Dominating the Snow and Ice
February 9, 2002
It is the biggest Winter Olympic team in the history of the country.
Exactly 160 German athletes, 70 more than the team for the 1998 Olympics in Nagano, have descended on the Building 821 on the Utah University campus in Salt Lake City.
Their goal: to better Germany’s record-breaking medal count of the Nagano Olympics, where the winter athletes won 12 gold, nine silver and eight bronze medals and led the world in medal count.
Germany enters a strong team again these Olympics. The country has athletes in 14 of the 15 Olympic events, including the newly added women’s bobsled and women’s hockey events. Olympic veteran Georg Hackl will break into the record books if he wins gold again this year. It would mark the fourth Olympic victory in a row for the 35-year-old from Berchtesgadener, Germany, competing in his fifth Olympics. .
The team also has strong gold medal hopes in women’s speed skating, bobsledding, the biathlon and ski jumping, where the dominance of Sven Hannawald this Winter shook up Olympic ski jumping predictions.
"After the results of this past winter, we can count on being on top again," said Walther Tröger, president of the German Olympic Committee. "But we know it will be hard. I think the United States will enjoy the home advantage."
It’s something the Germans are enjoying right now. Most all of the team and its 165-member staff arrived in Salt Lake City on Wednesday and have fallen in love with their accommodations.
"Everything is here," gushed women’s ice hockey team member Maren Valenti to the Rheinische Post newspaper. "You get everything, you don’t miss a thing. It’s awesome, perfect just like in the ‘Truman Show’."