Why not flee. In spring, when the sun in Stuttgart is at best shimmering faintly and is by no means warming, there are solutions. Despite more than ten years of competitive sport, Elisabeth Seitz is spontaneous, and Italy is close. For a change, this spring she traveled across the Alps for a few weeks and performed gymnastics in what was initially a foreign world, in the Italian league.
Actually, their world is different. It is significantly smaller, consists of two crossbars in the air, which are braced differently. The lower at 1.66 meters, the upper at 2.46 meters. In between, behind, above and in front of it, the gymnast Seitz feels at home and has achieved great art for almost 13 years. On Saturday she could win another medal at a European Championship, maybe gold.
At the age of 18, Seitz was not attracted to the natural, but to the difficult
But no matter how it turns out, the 29-year-old is already of great value for the German Gymnastics Federation. She emerged from the qualifications as the only German medal candidate, which is important for the importance of an Olympic sport. Seitz signaled: We’re still here. Some attention recently also fell on the only 19-year-old Pascal Brendel from Wetzlar, who took eighth place in the all-around at his first major event. The team is getting younger and younger, replacements like balance beam talent Emma Malewski are urgently needed, but they also need time to develop routine. So she had overwhelmed the role as defending champion, in the qualification she had to be relegated sid she said, “I tried to hide that, but it didn’t work that well.”
The furnishings of Seitz’ world are made of fine and resilient wood such as oak or cherry, round and 3.9 centimeters thick. And if this seems too low, you can increase it by a few centimetres, everyone adjusts their world differently, Seitz has also made it as comfortable as possible. But it took time.
At first, when she was still adjusting, she would fall on the mat or get bruises, and then as she became more confident in her gymnastics as she grew to like parallel bars, there were still lows in the relationship. Even the other day, when Seitz arrived at the World Cup in Liverpool with a weakened corona and then just missed a medal. However, the joys have prevailed over the years, because she has achieved quite a few things. For example, the invention of something seemingly impossible, namely the Seitz.
The natural way to fly from one bar to the other on the uneven bars is belly down and head forward because: You can see the target. But this is gymnastics, and at the age of 18, Seitz was not attracted to the natural, but to the difficult, and it was also the parallel bars, which she wasn’t afraid of. So, in the direct flight from the lower to the upper bar, she turned not just half, but a full turn around her body axis, and when she grabbed the upper bar she did not have her eye on it, but the hall ceiling. The downside: you fall many times before the bar is in your fists – the advantage: there are decent points on top of it and some gymnastics fame, because this seemingly impossible has since been called “the Seitz”.
After more than a decade, she now doses her strength
All of this was only possible because the gymnast from Heidelberg was always a bit crazy. She once called herself a “competition sow”, perhaps because she was motivated by it, but perhaps also because focusing and a powerful appearance were more important to her than the focus on grace that is still popular in women’s gymnastics.
In any case, she’s been there for 13 years, feels like 20 years, she also had all sorts of injuries, such as torn tendons, and yet she’s only 29 years old. At the age of 18 she won all-around silver at the European Championships in Berlin, and at 25 she won bronze at the World Championships on uneven bars. And even before her appearance on the international stage, she had regularly mastered the national championships.
After more than a decade at the highest level, Seitz is now also dosing her strength. Seitz met with national coach Gerben Wiersma at the beginning of the year to look for a new design for the exercises. After so many years, the same routines no longer inspire even the most disciplined gymnast. In the end, the two came to a surprising conclusion. After a long search, after weighing the pros and cons, they decided to save themselves the time and prefer to continue with the tried and tested.
It sounds modest, but it’s actually wise, and it fits with what the once aggressive competitor said in Antalya recently. Even if some teammates were angry about the failure, one should not ignore the actual goal. “We should be satisfied,” said Seitz in Antalya, “that we managed to qualify for the World Cup. That was the goal.”
Well, she also has another important one, with the uneven bars final on Saturday.