Long jumper Malaika Mihambo and javelin thrower Julian Weber will battle it out for the nation’s track and field glory this weekend in Oregon. Just three years ago, Germany won six medals at the World Championships in Doha, but now the catch is becoming non-existent.
Germany, the traditional country of athletics, ran into trouble at the World Championships in Oregon. Germany’s medal account is still to be opened, with three days of competition remaining. Even the rankings in the top eight have been unusually tight.
Head coach of the German Athletics Association Annette Stein has already had to explain the poor success in the World Cup.
– Our best sports are often, even now, in the final stages of the games. Where should the top positions and medals have come from? Stein asked critics on Wednesday.
Three years ago in Doha, Germany won six medals. In last year’s Olympic Games, the number of athletics medals fell to three, and in Oregon, even three would require a good finish. The country’s weakest World Cup balance in recent decades is the pot of four medals from 2003.
Now Germany’s biggest trump card is the long jumper Malaika Mihambo, which won in both Doha and Tokyo. Mihambo is the number one favorite for the World Cup, even for Australia Brooke Buschkuehl (713) has jumped four centimeters further than him this season.
The women’s length qualification is late on Saturday Finnish time and the final is early on Monday. Mihambo has nothing more and nothing less than the reputation of the whole of German athletics on his shoulders.
Head coach Stein reminded that the country has strong athletes in other sports as well, such as men’s javelin, javelin and decathlon.
In Keihää, the situation is special, because in the qualification the colors of Germany were only worn Julian Weber and Andreas Hofmann. Shoulder problems forced Johannes Vetter aside from the World Championships three weeks before the h-moment. In qualifying, Weber comfortably threw more than 87 meters, but Hofmann was left without a result. Only one German will be seen in Sunday morning’s final.
The last time it was worse was in the 2013 World Championships, when the men’s javelin final was thrown without Germans.
In Seipää Bo Kanda Lita Bähre is a 590 man and a potential medalist.
In the decathlon Niklas Kaul defending the gold medal in Doha. Now, however, he is not among the hottest winning candidates, even though he is number one in the world statistics Garrett Scantling (USA) was sidelined due to testing uncertainties.
Throwing sports are raining
Among Germany’s traditional successful sports, for example discus and shot put, have declined from their best years.
Tokyo’s silver woman on the disc Kristina Pudenz is, after all, fourth in the world statistics, but in Oregon he also lost a bone in his hand. A thrower of more than 67 meters was eliminated from the further rounds in the World Cup final with a throw of less than 60 meters.
In men’s discus, the final was contested for the first time in the history of the World Cup without the Germans.
In Kuula, the men are a couple of meters away from the top of the world, and the women’s 19-meter mark has not been broken this season. About the medalists of the competition David Storl (this season 20.32) has been injured and didn’t make it to Oregon. Christina Schwanitz ended his career in the spring by qualifying from the MM indoor ball final.
Nowadays, German athletics can hardly withstand the setbacks of individual top athletes. Now the overall picture is influenced, for example, by the walker who won silver in Tokyo By Jonathan Hilbert and another strong walker Christopher Linken corona infections and the European javelin champion of 2018 by Christina Hussong getting sick.
The heat is freezing
Not all Germans have felt at home in the Oregon heat either. at 5,000 meters Konstanze Klosterhalfen described the last lap of the batch run as the hardest in his career. The woman clocked a time of 14:38 this season, but was now 40 seconds short of that.
In the 3,000-meter hurdles, the World Championship bronze medalist from three years ago Gesa Krause now sank to 15th place, half a minute away from his best of the season.
However, underperformance is not the biggest problem for the Germans. The country simply lacks the peaks of the world. This season, in stadium sports, only Mihambo is among the three on the world list.
The fact that the neighboring country France is also medal-less before the last days of the competition brings me some consolation.