Gymnastics star
Dauser with World Cup gold in Olympic mode
Gymnast Lukas Dauser won World Championships gold on parallel bars. photo
© Virginia Mayo/AP/dpa
Blue, black, red, yellow, green: parallel bars champion Lukas Dauser is starting his “Road to Paris” with the Olympic party motto. His World Championship gold should also inspire the other German gymnasts.
The Olympic future began for the new gymnastics world champion Lukas Dauser symbolically already the evening after his triumph. The banquet at the end of the World Cup in Antwerp was themed “The Olympic Colors”.
And the 30-year-old dressed appropriately: red cap, yellow glasses, black shirt, blue jeans and green shoes. But his thoughts went beyond the five-color party and towards Paris.
“Now there’s a bit of pressure on it, a burden on it, there are the Olympic Games next year and going there as world champion is not without its consequences,” the parallel bars champion told the German Press Agency: “For me it’s desire. I’m trying to do that to turn it into a positive: Hey, I can do gymnastics so well. I want to show that again and I’m up for it.”
Praise from the gymnastics idol
Fabian Hambüchen, who was the last German gymnastics world champion until Dauser’s coup with his horizontal bar title in 2007, expects his success to be an incentive for the entire men’s team. “Definitely. The big goal of the Olympics was to secure the ticket, and they did that confidently. But for him, this World Cup is the highlight of his career,” the 35-year-old told dpa.
After the award ceremony, Lukas Dauser kept looking proudly at his medal around his neck and was also satisfied with the bite test. “It holds up, looks good, I’m satisfied,” he said, “I’m incredibly satisfied, incredibly happy.” His coach Hubert Brylok in Halle/Saale praised him for the victory in Antwerp with all his heart: “The boy really deserves it because he works so professionally.”
Dauser also expects his World Cup title to provide further tailwind towards the Olympic Games for his Halle training colleagues Nils Dunkel and Nick Klessing as well as his other selection colleagues Lucas Kochan (Cottbus), Pascal Brendel (Wetzlar) and the currently injured Andreas Toba (Hannover). “The fact that one of us manages to become world champion is pure motivation for everyone. We are a good gymnastics nation, we have proven that here, especially the men. That motivates everyone again, that they know we can do it too “can do it,” said the Olympic silver medalist on the parallel bars.
In the hour of his success, the champion also took time for an anecdote. His former coach Kurt Szilier once asked the 12-year-old what his goal was. He replied that he wanted to become Vice World Champion, whereupon the coach asked him: Why Vice World Champion? “I replied: Well then I don’t have any competition anymore,” said Dauser.
Enjoy World Cup success at home
After qualifying for the parallel bars final in Antwerp, he wrote to Szilier as an adult that his opinion had now changed. “His answer was: Dear Lukas, I wish you a lot of skill and a lot of success, that you no longer have any competition,” said the visibly moved world champion, “that I have now achieved this is incredible.”
After nine days with four tough competitions, Dauser wants to treat himself to a little rest at home in Halle/Saale. “I’m happy that I can sit on the couch with my medal around my neck and then hang it on my medal board,” he announced. After a few appointments, including honors, the sports soldier will begin a four-week course next Monday, at the end of which he would like to become a sergeant.
Because he wants to maintain his fitness level, he will also be doing gymnastics in the Bundesliga and at the Swiss Cup in Zurich on November 3rd, before flying to the Maldives for a ten-day honeymoon with his wife Viktoria in December. “And from mid-December the ‘Road to Paris’ starts for me.”