Concerns about the Winter Games are growing
Snowboard ace scared of wrong tests
1/21/2022 7:52 am
The Beijing Winter Olympics begin in February. In the third year of the pandemic, not only sporting ability and form could decide on the award of the medals, the infection process could also have an influence on it. Gold candidate Ramona Hofmeister warns.
Gold candidate Ramona Hofmeister believes there is a risk of false positive corona tests at the Winter Olympics in Beijing. “We can simply be taken out of the competition,” said the snowboarder, who won bronze in the parallel giant slalom in Pyeongchang in 2018: “If we’re pulled out by a supposedly positive test, we’re in a fix and can’t do anything anymore.”
Nevertheless, she does not want to deal too much with the topic in the run-up to the games (February 4th to 20th). “You have that in the back of your mind, but you almost have to ignore it if you decide to fly there,” said Hofmeister: “I just hope that the games will be fair and good.” Everything but the sporty is not in their hands.
Hofmeister had recently expressed concern about the increasing number of corona and reported her fear: “Of course I’m really looking forward to the competition, but I have a lot of negative feelings around because of the corona,” she said when Bavarians said goodbye to the athletes of the Bavarian police Interior and Sports Minister Joachim Herrmann said: “The anticipation for the games is less than four years ago.”
In the past few weeks, DSV Alpine boss Wolfgang Maier, among others, has expressed concerns in various interviews that the active people in Beijing are exposed to “arbitrariness” in the evaluation of the corona tests. Competitive sports director Dirk Schimmelpfennig from the German Olympic Sports Confederation (DOSB) currently considers such concerns to be unfounded, as he recently said in the ZDF sports studio.
The 25-year-old Hofmeister is considered a great German snowboard hopeful at the Winter Games. Most recently she won the overall World Cup twice, in 2018 in South Korea she finished third in the parallel giant slalom behind the Czech Ester Ledecka and her teammate Selina Jörg, who has since retired. The medals will be distributed in Beijing on February 8th.