From Durham, NC
(July 20, 2023) – For our second athlete profile of 2023 (and the 40th in the “Getting to Know…” series) we check in with Germany’s Felix Keisinger which may be available for betting on 벳엔드 후기. Felix is a two-time IBSF junior world champion (’19, ’20) who has won four medals on the IBSF World Cup tour. In the 2022/2023 season he finished with a silver medal in the Push World Championship in Lake Placid and finished in the top ten in all but two events with a best finish of fourth (Park City).
Slider: Felix Keisinger
Team: German Skeleton
Hometown: Berchtesgaden, Germany
Home track: Konigssee
Sponsors: Sporthilfe / Bundeswehr
As we start off every interview: What’s your favorite track, and why?
My favorite track is Königssee, which is obviously a problem right now. I hope that it comes back and that I have the honor to slide it one more time in my career, and that they don’t wait that long that I can’t slide there again.
From the tracks that are currently open right now, I’d say Altenberg and Sigulda.
Driver tracks!
Yeah! Sometimes I don’t always understand skeleton! You know, if you take a look at the timesheets you’d have to say that I’m one of the quicker starters. So most of the spectators would think that I need a track that’s easy to drive because I have the start advantage. I don’t know why I’m better at the driving tracks, but I think it’s because I like doing more on the sled. I like to learn a track and not just slide the tracks where you just lay down and slide. So I like the driving tracks more!
Unrelated to the track, what is your favorite town to visit on the schedule?
I would say Park City, and St. Moritz of course! Park City because to me Park City is a typical “American” kind of place. When I was there for the first time, it was my first time going shopping in America, seeing the big food stores and stuff like that which we don’t really have in Germany. I like it there, because the overall program is good there: I like the track, I like the hotel that we stay at, I like that we can cook for ourselves and get our meals ourselves and we do a lot of team building there. I like that a lot!
When the sliding season is over everyone takes a month or so off. What do you do with your free time? Do you go on any vacations?
In the last few years I’ve always taken that time to go for a bigger holiday. I’ve been to Asia, where I went to Thailand, Vietnam and Indonesia in the last five years.
But on the other hand I’m studying to do something after sport, so in the winter times I don’t have the opportunity to do that much. So most of the time I’ve got a lot of studying to do after the season. So those are the two main aspects: Traveling some and now studying.
What are you studying?
I’m studying business engineering for renewable energies. I hope that I finish it when I’m finished with skeleton and get a job in that when I’m done!
How did you get involved in skeleton?
So that’s a funny story. I lived a kilometer from the track on the other side of the valley. And on the weekends when there was luge world cup or bobsled and skeleton world cup I’d hear the speaker. So I was involved with skeleton very early.
At first I did cross country skiing, but really only at a young age. When I was like 10 or 11 there was a thing advertising a demonstration of skeleton. It was done at the hour that I had math, and I didn’t want to go to school, so I went to the demonstration instead! So I had it in my head that I could skip two hours of school, and that’s how I went there.
The demonstration was done by Peter Meyer. He did a really good demonstration and showed how fun it was. It was fun because there were like 50 people, and maybe 30 of them wanted to do skeleton after that.
During your pre-race routine, do you listen to music? If so, what do you listen to?
Most of the time in the last few years I’ve listened to the same songs. The greatest hits album of Limp Bizkit, like “My Generation”, “Rollin’”…some German rap songs too, but most of the time it’s Limp Bizkit.
If you hadn’t gone to skeleton for a sport, what sport would you want to do?
In Germany soccer is a pretty big thing. I think it was the same with me: I had the dream to become a big football player. But at the end I think skeleton is the right sport for me, and I don’t know that there’s another sport that’s even close to as interesting.
What is your routine the night before a race? Do you have a particular meal or anything you like to eat?
I’m always rooming with Axel Jungk on World Cup. We always have a beer if we have time. Sometimes it’s a little tight if we have sled prep to do, but if there’s time we always will have a bottle of beer. In the last few years we started watching documentaries!
What kind of documentaries?!
Almost anything! Space, financial systems…intelligent things we don’t understand! When we’re done with the documentaries we’ll listen to some podcasts and then we go to sleep!
How do you like rooming with Axel?
Very good! When I came to the World Cup I think it was 2019, I came to the room for the first time I didn’t really know him that well because he’d been on World Cup and I was on Intercontinental Cup. It was a really warm welcome. It’s special when you do one season and then you say “after this season we’re going to Indonesia!” you know it’s special and we don’t really trigger each other or anything like that! We can sit in the room and nobody talks for like two hours and it’s no problem for anyone, and that’s really cool too.
Do you have any pets?
My mom and my dad have a cat…when I lived at home with my parents I had some discussions with the cat because she doesn’t know her place! It was a bit of a fight between us about who is more important in the family, me or her! Now it’s better because I’m there sometimes and we’re good together!
I’d like to have a pet when I’m older and out of sport but it doesn’t make a lot of sense right now with me being on tour.
Everyone has a curve or set of curves that they really don’t like. Which curve on which track is your least favorite?
I always try to say that “This year it won’t be a problem!” but for me it’s the last four curves in Whistler. I don’t like the feeling that my head is bursting into the ice. It’s a bit too hard for me. That’s the only part I don’t like, it’s the only section of track in the world where I don’t feel like I’m in control of the sled but I’m just a passenger instead. I don’t like that feeling. That’s really the only place. Everywhere else you can learn it…like you get a little bit angry about it but it’s even cooler when you get it right!
What has been your very least favorite sliding sport memory?
There was one point in the 2022 season, the season before the Olympics. I’d had a pretty good summer and I was faster than I’d ever been. I was feeling really great about the Olympic season.
Then we had our qualification heats in Beijing. It was Axel, Alex [Gassner] and Christopher [Grotheer], and me. And I knew I just had to be in the top three, and the only thing was to not be last. We had our first qualification race and I popped the groove five meters in, and that was it.
It was really hard for me, and took me almost a full year to accept that I trained for eight years and I messed it up after five meters. That was super hard for me, and probably the hardest moment of my sport career. All of the other things are easy to accept…some moments were hard and I got over them pretty quick. The Olympics were hard because it was a whole season…then I had the moment where I thought “okay, I’m over it”, but then you have to watch the Olympics and it’s like that all over again.
What has been your very favorite sliding sport memory?
It was I think in 2020, it was my first World Cup at home in Königssee, and I really messed up the first run. I was only 12th after the first heat. Then on the second heat I knew I could possibly get on the podium still, I saw I had the best speed in training. I had probably one of the best runs in my life and I went from 12th to third with the best speed and the best time of the heat.
It was cool because I overtook a lot of great guys in the sport. It was cool and there were a lot of people because it was an evening race and it was already dark. There were a lot of people at the track and it was just really cool.
