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YANQING, China — Alexandra Burghardt adjusted her new Winter Olympics outfit in a resort just a few miles away from the bobsledding observe. It was two weeks earlier than her debut on the Beijing Video games.
“Generally I really feel like a double agent,” she stated. “Two lives to deal with.”
In August, Burghardt was operating the 100 meters within the blazing warmth of Tokyo’s Summer season Olympics. Now, six months later, she discovered herself in subzero temperatures in China, suiting up for the bobsled within the Winter Video games.
And on Saturday night time in Yanqing, she discovered herself with a silver medal round her neck, standing on a podium along with her teammate and bobsled pilot, Mariama Jamanka.
She joins an extended line of sprinters turned bobsledders, runners whose explosive velocity and energy on the observe can translate to the ice. However this summer-to-winter Olympic whiplash was excessive. The Tokyo Olympics had been postponed a 12 months due to the coronavirus pandemic and held in July and August 2021, six months earlier than the beginning of the Beijing Video games. Burghardt is likely one of the few athletes who competed in each — two Olympics in lower than a 12 months.
For Burghardt, the turnaround was much more disorienting, on condition that she hadn’t even considered competing in a Winter Video games till September.
The German bobsled federation had lengthy courted Burghardt, 27, one in every of Germany’s quickest sprinters, hoping she could possibly be the newest observe star to push a bobsledding workforce to a gold medal. “All of us knew her,” stated Rene Spies, the pinnacle coach of the German bobsled workforce.
She politely declined for years. “Oh yeah, the German bobsled federation has wished for it for a very long time,” Burghardt stated. “I’m fairly tall and quick and that’s precisely what they want for a great brakewoman, however I needed to get on with my precise sport first and attempt to attain my full potential earlier than beginning on a brand new journey.”
After affected by setbacks and accidents by means of a lot of her profession, she did attain a brand new degree up to now 12 months. She made the German Olympic workforce and clocked her quickest 100-meter time within the month earlier than the Tokyo Video games: 11.01 seconds.
In Tokyo, she ran within the girls’s 4×100-meter remaining, through which the Germans positioned fifth. She additionally superior to the semifinals of the 100 meters with a time of 11.07 seconds.
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“Tokyo was already a childhood dream come true,” Burghardt stated. “Then there was this chance with Beijing, and I needed to offer it a strive, and now we’re right here.”
Burghardt’s development from giving it a attempt to making an Olympic workforce was significantly swift. Kaysha Love, one other sprinter turned bobsledder who took the quick observe to those Video games, had no less than touched a bobsled earlier than final 12 months.
In 2018, a sliding coach reached out to Love’s observe coach on the College of Nevada-Las Vegas expressing curiosity. Her first time in a bobsled was in November 2020. The expertise was terrifying, she stated, but it surely cemented a objective: She would make the Olympic workforce. She completed her observe season and turned her full consideration to bobsledding in July 2021.
“The tip objective was all the time going to be the Olympics,” Love stated. “I knew I used to be respectable, at finest. I knew I had numerous work to do, however I wasn’t scared to place within the further effort.”
Now she’s very a lot in. She was chosen as a brakewoman for the U.S. Olympic workforce and completed in seventh place with Kaillie Humphries, the monobob gold medalist. Love already has ambitions to study to pilot a sled after the Video games.
Burghardt was extra skeptical initially, agreeing to coach for bobsled provided that she might proceed to work along with her sprinting coach and get again to the observe full time as quickly as she left China.
However she preferred bobsledding from her first run — a promising signal for Spies, the German coach, who stated many athletes get sick on their first run from the mix of velocity and strain. Burghardt’s method wasn’t nice, he stated, however she managed to enhance on her subsequent run. She was added to the World Cup lineup two days later.
“I didn’t actually have the time to return down,” Burghardt stated of the short transition. “I’m simply driving on this cloud.”
Her improvement was so spectacular that she was paired with Jamanka, the 2018 defending gold medalist.
The partnership labored out fairly effectively. They had been outrun solely by Laura Nolte and Deborah Levi, additionally of Germany, who received the gold medal in two-woman bobsled. Elena Meyers Taylor of america added a fifth Olympic medal to her assortment, ending with a bronze along with her teammate, Syliva Hoffman.
Burghardt is already debating whether or not to race in a German indoor observe meet per week after these Olympics. She can also be wanting ahead to getting again on observe along with her coach in Switzerland in March, after which coaching camp in April. Then, she stated excitedly, the season begins in Could.
“It’s a really huge 12 months for observe additionally, with the World Championships and the European Championship,” she stated.
“Then,” she stated laughing, “I’m going to wish a giant break.”