There is something in his actions that is difficult to grasp, a touch of the irrational. “I’m a mixture of everything,” said Julian Weber recently, the decathlete in the javelin throw, so to speak. “I’m not weak, I have good technique, a very good shoulder, I’m fast.” And what has always been important to him: the feeling. “Javelin throwing is also something magical for me,” says Weber, “so much has to come together in that very brief moment when you blast into it when you drop it, everything fits together.” If he immediately feels that he is carrying the spear the same distance, “from that feeling,” says Weber, “I live too.”
Now you should be careful with metaphysical explanations in top-class sport, on the other hand: If there was one thing that wasn’t lacking on Sunday evening in Munich’s Olympic Stadium, then it was emotions and the feeling with which Julian Weber, 27, from USC Mainz, aimed his javelin at an 87, 66 meters long journey to the European Championship title.
So this final day of the European Athletics Championships once again highlighted a handful of German athletes who made a championship out of not letting themselves be defeated. In 42.34 seconds, the women’s 4×100 meter sprint relay snatched the main prize that had eluded her at European level for a number of years. And Weber, who later stood in front of the reporters and said: “I’m European champion. I’ve got the medal I’ve been chasing for years.” He summed up: “It will take me a long time to understand what happened here.”
The audience simply blew all the heavy thoughts out of his head, says Weber
A first, small explanation: The first championships rarely go smoothly with the medals. Weber also went through years of pain for a long time, with three foot surgeries, among other things. He moved from Mainz to Rostock, from Rostock to Potsdam, to the Burkard Looks training group. He now knows how to keep his body reasonably healthy, he said recently. This year at the latest, he moved into the front row of German javelin throwers, which is also due to various sick leave (Johannes Vetter) and low form (Andreas Hofmann, Thomas Röhler) – but Weber thinks it’s nice to be in such a privileged role to hatch. And yet he had to attend the school of narrow failure one last time before everything fell into place.
In Eugene, he was still irritated by the fact that the tag of the medal hope was dangling from him, one of the few in a lurching German team. This time he mastered competition before competition. He spoke openly about his medal wishes, saw how his club colleague Niklas Kaul won decathlon gold at the beginning of the week, was full of anticipation, was also “in the tunnel” on his day, although he felt “really pain” and refrained from throwing in. A winning idea: “I wouldn’t have thought that he would counter the 87.28 meters of the Czech Jakub Vadlejch, in Eugene still third in the World Championship ahead of Weber, in the fourth attempt,” said Weber. The audience just blew all the heavy thoughts out of his head. Later he even had the strength for historical references: To win with the javelin in the Olympic Stadium, 50 years after Klaus Wolfermann’s Olympic victory, that was of course “a great honor”.
Julian Weber threw the javelin at 87.66 meters.
(Photo: Axel Kohring/Beautiful Sports/Imago)
In a way, it was fitting that shortly afterwards it was the women’s relay that sounded the last golden flourish of this EM and not their highly talented male colleagues who – as in Eugene – messed up the first change. Alexandra Burghardt, 28, Lisa Mayer, 26, Gina Lückenkemper, 25, and Rebekka Haase, 29, also had to sprint their own CV before everything came together this year, with bronze at the World Cup and gold at the European Championship. Haase, Mayer and Burghardt in particular were often injured.
Haase recently reported that she slipped into depression for months after the Tokyo games and was already too weak to take care of the laundry. Burghardt, on the other hand, often didn’t recover properly from malaise because she didn’t want to lose her place in the squadron, only being properly supported by her club in Burghausen and her family. She only found her old strength in the Corona year 2020 and with a new trainer. “If I hadn’t had the strong season I had last season, I wouldn’t be here this year,” she said ahead of the European Championship.
Did the EM undermine Eugene’s historically weak World Cup yield?
Haase recently reported that it was really exciting at the preparatory camp in Erding: In Eugene, the relay and reserve runners were rarely seen together, off the track. But that speaks for a special community that has grown over the past six or seven years: “Everyone has their own characteristics, their own lifestyle. But we enjoy it: that we are so different. We know that we also work that way. “
This “basic trust” in turn flows onto the track: she knows exactly, said Haase, when and how she has to start running when Lückenkemper rushes towards her, without commands, so that the baton slides into her hands. The routine is so deeply rooted that Lisa Mayer (in the preliminary and final) and Jessica Bianca-Wessolly (in the preliminary) easily slipped into the selection when Tatjana Pinto dropped out and Gina Lückenkemper was only fit again for the final.
With the performance of Munich, the Germans would have won only one medal at the World Cup, through Malaika Mihambo.
(Photo: Andrej Isakovic/AFP)
And now? After 16 medals, including seven gold ones, first place in the European Championship medal table? Did this undermine Eugene’s historically weak World Cup yield, the two medals and a sparse appearance in the final? Well, the conversion of chances by the top performers was undoubtedly good, with a few athletes coming much closer to their bests. But not many of the almost 120 athletes in the team, including experienced people. And the whole truth: With the bare performances in Munich, they would have won only one medal in Eugene, through Malaika Mihambo. The time of the gold relay would have been enough for fourth place at the World Cup.
Sure, some would say now, not only in the German association: different environment, different competitions. different air pressure. Softer mattresses. Such things. In fact, said the former decathlete and today’s ARD expert Frank Busemann time, it’s more like this: “The EM medals cloud the view.” On grievances in the association, a little on the fact that the Germans are the best on a continent that is increasingly being marginalized in world athletics. As DLV head coach Annett Stein said in Eugene: “It’s not all good if things are going well at the European Championships”. Despite all the athletes who absolutely didn’t let themselves be defeated, until the end.