Led by Anna Schaffelhuber, 19 athletes for the DBS are competing at the Paralympics in Pyeongchang. This was decided by the National Paralympic Committee’s nomination committee on Tuesday. In addition to the ten women and nine men, there are four accompanying runners in the sports Para Ski alpine and Para Ski Nordic.
“We’ll send a powerful team to South Korea. It is a good mix of experienced athletes who have already proven their performance capabilities, as well as new faces and young talents,”said DBS Vice President Karl Quade. Nine athletes will celebrate their premiere at the Paralympics.
He hoped, added the chief de mission,”very much to clean games, incidents like four years ago in Sochi may not repeat”.
Only on Monday, the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) decided to maintain the suspension of the Russian Paralympic Committee (RPC). However, selected Russian disabled athletes are allowed to start under a neutral flag.
In 2014 in Sochi, Russia had won the medals with 80 times gold, silver or bronze, clearly ahead of Germany (15). Four years ago, Schaffelhuber from TSV Bayerbach was the most successful German athlete with five gold medals. The DBS had 13 athletes in Russia.
Quade did not want to pronounce a medal for Pyeongchang. In addition to Schaffelhuber, he also counted the alpine runners Anna-Lena Forster (Radolfzell) and Andrea Rothfuß (Mittelal) as well as in the Nordic region of Andrea Eskau (Magdeburg), Martin Fleig (Freiburg) and Anja Wicker (Stuttgart) among the medal candidates.
Around 670 athletes from about 45 nations will compete in South Korea. In six sports (Alpine skiing, biathlon, cross-country skiing, wheelchair curling, sledge ice-hockey and snowboarding) there are 80 medal decisions.
The German team is not represented in sledge hockey and snowboarding. On the 4th. The German team at Frankfurt Airport will be bid farewell to South Korea by German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier – the German Paralympic Team for Pyeongchang 2018:
Alpine skiing paragliding: Anna-Lena Forster (Radolfzell), Georg Kreiter (Murnau), Thomas Nolte (Braunschweig), Noemi Ristau (Marburg), Andrea Rothfuss (Mittelal), Anna Schaffelhuber (Bayerbach); accompanying runner: Lucien Gerkau (Ristau)
Para Ski nordic: Alexander Ehler (Kirchzarten), Andrea Eskau (Magdeburg), Martin Fleig (Freiburg), Vivian Hösch (Freiburg), Clara Klug (Munich), Steffen Lehmker (Clausthal-Zellerfeld), Nico Messinger (Freiburg), Anja Wicker (Stuttgart); accompanying runner: Martin Härtl (Klug), Lutz Klausmann (Messinger), Florian
Wheelchair curling: Wolf Meißner (feet), Heike Melchior (Frankfurt), Harald Pavel (Schwenningen), Christiane Putzich (feet), Martin Schlitt (Frankfurt)