Olympic Champion Carina Vogt traveled back home to Germany yesterday. A large crowd welcomed her back home today and celebrated a big party on the market square of her hometown.
In the morning a reception was held in the sports hall of Carina Vogt’s hometown Waldstetten. Although about thousand people had gathered there to welcome her home, the atmosphere felt quite private, as many of her friends showed up to congratulate her. The local marching band played and the community offered free beer and snacks to all.
Major Michael Rembold expressed in his speech, that the whole region is proud of “Golden Carina”. He praised the work of the Degenfeld Ski Club, where Vogt learned to jump. He also payed his respects to Vogt’s Mother Iris. Without her, this win would not have been possible, as she always supported her daughter and motivated her to go on, when she was going through hard times. Out of the hands of Major Rembold Vogt also received the “Golden Nut”, the community’s award of merit.
Of course she had to tell the people, how she experienced this win herself: “I kept the focus on myself before the second jump. I did not know, how far the others jumped. This was a big advantage, but made it very hard to estimate, if the jump was far enough. I was in fact not able to judge my own jump. It was not just a second, it took quite a long time until something was displayed on the screen at all. Honestly, the jump was not the farthest one, so I was just looking towards the third place. I even thought about place four. But when the 1 appeared on the display – just boom!”
After the reception in Waldstetten Vogt moved in a police-escorted convoy to Schwäbisch Gmünd, the district town five kilometers away, where Vogt was born and attended school. There a large crowd of maybe 4000 to 5000 people had gathered on the market square to celebrate the first Olympic Champion from their district. Vogt ascended the balcony of the town hall, where she received the congratulations of Major Richard Arnold and Andreas Stoch, sports minister of the state of Baden-Württemberg.
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fot. Stefan Diaz
The sight of the large crowd, that in fact filled the whole place, was simply impressive, also for Vogt: “I thought that I started to realize, what I have achieved. But that a crowd like this came here just to celebrate me is simply incredible”, she said.
Schwäbisch Gmünd is known for it’s tradition in goldsmithery and so Vogt received a gold chain with five rings as pendants, that should remind her of the Olympics. Before she left the balcony, the people on the place released some hundred golden balloons labeled with congratulations.
Finally Vogt signed the visitor’s book of the town and then was occupied by a bunch of journalists, TV teams and photographers. “The preparations for the Olympics were very hard of course, but the two competition jumps were not as demanding as all the attention I receive today,” Vogt said with a twinkle in the eye.
A picture gallery of this event is available here:
http://photos.ladies-skijumping.com/index.php?id=106