A few minutes before the starting gun on Monday evening, the 10,000-meter runners trotted out of the catacombs. Not so Konstanze Klosterhalfen, who sprinted past everyone at the beginning of the warm-up. And the race got off to a flying start, and the 25-year-old went along with the first increase in speed. But at almost 7500 meters, the later winner, the Turkish Yasemin Can, started a very long sprint. Klosterhalfen had to be demolished, seeing British Eilish McColgan and Israeli Lonah Chemtai Saltpeter disappear. That wasn’t her plan. “You picture it a little differently in front of a home crowd,” she said.
She probably imagined the whole of 2022 differently. Konstanze Klosterhalfen had to end the indoor season in January because of a fall in a parking garage while warming up for the Milrose Games in New York. When she broke the European two-mile record in May, everything pointed to a successful season with two highlights. First the World Championships in Eugene, USA, then the European Championships in Munich. But at the end of June, Klosterhalfen became infected with Corona in the altitude training camp in Switzerland and was positive for 15 days. At the end of July she still competed at the Hayward Field at the World Championships over 5000 meters and was eliminated in the heats.
Unfortunately, Klosterhalfen is familiar with unwanted breaks like after her Covid illness: “Actually, I can regenerate quickly,” she said after the 10,000 meters in Munich. Because in 2020 she had to do without competitions for a long time due to an overload reaction in the pelvis and back problems, and in 2018 she also had to struggle with a knee injury for a long time. Then, in 2019, Oliver Mintzlaff, the managing director of the RB Leipzig soccer club, became her advisor and steered the Klosterhalfen, who had been training in Leverkusen to date, to the Nike Oregon Project to their current coach Pete Julien.
And in 2019, the form fitted. Klosterhalfen ran a fantastic 5000m race in Doha and finished third at a world championships. But no report about this success came without a “but”. Alberto Salazar, head coach of the Nike Oregon Project, was banned shortly before the World Cup for doping experiments, now life for sexual and emotional misconduct. In 2019, the runner Mary Cain showed what such a system, in which performance and not people count, can do with health the New York Times told.
The goal was ambitious: to beat their own record
The Nike Oregon Project is formally dissolved, but Klosterhalfen is still training with Pete Julien. Meanwhile, the Irish long-distance runner and Olympic silver medalist in 2000, Sonia O’Sullivan, has joined Klosterhalfen’s coaching team: “She’s been with us for a year and it’s great to have such a legend on the team,” she says. “She has other experiences and can give other input, especially when Pete isn’t there. But she’s the assistant coach, and that’s how it will stay for the time being.” Klosterhalfen’s training after her corona infection was intensive: “We did a harder workout every other day and that actually worked quite well with the regeneration.” she feels good
After the lack of a chance in Eugene, Klosterhalfen had a lot planned for Munich. Klosterhalfen explained after the race that she would have thought a time of 30:30 minutes possible for the 10,000 meters. That would have been half a minute faster than her German record from last year. And the time on Monday wasn’t far from this target either, the clock in the Olympic Stadium showed 31:05.21 minutes, just four seconds above her personal best time. Nevertheless, she said: “I thought that I could keep up with that longer and then it wouldn’t be that difficult.”
On Thursday she wants to run the 5000 for the first time after the 10,000 meters: “There is not that much time in between, but I have seen with many that it is still possible to run a good five, maybe it suits me the five even better than the ten.”
Whether at 5,000 or 10,000 meters – not only Klosterhalfen had high expectations of himself. She is now 25 years old and no longer a young talent. She wants performance to speak for itself. The German Athletics Association, which, alongside Malaika Mihambo, is running out of top talent at the top of the world, is also hoping for this. The consultant Mintzlaff once called Klosterhalfen a “millennial talent” who can run the world record over 5000 meters. She already has all the German records between one mile and 10,000 meters. And Klosterhalfen certainly has the ability to run even faster. Although not necessarily the world record conjured up by Mintzlaff. In order to permanently establish itself among the world leaders, Konstanze needs one thing above all: consistency.