ABreathe a sigh of relief after the last major competition of an intense athletics season was behind Malaika Mihambo. But that was easier said than done. “I can’t get enough air,” confessed the long jump world champion at the Diamond League final in Zurich: “I notice how much Corona is still affecting me.”
Her respiratory volume is still below average, the 28-year-old explained. Not threatening in everyday life, but also not appropriate for a high-performance athlete. “I had to rest,” she said of her competition design on Thursday in Zurich, where she missed two attempts. “Four jumps were the absolute maximum.”
Because three of them were invalid – the last with a seven-meter potential only just overstepped – there was not much room for a successful performance. In her only valid jump, she gave away around 30 centimeters on the beam. So the result of 6.52 meters and fourth place was still respectable, but not what the Olympic champion is otherwise able to offer.
“Corona formed a caesura”
Mihambo had contracted Corona after the world championships in Eugene, which she had won. At the European Championships four weeks later, she won the silver medal thanks to an enormous effort, but suffered a dizzy spell in the stadium during the subsequent television interview. “Corona formed a turning point,” she analyzed the past season. And, given the conditions, summed up: “I’m proud that it went so well.”
The Serbian Ivana Vuleta secured the victory in Zurich. As at the European Championships in Munich, the 32-year-old presented a mark in the first attempt, which the competition struggled with in vain: 6.97 meters was enough for her to win the diamond and a prize of $30,000. Malaika Mihambo is now looking forward to the “off-season” with confidence, as she says: “Five weeks without training” in order to recover from Corona as completely as possible. And above all vacation, which she will spend in South America. She wants to hike there: “I’m looking forward to it.”
Vacation is also announced for javelin thrower Julian Weber, who also fell a little short of expectations on Thursday. “I would have liked to have thrown further,” said the 28-year-old about his 83.73 meters, which was enough for third place in the success of the Indian Olympic champion Neeraj Chopra (88.44). The European champion from Mainz is drawn to Portugal, where he wants to relax completely. Weber announced “not to do any sport at all”. He will only use the break for regeneration in order to “get all the irritation out of the body”.
Weber found the year 2022 with many competitions and two season highlights to be “extremely mentally exhausting”, but looking back he described the past few months as “the best season of my life”. On the other hand, he called his last competition in the atmospheric Letzigrund “difficult”. He lacked rhythm and excitement: “The air was out.”
