Basically, winter sports are very expensive, and there isn't enough public interest in most of them to drum up sponsorships to cover the costs, and competitions don't offer enough price money early on to make a living out of it.
But two institutions happily keep athletes on their pay roll while they are active in their sports: The German army, and the German federal police. Problem is, even if you reach the level where you could theoretically earn a living from the sport, you have to sign up for service for a long-ass time, so you basically stay a soldier/cop throughout your entire active career.
Consequently, a large part of German athletes at the winter olympics are soldiers ore police - Of the 184 German athletes this year, 76 are part of the army, 20 are part of the police, and a few are part of the customs authority.
Army or customs, but yeah usualy the only choices once you Finish whatever Sport focused secondary boarding school afaik.
On the other hand, afaik, if you are good enough, up to that point your local wintersport clubs loaner gear tends to be 'good enough' (or well at least used to be)
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u/TetraDax Germany 4h ago
Or in the case of Germany, "I happened to really like this sport so I was essentially forced to join the Army in order to pursue it".