Emma Aicher at the Ski Championship: World Champion in Understatement and Down -to -Down

She weared her sports air and had her cap. This cap, which has changed in the head in the head. Anyone who wears them belongs to the family of the sponsor, where a lot glitters, shines and flashes – if not, then it is being chicked. But Emma Aicher hardly gave the impression that she had smoothed her hair before the race. The 21-year-old looked as if she had just grown down a 2940 meter long and almost 800 meter-deep ski descent. And said afterwards: “Has already fits, that wasn’t super fast now.”

Emma Aicher did not become a ski world champion on Saturday. To do this, you can confidently call world champion in understatement and down -to -earthness. Nobody had to comfort her after she had been hunted down with the start number 30, the fourth highest of the day, the twelve kogel slope, as if a horde of Pinzgau Fleckviehochsen had been after her. After half the course, Aicher was just in the lead. In the lower part of the race, where the slopes had worsened slightly but noticeably after 29 trips and plump sun, she lost time and finished the finish line with 48 hundredths of a second.

And even among the dozens of Austrian reporters in the Hinterglem stadium, the not so vague thesis made the round: Aicher would have won a medal with a slightly better start number, possibly even gold. This fact has to make you a flexible devil, or, Emma Aicher?

Aicher supported itself with that of a hand on the ski rock, in the other she captured her drinking bottle. Number 30? “This is normal, I always get the start numbers in the back,” she said. Lospech? “No idea, it actually doesn’t matter to me which start number I drive.” According to Aicher: “The three who are above did it really well and deserve it.”

The three up there had a few on the note. In fact, the gold medal won the woman with the start number 1. Breezy Johnson from the USA delivered a journey that was just as sparkling clean as the Saalbacher Rennpiste in the initial stage. Second place, 15 hundredths of a second behind Johnson and in front of the Czech Ester Ledecká (+21), Mirjam Puchner took the third Austrian medal to the Saalbach home audience. The Alpenland now leads alloanic the World Cup medal mirror, nothing is currently more important in Austria.

Emma Aicher, however, is more of a person who has recognized the value not to take himself too important. While quite a few of her competitors put her skis with a fashionable pusher hood, styled, styled and made up past the fans, Aicher blew through the face, two earring, one left, one right, she doesn’t need more. “I am satisfied that I could ski well and that I enjoyed it.”

The waves of the Zwölferkogel runway push them away with their carving giers like cotton wool

This sentence describes the young woman quite precisely. Skiing quickly and with joy is her profession, and that’s what she feels like before, she does not necessarily have to be the focus or even the focus of the outer spectacle outdoors. Aicher smiles when you feel like it, and if not, then the fellow human beings should also experience that. This may not be a headlight suitable for headlights around the clock, but honestly and real.

With all of this one almost forget how strikingly strong Aicher was skiing on Saturday (she had already become third in training before). The waves of the twelve fabric slopes, which made most World Cup athletes, pushed them away with their carving skis like cotton wool, after the jumps she landed in the corner that she continued to go to a perfect driving line. 27 hundredths of a second were missing for the bronze medal, and there was a question mark among the German fans in Saalbach. How could it be that Emma Aicher had to do with such a high start number?

On the one hand, the answer is due to your previous departure services this winter. There were zero points before the races before the World Cup, Aicher had either left or not driven below the top 30. She qualified for the World Cup departure because of her performance in the other three disciplines, Aicher is an all-hand driver. The second part of the explanation is in the start number allocation mode of the Ski World Association FIS. Depending on the world rankings, the best 20 will be divided into the first two starting groups before the World Cup departure. And so it is logical that Aicher from the start group three had to start. In the best case number 21, she could have received the draw on the eve of the race. The result is known.

Aicher had Lospech and she could have named this now. After the race, she could have used the stage for an objection that this mode was allowed to start others in front of her in all rankings. She could have made the suggestion that number 21 will no longer be drawn from number 21, but will be started in the world rankings according to the merits. But that’s not Aicher’s style. And while she explained her view of things in the dating and in short sentences, it looked like she saw it all the same and no different.

Aicher succeeds in saying a lot in a few words

For more than two winters, some observers of the scene have been surprised at Aicher’s taciturn. While one would wish other people of public life a little more of it. Aicher learned to ski in Sweden, where she grew up with her younger brother Max in Sundsvall, Sweden, where her mother’s language was mainly spoken in the family, i.e. Swedish. It was not until 2021 to Germany in the home country of her father. “Back then she could hardly German,” explains a confidant. In the meantime, Aicher lives in Berchtesgaden in Upper Bavaria and proved to be voice -oriented on this day in Saalbach: she succeeds in saying a lot in a few words.

Kira Weidle-Winkelmann, who ended up in front of Lindsey Vonn (15th) from the USA and Sofia Goggia (16th) from Italy, became twelfth with the start number-and preferred to talk about her teammate than her own race. “With a lower start number, Emma might have brought a medal,” said Weidle-Winkelmann. Aicher himself only said: “We will never find out.” Where she is right, she is right.