It starts with a dress rehearsal for the Winter Games in Beijing and an Austrian focus on the relay.
The top athletes in the short track open their Olympic season from Thursday to Sunday with the dress rehearsal for the Beijing Games. Qualification for the major event is the focus of the four season World Cups scheduled until the end of November. Next week it goes to Nagoya in Japan, in the second half of November competitions in Debrecen and Dordrecht will follow. The European Championships will take place in Dresden at the beginning of January, the World Championships in Montreal in mid-March.
qualification
The way to one of the 52 places in the Olympic field is through the relay. The best eight teams are allowed to send four to five participants, which means that around three quarters of the Olympic field are filled with these athletes. This is hardly achievable for Austria. The remaining places are allocated to individual athletes and the mixed relay. The focus of the Austrians Nicolas and Dominic Andermann, Matthias Wolfgang and Heinrich Liu is on the relay.
Because the four World Cups also qualify for the World Cup and European Championship. “If we make it into the top 12 in Europe, we will be represented again with a relay at the European Championships,” said ÖESV General Secretary Hermann Filipic. For the Olympics, however, it also seems possible that Nicolas Andermann will make it to the season's highlight with a single start permit. The Viennese showed good EM results last season. Most recently, he had been preparing for weeks with the Italian national team.
The journey to China turned out to be very difficult for the red-white-red team. “The effort was enormous, since the flight could only take place via an airline. China also requires special PCR tests from specially listed laboratories. The corona requirements are very strict, all teams are in a hotel, but the floors are hermetically sealed.” Filipic said. The program for the four World Cups consists of two qualification days as well as two days for finals and placement runs.
