Olympia 2018: Hirscher in Pyeongchang:”Huge improvement on last games”

Austria’s alpine skiers trained for the first time on snow in South Korea on Tuesday, while units in giant slalom and Super-G were on the agenda to get used to the Olympic Games. Marcel Hirscher also put on his skis for the first time in South Korea one day after his arrival.

“The trip was very pleasant,”said the Salzburg resident after his arrival at the Olympic Games on Monday. At the airport in Seoul the 6 times overall World Cup winner and friend Laura was welcomed by Chief of Mission Christoph Sieber and taken to the hotel in the Jeongseong Alpine Center. This convinces with short distances, a great hotel and good training possibilities.

“I’m pleasantly surprised to see how tipp-topp is doing here,”Hirscher said,”that’s a huge improvement on the last Olympic Games:” It’s just one hundred metres from the hotel to the lift for the athletes.

While the speed pilots Matthias Mayer, Hannes Reichelt, Max Franz and Vincent Kriechmayr as well as Marco Schwarz had already acclimatized in Seoul from Saturday to Monday and had travelled to the mountains afterwards, Hirscher was on the runway right after his arrival in the morning with fantastic weather and biting cold in Asia “. But it will be very interesting to see how the snow conditions develop over the next few days,”Hirscher explained.

While the rest of the team practiced giant slalom, Hirscher regained the long slats after a long time “I started with a few laps of Super-G, because I was the last time at the World Cup finals in the speed range” At Olympia there are (almost) no extra tours, so you have to follow the possibilities and divisions.

The test team has extensively analyzed the conditions in the last few days, and the 28-year-old’s service crew is now taking over for fine-tuning. First of all, we worked on the set-up for the downhill run in combination.

One of the 54 athletes in the ÖOC’s 105-strong line-up, who have not yet competed in winter games or have never been to Winter Games before, is Kriechmayr,”Of course it’s a dream. But when you’re there, the thought counts for me that being there is everything, not more. Then, of course, I would also like to fight for medals,”the Upper Austrian said to the APA.

He also hopes that he will get to see something else besides the ski slopes, but he can’t estimate it yet because of the program and the distances “But here I am skiing, everything else is irrelevant” For an athlete there would be nothing bigger than an Olympic title “. It is everyone’s goal to achieve that one day