Oh yeah. That's in figure skating category. I mean who cares about Winter games anyway(
)?!
We are you in, you know, real sport? Basketball, soccer, tennis, voleyball, handball etc etc. Do you even play that over there?
Basketball we play on the 3rd european level (with superior nations like Cyprus, Island and Malta),
in Soccer we qualify for every third world championships (and since we host the european championship 2008 we're already qualified there). Otherwise we're ranked 75 in the world just behind the Democratic Republic of Kongo. (Our "high time" came in the 1950ies where we have a 3rd place in world's to show)
In Tennis we haven't had a player in the top 20 since Thomas Muster, former world #1, stepped down like 8 years ago. We got 2 players in the top 100 i believe. For Ladies Tennis it's about the same.
In Volleyball we have two fine clubs playing regularly in the European Champions league (but since they have around 10 foreign players each our national team isn't even worth mentioning).
Handball, what's handball. Playing the ball with the hand does result in a free kick or penalty, right ?
Hey, it's Austria and we have snow. Or ice hockey team regularly plays in the world championships. We got great cross country skiers (that are not ALL part of the doping scandal) and a few more. Ice skating isn't sports for me, its show. And don't even talk about Curling ...
Funny enough some other events produced Austrian olympic champions: Sailing, Judo, Triathlon, Windsurfing, Shooting.
But again, we are too small and wealthy to produce great teams. Kids don't have that incentive anymore to get out of slums or poor life conditions (apart from those world class skiiers coming mostly from small towns in the alps).
Believe me, most of the time it's no fun being Austrian sports supporter nowadays ...
