vAnessa Mark's birthday wish didn't stay a secret for long. While the bobsleigh athlete, who had just turned 28, kept her thoughts to herself as she blew out the candles on her surprise cake on Saturday morning, a few hours later she was able to speak openly about it. The dream of the Eintracht Frankfurt winter sports athlete came true: together with driver Lisa Buckwitz, the pusher raced in the World Cup Winterberg on a two-man sleigh to gold.
As happened in mid-December at the Innsbruck World Championship, the Olympic champions Laura Nolte and Deborah Levi, who also live in the big city on the Main, and the reigning champion Kim Kalicki from Wiesbaden with her co-driver Leonie Fiebig, were left behind in the second and third place, although both duos managed to improve their record.
Bride with strong nerves
“I still can't believe it,” Mark said Sunday. His voice sounded groggy; The energetic athlete had repeatedly shouted her joy after her triumph in the exciting three-way battle. After the second of four races, she and Buckwitz from Potsdam, who a week earlier had won bronze in monobob, took first position and defended it to the end with a lead of five hundredths of a second.
His friend's strong nerves about the steering cables were the deciding factor, Mark explained. The distances are “just the blink of an eye.”
The Dortmund native hasn't had an easy road. For the 2015/16 season, the former heptathlete moved from the track to the ice rink, but she failed to adapt there. His current coach, Tim Restle, who had founded a bobsleigh group as an athletics coach at TuS Eintracht Wiesbaden, believed in his potential and that's why Mark moved to the capital of the state of Hesse.
On the sled of the now retired Olympic champion Mariama Jamanka He achieved his first World Cup successes four years ago and finished his World Cup debut in 2021 in Altenberg in sixth place. A foot injury prevented the possible Olympic start in Beijing 2022; Mark was also diagnosed with gout, which he can now control by changing his diet.
“Cool and informal”
The current season is the first for which the administrative assistant was able to prepare without problems. Meanwhile, as only a member of the so-called supplementary team, Mark had to obtain permission to join Buckwitz in two push tests in Magdeburg and Oberhof with good results.
The two got to know each other well during their time together as pushers on the Jamanka team. “Lisa is very calm and relaxed,” says Mark, watching various videos on social media, one could characterize her as an energetic prankster.
Restle's training group came under the Eintracht umbrella in 2022 and trains in the summer months at the Hahnstrasse athletics facility, where a push track for bobsleigh specialists will also be built in the near future. Mark praises the “support” he feels at the big club. He has now achieved the first SGE world title among active athletes in a still young sport. Club colleague Issam Ammour won bronze at the World Cup together with his brother Adam.
Unlike the World Cup, the three German women's teams drove the same sled, which made the close race easier. Attempts to curb the dominance of World Cup hosts through rule changes at the international level have had little effect. Mark is proud to be in his nation's bobsleigh. But the daughter of a German mother and African father also feels connected to her father's homeland. “When I compete,” she reveals, “I always wear Ghanaian socks.”