YANQING, China — The 2022 Winter Paralympics ended Sunday with China successful, by far, probably the most medals, 61, adopted by the undaunted Ukrainian group and Canada.
But when the Aigner household, the 4 snowboarding siblings from rural Austria, have been a rustic, they might have completed eighth at these Video games. They captured extra medals on their very own, 11 (six golds), than international locations like Norway, Japan, Italy and Sweden.
Veronika and the twins Johannes and Barbara, together with Elisabeth, Veronika’s older sister and information, are a powerhouse ski nation unto themselves. They’re the von Trapps of Austrian vision-impaired snowboarding, and their debut on the Paralympics created a variety of buzz.
The Aigners’ different guides are Klara Sykora and Matteo Fleischmann, who’re boyfriend and girlfriend and honorary members of the Alpine Aigner clan, which took dwelling 9 of Austria’s 13 medals. (The guides’ medals don’t depend within the official standings, however Elisabeth Aigner mentioned she would cherish her two as a lot as anybody else within the household.)
“We’re very lucky to expertise this as a result of not everybody can say they went to the Paralympics,” Elisabeth Aigner mentioned. “However to have the ability to share it with the entire household is unimaginable.”
It was a household vacation, she mentioned, however with a variety of medals.
Veronika Aigner, 19, received two gold medals with Elisabeth, 23, snowboarding down in entrance of her. Once they received the primary gold on Friday, they embraced on the end line for over a minute.
“Throughout that hug, we weren’t talking lots as a result of we have been crying a lot,” Veronika mentioned. “We have been so comfortable, and so happy with Babsi, too.”
Babsi is Barbara Aigner, 16, the dual of Johannes Aigner. They burst onto the para Alpine ski scene on the world championships in January in Lillehammer, Norway, like a sudden storm, successful gold medals of their first main worldwide competitors.
When Johannes arrived in China, he was not sure he would even enter the vision-impaired downhill race till he fared effectively in a observe run. He entered and received gold, then received one other gold within the big slalom, and 5 medals in all.
These Paralympics are over, however the vision-impaired Alpine ski world must cope with this household for a very long time.
“We’ve got a variety of years forward of us,” Barbara mentioned via Sykora, her information. “The purpose is to maintain persevering with what we began.”
For many opponents within the age of Covid, touring to the Paralympics meant going alone. Relations weren’t allowed to affix grownup opponents, however one father or mother or guardian might accompany every athlete underneath 18.
That enabled each dad and mom, Petra and Christian Aigner, to make the journey, one for every of their 16-year-old twins. The one one who couldn’t journey was Irmgard, the eldest, who as soon as served as Veronika’s information.
The three racers, Veronika, Barbara and Johannes, all have congenital cataracts, a situation at beginning that causes cloudiness on the lens of the attention, which may trigger decreased imaginative and prescient and blindness. The vision-impaired siblings have all had not less than two surgical procedures to stabilize the decay, however they nonetheless have issue seeing and depend on guides to get down the slopes.
Petra Aigner was born with the identical situation and has had 30 surgical procedures to maintain it from rising worse. She is unable to see her youngsters race from the stands, so Christian Aigner provides her turn-by-turn updates.
“I’m glad I can’t see it,” Petra Aigner mentioned via an interpreter shortly after her daughters completed first and second within the slalom. “I might be too nervous.”
The Aigners stay on a farm in Gloggnitz, a hamlet of roughly 6,000 folks about an hour south of Vienna on the Austrian autobahn. The farm has 30 chickens that produce eggs for the household and neighbors, 4 work horses, a donkey and rabbits.
Christian Aigner works as a caretaker for a water pipeline that runs via close by woods, and Petra tends to the farm, together with Barbara, who loves animals.
The older sisters have been the primary to ski; quickly, all joined in. Sykora, who met them via racing, ultimately grew to become Barbara’s information. Her father, Thomas Sykora, received the bronze medal in slalom on the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan.
He now works as a tv commentator. In considered one of his gigs, he dons a video digicam atop his helmet and careens down the mountain, giving viewers in ski-mad Austria a way of the course. He’s a information, of types, and Klara Sykora performs comparable work, only for a single particular person.
One evening final yr, Klara Sykora went to dinner on the Aigners’ dwelling and introduced her boyfriend, Fleischmann, who was additionally a ski racer. Petra observed how effectively Fleischmann received together with Johannes and requested him to function her son’s information.
The information position is crucial in vision-impaired snowboarding and requires immaculate teamwork and an nearly sacred belief. Guides descend the course forward of the racer — not too far forward, or they received’t be heard, however not so near sluggish the racer or trigger a crash. They name out the turns and bumps as they go. It’s a distinctive bond, which explains why Sykora and Fleischmann are honorary Aigners.
“We really feel very honored to be a part of this household,” Klara Sykora mentioned.
Quickly after the group arrived in China for the Paralympics, the athletes’ village in Yanqing was dotted with Aigners all over the place, particularly when the dad and mom, who stayed in a resort, joined them.
The previous couple of days of racing, particularly, felt like a celebration of Aigner dominance on the slopes. There was Veronika and Elisabeth hovering down, nearly as if tethered by string, adopted on the medal podium by Barbara Aigner and Klara Sykora, whereas Johannes Aigner and Fleischmann racked up medals of their very own.
In his first run on the large slalom Friday, Johannes Aigner and Fleischmann have been in second place, robust sufficient to nearly guarantee a medal, so long as Johannes didn’t wipe out in his second run.
However he needed extra. He informed Fleischmann he meant to go all out of their second run, a lot the best way his Austrian forebear, Franz Klammer, did on the 1976 Olympics.
“It was a raffle,” Fleischmann mentioned with amusing, “however we talked it over and I fully supported his determination. And it paid off.”
When it was over, they greeted the remainder of the household and surrogate members of the family, all however the dad and mom within the uniform of the Austrian Paralympic Alpine racing group, a household nation of medal-winning Aigners.
“I’m actually comfortable to have all my sisters and oldsters right here,” Johannes Aigner mentioned, with Fleischmann serving as translator. “It was unbelievable to come back into the end space and they’re all right here, cheering for you and hugging you and crying for you. It’s simply unbelievable.”