Tina Punzel (from the front), here with Christina Wassen, sees her greatest chances of success in synchronized jumping.
Photo: imago/Fernando Bizerra
A brief smile crosses Tina Punzel’s face when she thinks about the beginning of the year. After her last jump at the Olympic Games in Tokyo, the water jumper from Dresdner SC took a much-needed break. Her sabbatical from the board lasted five months: she was only in the water twice until Christmas, and in January she started training again. »In the beginning I was ill quite often. My body needed a very long time to accept and cope with the training workload again,” says Punzel – who over time was also pleased to discover how much she was still benefiting from her thousands of training jumps, especially in the past year.
Tina Punzel (from the front), here with Christina Wassen, sees her greatest chances of success in synchronized jumping.
Photo: imago/Fernando Bizerra
“For me, that was confirmation that I hadn’t exactly taken the wrong path after Tokyo,” explains the 26-year-old cheerfully. She now wants to savor this joy at the World Championships in Budapest. The training is currently more fun for her than it has been for a long time, reports Punzel. She makes no secret of her ambitious plans – and in her four World Cup starts she has one competition in particular in focus.
In synchronized jumping from the three-meter board, she finally won Olympic medals with Lena Hentschel almost a year ago. “I’d be lying if I said that’s not our goal. Of course we want to defend the bronze medal from Tokyo,” says Punzel. However, what is most important to the four-time European champion is her carefree attitude, which she brought with her to Hungary. “I see it all as an encore, too. I don’t have to prove anything anymore,” she emphasizes – and explains with relish: “It’s currently a more relaxed mindset.”
In contrast to the economics student, Patrick Hausding is no longer at the World Cup. Born in Berlin, Germany’s flagship jumper for many years, retired from competitive sport in May. He is now following the competitions in Budapest with a beer in his hand on the live stream at home – and there he was served the bronze medal by Timo Barthel and Lars Rüdiger in the synchronized competition from the three-meter board on the first day of the final.
With the same jump series as now with Barthel, Rüdiger won Olympic bronze together with Hausding last year. Before the most difficult jump in the final, 26-year-old Barthel kept whispering the name of his prominent predecessor on Sunday evening. And the self-prescribed verbal medicine worked. “That calmed me down, lowered my nervousness,” the Rhinelander reported afterwards, and he also confessed: “I haven’t been able to sleep for two weeks because I’ve always dreamed of this medal. It’s just unbelievable.«
Meanwhile, his teammate Tina Punzel is still looking forward to her own World Cup start – and sheds light on the new situation for the DSV team in general. »Patrick Hausding really showed world-class jumps in training, which simply amazed you. He’s always been very present. You can tell that he’s no longer in the hall,” explains Europe’s water jumper of the year 2021 – who, up until three years ago, always put too much pressure on herself before big events.
The last World Cup was the first for her where she arrived a little more relaxed than usual, says Punzel – and gives the reason for this inner change. »Over the years I’ve become a bit more self-confident and now I have the feeling: Yes, I belong there. I can really compete with the very best in the world, I don’t have to hide anymore,” says the water jumper, who broke her personal “ban” in 2019.
At that time, Punzel won bronze at the World Championships in mixed synchronized jumping from the three-meter board together with Lou Massenberg in Gwangju, South Korea – and today she recapitulates: “Before, I always came back from World Championships and thought: ‘Hm, what was going on now ?‹«
Punzel, who is contesting her sixth world championship in Budapest, experienced her first title fights in 2011 in Shanghai. “It was all really exciting for me. I was the chick in the team, everyone took care of me,” she says. That was very nice, because: “It wasn’t about me having to get a medal.” That has changed somewhat in the meantime. “It’s,” explains Punzel, “a different approach – even if I don’t always want to admit it to myself.”
However, the native of Dresden has been fulfilling her role as a team oldie for some time now. After the Olympic Games in Tokyo, she was “simply full” and didn’t even know if she would ever return to diving. Now she is back and wants to pass on her experience to the younger colleagues. “So,” Tina Punzel emphasizes, “not everyone needs as long as I do to get into a World Cup final.”
