(sda) “After the Olympic Games and World Championships, Davos is the coolest thing you can achieve,” said the 26-year-old from Lucerne, who only had to bow to the Swedish serial winner Maja Dahlqvist. With the podium in Davos and the silver in the team sprint last winter at the World Championships in Oberstdorf, Nadine Fähndrich has already struck two of the most prestigious events for her. And the games in Beijing in 2022 will be the third trick if you succeed in a world-class field like Davos. “My expectations of the Olympics have been very high for a long time,” emphasized the woman from Eigenhal. But the result in Davos will give her extra guts, since the sprint in skating technique is also run in China.
Fähndrich ran on the podium in an individual discipline for the fifth time in the World Cup, for the first time in Switzerland and for the fourth time in a sprint. In terms of the number of podium places, the Lucerne woman pushed past Evi Kratzer and caught up with Laurien van der Graaff. Nadine Fähndrich has heard a lot from the now 60-year-old Kratzer, who was third at the World Cup in Oberstdorf in 1987, but the two have never met. The native of Graubünden achieved her podium place in Davos in 1984 over 10 km classically. At that time she was the only runner in the top 12 who did not come from Norway or the Soviet Union.
Nadine Fähndrich had already given podium places by falling. In Davos, a self-inflicted fall of the leader Rosie Brennan helped her on the final ascent. The Swiss woman was therefore the first to tackle the descent and also entered the home straight as the leader. The Swiss had reached the final as a lucky loser over time.
Last year Fähndrich was bitterly disappointed with 4th place, especially since the Norwegians, Swedes and Finns were missing. This time she celebrated the podium at the finish line. Laurien van der Graaff from Davos failed in her departure in her home race in the quarter-finals and found herself at the other end of the emotional spectrum. With a tactical mistake, she awarded the semifinal ticket. She switched to the outside lane behind the leading Swede on the descent to the finish line, but did not get past and was passed through. “I actually never make tactical mistakes. In the last race in Davos, of all places, I make one,” said she, who is stepping down at the end of the season.
Three Olympic norms
Five Swiss men made it into the knockout rounds, but not Dario Cologna, who finished second in the sprint in Davos in February 2013. The four-time Olympic champion took 66th place in the prologue, and was a good five seconds short of the required 30th place. However, Cologna’s focus is on the 15 km with the individual start on Sunday, he primarily contested the sprint to gain competitive practice.
The best Swiss was Roman Schaad in ninth place. Like Valerio Grond, last year’s finalist, the Schwyzer failed in the semifinals. But the two of them met the Olympic standard just like Jovian Hediger. This trio is in pole position to represent Switzerland in the sprint in Beijing. Five more runners should be nominated for the men’s relay and run various distance races.
In the men’s category, too, Norwegian world champion Johannes Hösflot Klaebo won a favorite.
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