European Championships
She flew to the gold medal: This is Sprint Queen Gina Lückenkemper
Gina Lückenkemper celebrates the European Championship title in Munich’s Olympic Stadium
© Alexander Hassenstein / Getty Images
Gina Lückenkemper secured the EM gold medal over 100 meters with a razor-thin lead – and can hardly believe her success afterwards. The 25-year-old sprinter almost didn’t compete in the final.
In the end, Gina Lückenkemper flew across the finish line. The 25-year-old sprinter only caught up with her competitors Mujinga Kambundji from Switzerland and the British Neita Daryll in the final of the 100 meters in the last meters and threw her upper body forward. The target photo decided. A millimeter lead was enough for the Munich Olympic Stadium to explode again after the gold medal triumph of decathlete Niklas Kaul. With 10.99 seconds, almost at the same time, but with a shoulder just ahead of the Swiss, Lückenkemper crossed the finish line on this intoxicating evening for German athletics. Expressed in numbers, Lückenkemper’s lead was five thousandths.
The fact that as soon as she crossed the finish line she stumbled and fell onto the tartan track and a wound on her thigh had to be sewn up with eight stitches – it no longer mattered. When Lückenkemper saw the result on the scoreboard, she burst out. Stunned, she opened her eyes and put her hands in front of her face, 40,000 spectators sang “Oh, how beautiful it is”. The spectacular women’s 100-meter final marked the end of a day on which the German track and field athletes were enthusiastic. Niklas Kaul won gold in the decathlon, the discus throwers Kristin Pudenz and Claudine Vita won silver and bronze. It hadn’t been this successful for a long time.
Success on tortuous paths
“The stadium is absolutely amazing today. I’m so incredibly grateful to you. I don’t notice anything right now, I have so much adrenaline,” said Lückenkemper into the microphone in the stadium, through which La Ola sloshed.
Lückenkemper had been plagued by problems before the final. She started the semi-finals with a blue tape on her back left thigh. Only her trainer convinced her to take part in the final. Sporting success sometimes comes about on winding paths.
It is fitting that Lückenkemper, who comes from Soest in North Rhine-Westphalia, has repeatedly been thrown back by injuries in the past. Four years ago she had won silver at the European Championships, but the big breakthrough was a long time coming. At the Olympic Games in Tokyo last year, she only took part as a reserve runner for the sprint relay. Although she was used in the final, she only managed fifth place. At the World Cup in the USA a few weeks ago, she failed in the semi-finals, but won bronze in the relay.
She lives in Florida
So now the biggest triumph of her career. Lückenkemper has finally proven that she can keep up with the best in the world, even if the Jamaican and American sprinters are in a league of their own. But exactly to close this gap, Lückenkemper switched to the training group (Pure Athletics Group) of US coach Lance Baumann in 2019. He picked her up because she’d proven she could do it with multiple runs under 11 seconds.
Since then, she has been training in Clermont, Florida, has taken an apartment there and has steadily improved. The group is top-class. American sprint world champion and Olympic gold medalist Tori Bowie and two-time Olympic gold medalist Shaunae Miller-Uibo from the Bahamas are among them. Baumann trains less, but harder. Known are the knock-out days (Ko days), on which the runners complete sprints at a faster rate. It goes so far that Lückenkempfer would throw up every time if she had the time, she once told the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung”.
A certain hardness against herself is just as inherent to her as a great deal of self-confidence. When the German athletes came under severe criticism after their poor performance at the World Championships in Eugene, Lückenkemper vehemently defended himself and at the same time denounced the promotion of top-level sport here in Germany. The German athletes would have to “work their asses off to be able to compete against these full professionals”. The two-time Olympic champion Ulrike Nasse-Meyfahrt, now 66 years old, dismissed it as “populist nonsense”. The debate will definitely continue. As a European champion, Lückenkemper’s criticism will be heard more.
Lückenkemper now has a little time to take a breather and enjoy her new role. During this time, she should collect a few more followers on Instagram, where she is already followed by over 180,000 people. The next big goal follows on Sunday. The athlete from SCC Berlin wants to win the next medal with the relay.
Sources: DPA, “sport show”, Deutschlandfunk, “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung”, N TV