anty1975 wrote: ↑Sun Aug 11, 2024 15:18
In Rio and Tokyo you had also very good women's swimming team but most of them retired now and for a small country like Denmark its of course hard to replace a star like Pernille Blume...
Yes, only really one swimmer who could compete this year, but she also did better than expected. Helena Rosendahl Bach finished 4th in the women's butterfly. She will actually carry the flag at the finishing ceremony alongside wrestler Turpal Bisultanov. Bach did better than expected, but thought they would have picked one of the medalists. At least the handball team should still be there, so someone like Sandra Toft would have been a more obvious choice, but haven't seen any explanation yet.
And yes, there was really a golden generation of swimming, which has now all retired. Tbh. it's still weird for me to see Pernille Blume mentioned like a star, but I know that's what the results show. But like for so many years, there were three world class swimmers, Lotte Friis, Jeanette Ottesen and Rikke Møller Pedersen, who all won so many medals at World and European championships, including several golds. They never really hit their best at the Olympics, where all other countries brought their best. For most of the time, Blume was like someone few knew. She joined the NT aged 18 in 2016. She was on the medley team, which is where she won all of her medals before 2016. But she was often the weakest link, and individually she wasn't close to anything. Often never even close to reaching the final. In late 2015, she stopped swimming for three months and considering retiring. But she returned to the sport, only just hit the Olympic qualification time in the last second. And then at the Olympics, aged 22 she was suddenly the best in the world with the fastest time in the heats, semi and final. And also pulling the medley to a bronze medal, so both Ottesen and Møller Pedersen finallt got an Olympci medal. And then 4-5 years with a very high top level, but also several injuries and missed tournaments. After the bronze in Tokyo, her career more or less ended quickly. Among other things do to more injuries, she retired in 2022. So a shorter time on top than most of the others big Danish swimmers, but of course by far the biggest single results.
Also rowing is one sport, where Denmark has won medals for decades, but we didn't really have anyone expected to be near anything this year. It's still a sport with a good deal of funding, so would expect some new strong names to emerge soon.
A sport where the depth doesn't seem that big.