Falls, injuries, despair: Gut-Behrami sounds the alarm – what is going on in the ski circus?

“The coordination must always be perfect and does not tolerate errors. As an athlete you always think that it might be better to test your skis instead of regenerating. Let’s take the crazy race in Jasna a few days ago. In the past you would have thought: Forgotten, because we won’t have this special snow next week. Now you’re thinking about whether you should build a new ski.”

“At the start there is a new radio message every ten minutes. Every meter is carefully analyzed. At a certain point you no longer have a plan for what you are going to do. And if you don’t start calmly, you will end up in the net at some point. In addition, you have to analyze the trip on video for three hours in the evening, because half is not enough. You’re just looking for trouble.”

“If you have two days off, you go and train somewhere or test your skis and neglect your recovery. There is always the uncertainty that you are not doing enough. At some point you’re going to be flat at first.”

«Ten years ago we only talked about skiing. Now you have to constantly do an Insta post, be available for three sponsors and go skiing with some of them in between.

“We have 45 races on the calendar. There are of course more than before. Crucial, however, is the time we have to recover; it is getting shorter and shorter. We have to give interviews for hours, go to the starting number lottery in the evening and do other things.”

And the conclusion? You can see that Gut-Behrami is suffering from the added stress compared to when she started. At the same time, she examines herself and her colleagues: “We also demand that everything is done extremely professionally.” Her conclusion: “It’s hard to stop this bike.”