IRIS SCHMIDBAUER
The 27-year-old was asked at the European Championships why she did this sport at all, throwing herself from a height of 20 meters into the abyss. Schmidbauer replied: “Why not!” The Dresdener loves to be tickled, and she is also a great athlete. At the EM premiere in cliff jumping, she won the gold medal.
She made her first attempts at jumping in Utting am Ammersee. Later she got to know some cliff divers and learned, as she told Bayerischer Rundfunk, “that you can actually jump from 20 or even 27 meters – and survive it”.
At the age of 19, she finally switched to this spectacular and dangerous sport. To protect the jumpers, there are always rescue divers near the diving area. Iris Schmidbauer has also been badly injured. She told the “Süddeutsche Zeitung” that she once broke her coccyx in an accidental jump.
Despite this painful experience, she can’t stop jumping – and has now been rewarded with the title of European Champion.
NIKLAS KAULThe spear flew and flew. If he had had eyes, he could have looked at the beautiful tent roof of Munich’s Olympic Stadium. And if he had had ears, he would have enjoyed the applause of the 40,000 or so spectators. It was a long, long flight and only at a distance of 76.05 meters did it dig into the grass.
The spear had just been sent on its way by the decathlete Niklas Kaul. Until then, Kaul had delivered a decent, but not exorbitantly good decathlon. No wonder Kaul has had to deal with many injuries in recent years. At the Olympic Games last year, he suffered a bruised ankle.
But the 24-year-old fought back. First with a sixth place at the World Championships in Eugene – and with the European Championship title in Munich. He was almost hopelessly behind the Swiss Simon Ehammer. But the 76.05 meters in the javelin throw (nobody has thrown further in a decathlon at a European championship) brought him back into the game.
In the final 1,500 meter run, he had to make up a whopping 27 seconds on Ehammer. And Kaul ran and ran, the audience roared and roared, so that in the end Kaul even finished 38 seconds ahead of Ehammer.
GINA LUKENKEMPER
The 25-year-old made a difficult evening for reporters on Tuesday. Late at night, around 10:30 p.m., she won the gold medal in the 100 meters in 10.99 seconds. Few had expected that. Maybe with a medal, but certainly not with gold. A number of reports had to be rewritten again. A sprint title for German athletes is a rarity. Verena Sailer last managed to do this for women in 2010.
Lückenkemper could hardly believe her luck. Especially since her sporting path has been followed by bad luck in recent years. She was often injured, and her restart in a training group in the USA also came to a halt due to the corona. Accordingly, her elapsed times were not what she had hoped for. But since this year things have been looking up again. At the German Championships in Berlin, she ran 10.99 seconds, staying under eleven seconds for the fourth time in her career – until the final at the European Championships in Munich.
After being a few meters behind after the start, as is usual with her, she got closer and closer to the two leaders Mujinga Kambundji and Neita Daryll. In the very last few meters, she threw herself so energetically at the finish line that she stumbled, fell, and lacerated her thigh, which required eight stitches.
The finish photo of the three sprinters brought back memories of a legendary finish in the 400 meter hurdles at the 1987 World Championships in Rome. At that time, the two Americans Edwin Moses and Danny Harris and the German Harald Schmid were tied. After studying the pictures, the resolution followed, Moses was a tiny bit ahead of Harris and Schmid.
This time, however, the German Athletics Association had better luck. For Lückenkemper, the title was the biggest success of her career up to that point, after she finished second at the 2018 European Championships in Berlin.
Another title could be added on Sunday. As Lückenkemper announced on Saturday, she can compete in the 100-meter relay final on the final day. “I am very happy to be able to tell you that the leg felt so good in today’s test that I can actively support the team on the track,” wrote the European champion on Instagram.
SEBASTIAN BRENDEL
The canoeist could well be the model for a sculptor who creates sculptures after the model of Greek antiquity. The Brandenburger has the perfect body, he is 1.92 meters tall, weighs around 90 kilograms and at first glance 90 percent of it seems to be muscle mass.
Not only does Brendel have an enviable physique, he’s also extraordinarily successful. The exceptional athlete has already won the Olympics three times and is world champion eleven times. On Friday he won his 14th European title, and a day later his 15th.
Together with his partner Tim Hecker, he won the 1000 meter distance in the two-man canoe on the Olympic Canal in Oberschleißheim. Brendel, 34, and his partner, ten years his junior, who won bronze at the Tokyo Olympics, relegated Italy and Hungary to second and third. On Saturday he pulled away from Hungary’s Balasz Adolf with a strong final sprint in the long distance over 5000 meters.
Canoeing doesn’t usually get a lot of media attention, not even Brendel. Despite or perhaps because of his successes. Because if he starts, the observers assume that he will be in front in the end. And, well, that’s what happened this time, too.
