbrella that he had forgotten in the Milan metro.
Someone who can not only gently look back, but also look forward, speaks so calmly. Stolz has another chance in Milan, in the mass start. And in four years, at the next Winter Games, he will only be 25 years old – and only three years older than the aspiring Olympic champion Finn Sonnekalb.
