Carina Edlinger yesterday at the XIII. Winter Paralympics in China brought Austria’s second gold medal home. The visually impaired Salzburg native won with guide Lorenz Lampl in the skating sprint of the cross-country skiers. The 23-year-old had placed her greatest hopes in this competition before the major event for disabled athletes. “I’m not often speechless, but today I am,” she was happy about the gold coup without big words.
Edlinger has had a difficult time, the Paralympics have not gone according to plan so far. On Monday, Austria’s disabled athlete of the year gave up more than 15 kilometers due to physical problems and also skipped the biathlon on Tuesday. “The last few days have been extremely hard, but actually the last few years have been. I often didn’t know whether and how to continue. Now it was worth it, it paid off.”
Qualification without a guide
The sprint competition got off to an excellent start: Edlinger set the fastest lap in qualifying at the Zhangjiakou National Biathlon Center in 3:23.38 minutes. She decided to start in the qualification without guide Lorenz Lampl. “We’ve only known each other for almost two weeks, but coordination is extremely important in the sprint. So we said I’d do it alone.”
Edlinger prevailed in the final – together with Lampl in the cross-country ski run – clearly ahead of a Ukrainian and two German athletes, even before that she had emerged as the winner in the semi-finals. The four-time overall World Cup winner shed tears of joy at the finish: “It wasn’t easy today either, my legs were heavy. It was a team effort, everyone helped: coaches, physio, the ÖPC team. I always knew that this race would be my best chance of a medal. Now I can say that it has paid off.”
Source: Nachrichten
