Behind the carabinieri

Russian luger brought silver

Albert Demchenko did what was expected of him - he won silver at the Olympic Games. They hoped for this medal, but, fearing to scare away their luck, they did not talk about it in advance. Still, Demchenko had very serious rivals. Germans Georg Hackl, David Möller, American Tony Benschoof, Italian Armin Zoggeler. As a result, the gold medal went to the Italian carabinieri champion of Salt Lake City Zoegeller, and the silver medal to Albert Demchenko, who had the right to count on the highest step of the podium.

The hope for “gold,” although weak, still lived until the last moment. After two races on Saturday, Demchenko was 0.16 seconds behind the Italian. Not so much to forget about first place, but not enough to seriously count on it. And Demchenko did everything he could. In the third race, he could well have made up half of the gap, but, having passed the last segment without sin, he only came slightly closer to Zoggeler. So, before the final attempt, there was only hope for an extremely favorable combination of circumstances. Naturally, it is favorable for us. By the way, this is a very real hope. It was clear how nervous Zoggeler was, preparing for the final race for a long time. Surely the Italian remembered his fall in training. The Russian also remembered, although he didn’t show it. “The leader’s failure in training didn’t throw me off in any way - everyone has falls, you shouldn’t pay attention to it. In my opinion, nothing can unsettle him,” Demchenko said on Saturday. And apparently, he knew what he was saying. Zogeller calmly accepted the fact that Demchenko had set a track record, and calmly drove his last and decisive attempt. Without brilliance, but most importantly, without mistakes, he won his second Olympic gold in his career, leaving Demchenko only with silver.

However, “only” is inappropriate here. If back in the spring of last year someone had risked predicting Demchenko that he would win “silver” and would only fall short of “gold” by a fraction of a second, the response would have been a slightly sad smile and eyes averted to the side. There were few who believed that the 2005 World Cup winner, after a generally simple operation, would be able to return to his level. Almost a year ago, due to a doctor’s mistake, Demchenko could have easily said goodbye to his career. And that's just the best case scenario. When removing appendicitis, doctors forgot the tip of the breathing tube in the trachea. Another emergency operation was needed, followed by several months of recovery. And this is in an Olympic year, when every day counts. Now Albert doesn’t like to remember this story, and he only regrets one thing: he used to design his own sleds, but now doctors forbid him to appear in the workshop - due to the fumes of the materials used in the process of preparing the sleds, the seams on his neck are coming apart. But the sleds prepared by trainer-mechanic Alexander Vasin turned out to be “silver”.

And the third in this dispute was the Latvian luger Martina Rubenis, leaving behind Tony Benchouf. And the legendary man Georg Hackl remained only in seventh place. There are countless athletes who took part in six Olympics in a row. And Hakl is the only one of them who could win medals at all his Olympic starts. But Huckle's time has passed. Now is Demchenko's time.

Andrey VDOVIN