“As if you had never been away”, the specialist magazine Beachvolleyball.de praises the comeback of Olympic champion Laura Ludwig. But in the first game after her second baby break, the 2016 Olympic champion suffered a two-set defeat with her new partner Louisa Lippmann. At the Elite 16 tournament of the Beach Pro Tour in Cape Town, the two women from Hamburg lost 19:21, 15:21 to the American duo Emily Stockman/Megan Kraft. “There were already a lot of nice elements there!”, praised the trade press and listed the extreme wind conditions in Cape Town as mitigating circumstances: “You can definitely build on that”.
The top-class competition in South Africa is Laura Ludwig and Louisa Lippmann’s first tournament together. The 36-year-old gave birth to her second son, Lenny, in May. Her partner, who is eight years younger, only left the sand this year after being one of the world’s best volleyball players for years. At the European Championships in Munich in August, she played with Ludwig’s former partner Kira Walkenhorst on an interim basis.
Ludwig/Lippmann have only been working with national coach Martin Engvik for a little over three weeks. Laura Ludwig has not yet reached her usual level of fitness. Originally, the new formation only wanted to play the first joint tournaments next year. But now they got the chance to compete with a wildcard in Cape Town. There they will meet Suzuka Hashimoto/Reika Murakami (Japan) and the Slovenians Tjasa Kotnik/Tajda Lovsin in Group D on Friday. They will then compete in the Tour’s Challenger tournament in Cairo.
The tournaments are more for learning and getting to know each other. “Find us in the field,” Ludwig told NDR. National coach Engvik is convinced of his new duo. “I now have the most exciting project in beach volleyball ahead of me,” he told the “Abendblatt”.
Things will get serious in 2023. Then points have to be collected to qualify for the 2024 Olympic Games. Engvik expects his pair to reach the top level by the end of next year. Laura Ludwig would like to experience the Olympic Games for the fifth time in Paris, for Louisa Lippmann it would be the first time since the German indoor volleyball team had not managed to qualify since 2004.
