To be a role model!
The badge is often pinned to top athletes.
Already they are lost.
Who is without a shadow?
Felix Loch will certainly not claim that about himself.
Although he was honored again a few days ago with a role model award.
Three Olympic victories and 13 World Championship victories in luge are undoubtedly worthy of an award.
Above all, they say something about the consistency of this athlete at the highest level.
A royal virtue.
Not even being at the forefront, but over a long period of time.
Eight months?
Seem like a second or like a never-ending martyrdom - from the point of view of Ukrainians.
Felix Loch empathized with their situation.
Went there several times in the spring to pick up refugees, collected donations over the summer with the association Athletes for Ukraine eV, founded by the former biathlete Jens Steinigen, and organized sports for the children of refugees in the autumn.
He invited the Ukrainian skeleton rider Vladyslav Heraskevych to Christmas Eve.
Loch offers lodging from day one of the war, in its heart.
Merry Christmas.
At this point we should be silent to hear what Heraskevych has to say as world sport officials rave about reunifying sport in the name of peace.
They want Russian athletes to perform again.
For example in duels – is that the right choice of words?
– against Ukrainian.
So that an ideal Olympic world can be simulated at the Summer Games in Paris in 2024.
Because it is unbearable if Russians are supposedly not allowed to compete at international level just because of their passport.
People understand that.
Just as most of them can quickly follow Heraskevych: Isn’t it – analogously – the (survival) of Ukrainian athletes not a little more difficult when they are standing in front of the rubble of their bombed apartments, their sports facilities or are crouching in icy trenches?
Especially since some will no longer take part in sports festivals because a Russian projectile has thrown them into the grave.
For at least 180 there is no more hope.
Instead of clamoring for unity in sport, it's time for a long, quiet night.