Five gold, eight silver and bronze each, that’s the German medal haul in the middle of the second week of the Olympics (as of February 19th). That’s right, especially since it is without the saving ice channel would look much bleaker for Team D. Determined sober.

Another sober observation is of course this: Germany is not lucky at these Winter Games. Really not. All the more nasty fourth places.

Vanessa Voigt in the biathlon individual. The men’s and women’s relays in biathlon. The ski jumpers, once in the mixed team, once in the super team. The women’s cross-country skiing relay. The toboggan doubles Toni Eggert/Florian Müller. Hannah Neise in the skeleton. Lisa Buckwitz in the monobob. Annika Morgan in snowboard slopestyle. Tatjana Paller in ski mountaineering. All. Always. Fourth.

No nation has recorded more fourth places than Germany

Let’s not even start with other dramas that can hardly be measured in numbers, like Lena Dürr, who scored the first goal. We Germans are the sheet metal kings of the Olympics: We “lead” this hit list with eleven fourth places so far, ahead of Norway (nine) and France (eight). And if fourth places had a face, it would be like the one that forms when you bite into a lemon. Yes, exactly. You see it in your mind’s eye.

Our biathletes in particular felt the lemon feelings; especially Franziska Preuß, shortly before the end of her glorious career.

For the first time in Olympic history, both the German men and women remained without a medal in the relay. The men also came, see above: a very ungrateful fourth place.

Ski jumpers are 1.2 and 0.3 points short of two bronze medals

In the individual, Vanessa Voigt missed the podium over 15 kilometers at the Olympics for the second time in a row. A few seconds were missing, Voigt exhausted himself, Nevertheless, there were some forms of anonymous commentswhich reveal the entire depths of humanity. According to Voigt’s cheeky reaction: “I delivered my best performance again in the Olympic race, I can’t blame myself for anything.” That’s it, dear internet trolls.

Our ski jumpers had hardly a more pleasant experience, on the contrary. First, Philipp Raimund, Felix Hoffmann, Selina Freitag and Agnes Reisch finished in the mixed team a measly 1.2 points behind bronze.

Then things got even more brutal in the Super Team with Raimund and Andreas Wellinger. 0.3 points to bronze, a fantastic Raimund jump that will not appear in any statistics because it was canceled shortly afterwards in the snow chaos. Over. Wasted. Fourth. Wellinger didn’t hold back his emotions; preferably, he grinned, he would “hit the wall somewhere”.

The toboggan doubles Eggert/Müller were – perhaps – able to console themselves a little with the fact that their compatriots Tobias Wendl/Tobias Arlt raced to bronze. Even though they snatched the medal away from Eggert/Müller. Perhaps the consolation was limited after all.

We deserve a bit of luck at the end of the Olympics

It was similar for Neise in the skeleton, who crossed the finish line behind Susanne Kreher (silver) and Jacqueline Pfeifer (bronze) on the sheet metal place, which unfortunately has to exist. Bobsledder Buckwitz, on the other hand, experienced how colleague Laura Nolte won silver, but somehow also lost gold – by an absurd 0.04 seconds after four runs. Which dampened the silver joy. Understandable.

Let’s encourage ourselves for the final days of these Winter Games. If Murphy’s law – anything that can go wrong, will go wrong – also applies in reverse, the German athletes should have a wonderful Olympic epilogue.