In the Berlin Olympic Stadium, a phenomenon occurs in good time that cannot be grasped with quantum physics, string theory or other physical laws. Even if there are only a few people in this giant bowl, spreading them out like a few colorful sprinkles on a very, very large cake, like on the first day of the German Athletics Championships on Saturday, these few people still create an atmosphere that seems like an acoustic wave sloshing up the (mostly empty) tiers, breaking and crashing back into the interior like a monster wave on the western Atlantic.
And another phenomenon: The sprinter Gina Lückenkemper almost managed to surpass this emotional carpet of sound on Saturday evening. When the 25-year-old crossed the finish line over 100 meters, everything seemed a little more intense than in the previous performances, the 5.90 meters by pole vaulter Bo Kanda Lita Baehre, for example, the 67.10 by discus thrower Kristin Pudenz and the 50, 91 seconds by Corinna Schwab over the 400 meters. Lückenkemper drummed her fists in the air, she screamed, she cried, of course “because I’m an incredibly emotional guy”, as she later explained: “I cry so quickly with all sorts of things, it’s sometimes a bit exhausting. ” But a run under 11 seconds, this time in 10.99, she rightly asserted, was “still something special”.
Front: Gina Lückenkemper.
(Foto: Axel Kohring/IMAGO/Beautiful Sports)
The images almost seemed to double on that summer evening four years ago when Lückenkemper had cracked this mark for the third and last time to date. It was at the 2018 European Championships, back in Berlin, when Lückenkemper raced to the silver medal in 10.98. A run in which she packed so many emotions that she lost a film tear of almost eleven seconds. Her career was like a domino game back then, one stone knocked over the next, successes from young talents, EM bronze in 2016 over 200 meters, when the school friends celebrated the Abi ball; then the silver EM 2018, always further, always brisk on the way, with mouth and legs.
The following year was the first to be covered by a veil. Lückenkemper left her longtime trainer Uli Kunst, who had carefully built her up, but under whom she often trained alone; she relocated to Lance Brauman’s training group in Florida. That sounded promising: Here the sprinter, who was the first German since Katrin Krabbe to dive below the 11-second mark (in 10.95). There was a group with world champions and Olympic champions like Noah Lyles and Shauna Miller-Uibo, a trainer who had looked after many greats, including those with a doping reputation like Tyson Gay (which Brauman claims not to have noticed). After just a few weeks, said Lückenkemper, she was “in the shape of my life”.
Then came the pandemic. And the dominoes stuck. Florida excursions were initially impossible, training facilities in Germany were closed. Lückenkemper trained in Bamberg on the canal and in the neighbors’ garden, again alone. Suddenly, injuries slowed her down, sometimes she completed one run too many, sometimes a vertebra was not seated properly, which disrupted the supply to the muscles. A career in which it was “almost picture book” was now mixed with disturbing noises, including people in the environment who turned away in failure. Also an emotional thing.
Lückenkemper now appreciates the value of a healthy body
In the end, Lückenkemper recently said in an interview, she learned a lot even in the time when nothing seemed to be progressing. For example, “appreciating a lot more” a healthy body that has been almost picture-perfect over the years. And above all: staying true to yourself, trusting that the seed would already be sown but would only blossom later, even if many real or supposed experts doubted that.
She herself, said Lückenkemper on Saturday in the belly of the Olympic Stadium, still steaming with happiness, “never doubted it”. And: “A lot of people are now making me a comeback kid, but I think I’ve never been away. I just had bad luck with injuries.” Only since last November has she finally been able to sail through the new, hard training, training with units that sometimes follow each other so hard and close together that she didn’t have time to throw up. At the same time, she got to know “so many brilliant and wonderfully inspiring people” in Brauman’s group, so in the end the equation is quite simple: If you’re surrounded by full professionals all the time, you’ll eventually get the appropriate performance.
The competition from the USA is still one step ahead
And if you listened to Lückenkemper like that, you got the impression that the comeback kid wasn’t so wrong after all. At least that’s all back this year: The feeling of “flying” on the track, as Lückenkemper called it on Saturday, when every step from the first heat to the final feels easy, even though it’s hard work. The ability to really grow in the bright light of competition. The joy of the upcoming World Cup, where a whole new level awaits them. With her 10.99 seconds, Lückenkemper wouldn’t even have made it into the top six in the US championships on Saturday.
“It’s going to be fast,” said Gina Lückenkemper at the end of Saturday evening, with a smile that revealed: it’s her again.
