So a throw. It was the sixth and last attempt in the javelin final of this World Championships that would now judge everything: Julian Weber’s great ambitions, the dwindling hopes of his association. Weber pointed his finger at the grass, at this angle he would shoot the javelin straight into the winning path, he threw himself, rolled on the ground, but the silence that followed the rhythmic clapping heralded nothing good.
The 35,000 spectators, who could already estimate the trajectory, neither whispered, nor did Weber stretch his arm in the air, knowing that he had made a successful throw. Shortly thereafter, the 28-year-old buried his face in both hands. 85.79 meters, that was enough for fourth place, again after the 2022 World Championships in Eugene. For the German Athletics Association (DLV), this also sealed a historic zero number: German athletes had never won a medal at world championships, and at the Olympics the lowest level so far had been a silver medal, 2008 in Beijing.
Weber had been the last hope of the DLV in Budapest, at the same time the only one on whom one could in good conscience unload the burden of hoping for a medal. Except for the start of the Diamond League in Doha, he had not finished a competition outside of the top three this season, had traveled to Hungary as the second best in the world with 88.72 meters. He had said in many previous conversations that he had not only painstakingly adjusted his body and his technique for the better; after the disappointment of Eugene and the European championship title in Munich shortly afterwards, he also learned not to push away expectations, but to deal with them. And in the best case, to transform it into something sparkling.
High jumper Christina Honsel surprises in a positive way
After the German championships in Kassel, where he had set his best performance of the season, he showed up in Budapest already noticeably scratched. Qualifying was difficult, he complained about “irritations”, but then he would save the best for the final. He then followed suit with 85.79 meters after Olympic champion Neeraj Chopra from India had presented 88.12 meters. But when the others, as recently in Eugene, started to increase their runs – 87.82 meters from Arshad Nadeem from Pakistan, 86.67 meters from the Czech Jakub Vadlejch – Weber only managed to counterattack up to almost 83 meters – and trudged along blank view from the stadium.
High jumper Christina Honsel managed a surprise of a positive kind, who finished eighth with a jump of 1.94 meters – after she hadn’t managed more than 1.83 meters outdoors before the World Championships. For 21-year-old Olivia Gürth it was already a success that she made it to the final over 3000 meters steeplechase; there she ran another personal best (9:20.08 minutes), was 14th and set a small sign for the coming year: with the norm for the Olympic Games in Paris.
