The beginning of the year is considered a good time to start over.

Tidy everything up in the parlor and upstairs, and off you go to the next adventure.

And every time we fail a little less, or at least more cheerfully.

But how is it with top athletes?

No time for contemplation on public holidays? In the past people would have spoken of an unsteady way of life, it is claimed today. And easily forgets that ski jumpers almost flew into the New Year 70 years ago, carried by the upswing for sport in society. Wherever you look, there is games, fights or at least hard work when everyone else (could) come to their senses.

Tennis stars like Zverev quickly swapped travel bags for Christmas, and they're already opening up again. If professional cyclists still carry a touch of bacon with them, the Tour de France will no longer work. Which brings us to the middle of this year, which is not even three days old, for a moment: Top athletes have to be ahead of their time. There's something tragic about that. For years he trained as hard as a bone for his first participation in the Olympic Winter Games.

When it is then done, the young luge rider on New Year's Day after the World Cup competition in Winterberg can't really look forward to what has fascinated him since childhood.

Because with a view to Corona and the regime, an "oppression" accompanies him to Beijing.

The entertainment experts, masters of creating exciting, thrilling, thrilling moments in sport, can do so much, but only one thing too often cannot: enjoy the moment.

World Cup final on the fourth Advent

We know why. In addition to the unpredictable pandemic and the sins of sports politics, also the need to constantly accelerate. The little ones (sports) like the big ones, trapped in a self-preservation system in which allegedly loses who brakes first. A cursory glance at the 2022 sports calendar confirms this - 140 events of great international importance alone: ​​Four Hills Tournament, European Handball Championship, Australian Open in January.

Followed by the Winter Olympics, Super Bowl, the Champions League of football in February. When the Paralympics are over and Formula 1 is circling again, it is hardly spring, although the first spring classic in cycling is already on the program. The year goes breathlessly through the European Athletics Championships as a reminiscence of the 1972 Summer Games in Munich in August to the winter football tournament with the World Cup final in Qatar - on the fourth Advent.

In this hamster wheel, the unbroken enthusiasm of young people for life in top-class sport appears like a miracle and their increasingly constructive-critical attitude towards grievances like a revelation.

Perhaps this is also due to little stories under the surface: A young Russian lent an American his racing sled for a World Cup race in Sochi because the Chinese customs officials confiscated the freight and sports equipment after the competition on the Olympic track.

If that's not a start.