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A fighter resigns – Tina Weirathers admirable ordeal


Don’t be put off by numerous setbacks: Tina Weirather.

Image: Getty

Comparably early, Tina Weirather ended her career at the age of 30 and retired from skiing. The extraordinary career could have ended before it even started.

Tina Weirather is 15 when the Liechtenstein woman makes her debut at the 2005 World Championships in Bormio and hints at her talent for the first time. Almost two years later, she scores for the first time in her fourth World Cup race – but she has to wait a long time for the final breakthrough. Because Weirather is caught up early by serious injuries. At the age of 17 she already tore both cruciate ligaments, and by the age of 21 she had to go through seven knee operations. But she never gets rid of the injury witch.

In training for the downhill run in Lenzerheide in March 2007, Weirather falls badly. The sobering diagnosis: Tear of both cruciate ligaments and the inner ligament on the left knee. A year later – almost three months after her comeback – Weirather tears his cruciate ligament in his right knee again during giant slalom training and has to take the next break.



But Weirather does not get on and will return to the World Cup in the 2009/10 season after a long period of suffering. In January she achieved her best career result to date with the 7th place in the Super-G from Cortina – on the following day she fell on the descent and the cruciate ligament was torn again. At the same time, the dream of participating in the Olympic Games in Vancouver is bursting.

Suffering is worth it

Weirather gets up again and starts again at the beginning of the 2011 season. And that pays off. On the downhill from Lake Louise, she sensationally ranks second behind Lindsey Vonn at number 40 – the first podium in the World Cup is a fact. «I was lucky with the conditions, but I was able to finish exactly what I had planned. I’m just happy, an incredible feeling, »she says afterwards.

Weirather’s final breakthrough came in March 2013 in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, where she celebrated her first World Cup victory in the Super-G – and became the first daughter of a former World Cup winner who could also win the World Cup.

Tina Weirather (center) after her first World Cup victory in Garmisch 2013. With her on the podium: Tina Maze (left) and Julia Mancuso.

Image: Keystone

Weirather comes from a family of skiers. Mother Hanni Wenzel has 33 triumphs in the World Cup and is still the only Olympic champion in Liechtenstein (gold in slalom and giant slalom in 1980). Father Harti Weirather crowned his career with the world championship title in the 1982 downhill in Schladming. “Hopefully more of the woman. If she only has that from me, she can only drive straight out, »the Austrian once replied to the question of who Tina inherited her talent from.

Weirather overcomes the last curse

Weirather is not spared from setbacks even after her breakthrough. In 2014 she travels to the Sochi Olympic Games as one of the most-named medal candidates and is among the top three in the first two training sessions. The shinbone head breaks in the final training session – the games have been played for the flag bearer of Liechtenstein. Just like the season. “I thought Olympia was cursed,” Weirather looks back in the “Tagesanzeiger”. It should also overcome this curse.

In Pyeongchang 2018, the childhood dream of an Olympic medal came true thanks to a third place in the Super-G, a hundredth ahead of Lara Gut-Behrami. It is the most wonderful moment in her career: “It gave me a lot emotionally – after everything that happened”.

Not a perfect ending

Now, after 222 races in the World Cup, Weirather has reached the end of her career. 41 podium finishes, nine victories and two small crystal balls in the Super-G discipline adorn her Palmarès – she was also unable to stop seven knee operations, five broken hands and four broken vertebrae. “It is not a matter of course that I can still jog,” she says herself. “Even if these years were very difficult, at least in retrospect they had something good. The same gratitude and humility that I have learned. »

She lived this sport intensively and was able to fulfill her childhood dreams. “That’s why it’s enough for now,” explains Weirather. Because of the Corona crisis, she is not allowed to take part in a farewell race. But she doesn’t want to extend her career because of this: “It was almost like a fairy tale and just because the end is not perfect it would be wrong to continue.”

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