Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK

OLYMPICS

Victorious Viktoria puts Germany in top spot

Germany consolidated its place on top of the Olympic Games medal table on Thursday thanks to a gold won by Viktoria Rebensburg in the women's giant slalom, her country's first in the event for 54 years.

Published: 26 February 2010 07:33 CET
Victorious Viktoria puts Germany in top spot
Photo: DPA

The 20-year-old Olympic debutante sprang a huge surprise to upset the field and win the weather-affected event ahead of Slovenia’s Tina Maze and overnight leader Elisabeth Görgl of Austria.

“I have had a look at the medal table,” said Rebensburg, whose previous best finish on the elite World Cup circuit was a second in this season’s giant slalom in Cortina.

“I’m happy to have contributed a medal to that. It’s cool – pretty awesome,” she said.

Germany, with an overall haul of 28 from eight gold, 10 silver and seven bronze, now stands clear of both the US and Canadian teams, who have won seven golds apiece.

Rebensburg overshadowed better-known team mates Maria Riesch, who last week won super-combined gold, and Kathrin Hoelzl, the leader of World Cup giant slalom standings.

“She should experience this moment, right now in this moment,” Riesch said of Rebensburg. “Because it all goes by like a film and tonight she will shake her head and wonder what happened.”

Rebensburg, a former world junior champion, admitted that she had been under less stress than her team-mates and rivals.

“I don’t think I had as much pressure as the top three but I know I can ski fast and win a race, so I made my own pressure.

“I was able to accelerate in the last part. If you don’t take any risks, you won’t win anything.

“I was able to show I could do it with the podium in Cortina. Everything just came together here. It’s just fabulous to get a medal.

“It’s unbelievable,” said the German. “I don’t know what to say. It just sounds so strange.

“It’s going to take a few days to sink in. I just want to enjoy the ceremony and the rest of the day. We’ll celebrate tonight.”

Silver medallist Maze became the first Slovenian to win two Olympic medals after also claiming a silver in the super-G.

“Yeah, I did want gold,” acknowledged Maze, who missed out by just four-hundredths of a second.

“It was my wish today, but still it is a silver medal and I won two medals in this Olympics. It’s a big deal. It’s a big day for me.”

Görgl added bronze to her third-placed effort in the downhill, but refused to rise to the bait on why her male team-mates were failing to bother the medal engravers.

“Ask the guys,” she said. “You’re asking me questions I cannot explain!”

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.

SPORT

The French Paralympic star who survived war, grief and mutilation

The Paralympics is full of stories of disabled athletes overcoming the odds to achieve sporting greatness but few bear the trauma of Jean-Baptiste Alaize.

Published: 28 August 2020 10:06 CEST
The French Paralympic star who survived war, grief and mutilation
Jean-Baptiste Alaize training in Antibes. All photos: AFP

The 29-year-old French sprinter and long-jumper, who features in Netflix documentary Rising Phoenix released on Wednesday, was just three years old when he lost his right leg.

Not by accident or illness but by the brutal hack of a machete.

A child caught up in the civil war in Burundi in October 1994, he watched as his mother was beheaded.

“For years, every time I closed my eyes, I had flashes. I saw my mother being executed in front of me,” he tells AFP after a training session in Antibes, running his finger across his throat.

The killers left the Tutsi boy for dead. Alaize carries a large scar on his back but he was also slashed across the neck, right arm and right leg by his Hutu neighbours.

He woke up in hospital several days later, alive but missing the lower part of his right leg which had had to be amputated.

“With my mother, we ran, we ran, but we didn't manage to run far,” he says. “We were executed 40 metres from the house.”

A decade later, after coming to France in 1998 and being adopted by a French family, he joined the athletics club in Drôme.

Fitted with a prosthetic limb, he discovered that running gave him his first night without a nightmare since the attack.

“From my first steps on the track, I had the impression that I had to run as long as possible, so as not to be caught,” says Alaize who now lives in Miami.

“I remember like it was yesterday my first night after this session, it was… wow! I had cleared my mind. I was free.

“My energy, my hatred, were focussed on the track. I understood that sport could be my therapy.”

He tried horseback riding and enjoyed it, reaching level six, out of seven, until he pulled the plug.

“It was my horse that let off steam and not me,” he laughs.

The psychologist did not work out either.

“She made me make circles and squares. After a few sessions I told her that I wanted to change my method.”

However he did click with his school physical education teacher, who directed him to athletics after he had anchored his team to a spectacular “comeback” win in a 4×100 metre relay.

His classmates had no idea he was an amputee. He had hidden it to avoid teasing and more racial abuse.

“I was called 'bamboula', dirty negro, the monkey. It was hard.”

Fortunately, the Alaize family, who adopted him after he had spent five years in a Bujumbura orphanage where his father had abandoned him, gave Jean-Baptiste a base and a home that he had not had for years.

“When I arrived here I didn't know it was possible,” he said.

“I had lost that side, to be loved. I still can't understand how racism can set in, when I see my parents who are white, and I am a black child… they loved me like a child.”

His parents, Robert and Daniele, had already adopted a Hutu child from Rwanda, renamed Julien.

John-Baptist was originally called Mugisha. It means “the lucky child” which is not quite how things worked out. His new family name, though, suits him better. Alaize is a pun in French for 'a l'aise' – at ease.

The French disabled sports federation spotted the prodigy, and he began collecting his first trophies, including four junior world titles at long jump, three of them with world records.

“It was starting to change my life and I was happy to represent France,” he says.

He went to the Paralympic Games in London (2012) and Rio (2016), where he finished fifth in the long jump, just five centimetres short of the bronze medal.

Now armed with his state-of-the-art prosthesis, which he nicknamed Bugatti, he was dreaming of taking a step up at Tokyo 2020 and going home to France with a medal but the postponement of the Games has decimated his sponsorships.

“I'm still looking to compete at Tokyo 2021 or 2022 and Paris 2024,” he says.

“If I don't succeed, I will have to turn the page which would be sad.”

He hopes that Rising Phoenix will raise his profile and maybe attract some sponsors.

The documentary's producer Ian Bonhote is in no doubt that Alaize's star is rising.

“He bursts through the screen. His story will resonate,” he says.

“The nine athletes in our documentary all have different backgrounds, but none survived what Jean-Baptiste suffered. His disability was imposed on him in such a savage and violent way.”

Rising Pheonix is available now to view on Netflix.

SHOW COMMENTS