Link to original article: Tageblatt 11 Nov 2021

Translation

A month ago, the 48-year-old left for one last week of intensive training in Altenberg, Germany, where he is expected to contest his last race of the qualifying phase, which will last until mid-February. Then we went to Whistler Mountain, Canada for training and competition preparation. The first races of the “North American Cup” were scheduled there.

The competition in the continental racing series was unusually strong: “Since it is an Olympic year, many nations also use their teams from the Intercontinental Cup in the smaller American series in order to collect as many points as possible and maybe a second or third To secure a starting place ”, explains Jeff Bauer. After the first race on Sunday he was not satisfied: “I’m not so happy because I had a small crash in the sixth corner. But I’m glad that I got back on the sled properly and finished the run normally. ”23rd, 2.59 seconds behind the Austrian winner Alexander Schlintner (53.71 seconds), he left five competitors behind.

In the second race on Monday the curve fit better, but with 1.97 seconds behind the winner of the previous day, he lost one place. “The run was better, but a few too many small mistakes prevented a faster run. The ice is faster than last week in training and I’m still adapting, ”he analyzed afterwards.

Not an easy task on the world’s fastest route at 145 km / h. But all good things come in threes, and on Monday, finishing 19th, he finally qualified for the second round. He was unleashed there in twelfth place, 1.69 and 1.02 seconds behind Canada’s Evan Neufeldt overall -17. and collected first points. The decisive factor was the difficult turn 6, with the fourth in Altenberg the greatest challenge in sledging. Jeff Bauer said: “Last week I crashed hard on my back in practice at the exit of that corner. I trained them well, but I also fell in the first race, which hurt a lot again. In the second race I was still nervous about the corner. In order not to fall, I drove them too hard and lost time. Today I felt ok in the curve. and had a great run. So I ran it on the second run and had a great run. That was a great feeling that I want to take with me into the races next week. ”Then again in Whistler the Intercontinental Cup will be about significantly more points for the dream of the Olympics.