Almeria. Strange, in an air-conditioned Munich exhibition hall, of all things, to think of a desert in front of an Andalusian port city. Maybe it’s the heat outside. The Tabernas Desert off Almería looks a bit like some barren stretches of land in North America, which is why many Westerns have been filmed there since the 1960s. Play me the Song of Death, The Magnificent Seven, Four Fists for a Hallelujah, Manitou’s Shoe – the list is long. After that, many of the scenes simply remained standing. Lonely scattered in the landscape, you can visit them: in the front supposedly a saloon or a church, behind nothing but a network of wooden slats and papier-mâché.
Of course, the exhibition hall C1 has nothing of a desert, except that it is just as quiet here in the morning of the opening day. The breeze from outside still doesn’t blow rolling bushes in. But no matter which door you enter through, you first encounter a huge network of wooden beams and steel struts that fills the entire hall to the brim and behind which something completely different is hidden, that’s the way it is.
In this case it is the Velodrome. Briefly through one of the tunnels in the network, another world opens up – which, however, has little of a western town. The last transmission rehearsals are running, monitors are everywhere on desks and stands, the climbing competitions from Königsplatz are currently being shown on TV. A few athletes are pedaling stationary bikes, one Swede, one Norwegian. Here you stand in the middle of the wooden railway oval, which extends at the outer edges to just below the roof. A few athletes are doing their warm-up laps above, circling above the heads of the people inside, the spectators in the grandstand seats directly under the hall roof could almost touch them. Futuristic high-tech special wheels hang around everywhere in the interior, some as expensive as a small car, others more expensive.
Kristina Vogel finds the system “unorthodox”. The risk of falling increases here
So there should be a lot of German medals here in the coming days. 22 decisions will be extended by Tuesday. Here Lisa Brennauer, the seven-time world champion from Kempten, will complete her last track cycling appearances before retiring, before she also says goodbye to the road races.
“Unorthodox,” says Kristina Vogel. She looks around.
The builders have created a very special place for Kristina Vogel. The 31-year-old comments on the competitions as an expert for ZDF, usually sitting in a grandstand seat. But everything is crammed so tightly into this hall that there was no way to make the seats up there accessible for the wheelchair, which the two-time Olympic champion has been dependent on since a training accident four years ago. So they built a podium in the middle of this oval in the interior from which she could comment, from which she could high five the drivers behind her desk, as she notes with a grin, and which seamlessly merges into another podium where the award ceremonies take place. After the team competitions, it can get tight for the commentators.
However, the “unorthodox” refers to the plant itself, which was built here within 14 days. The track is made of slabs instead of individual wooden boards, and because the hall just wasn’t big enough, the lap is only 200 meters long instead of the usual 250 meters. In the Olympic Hall, where the six-day race used to take place, gymnastics are taking place these days. There is this “range”, similar to football fields, which can be between 90 and 120 meters long, explains Manuel Deutschmeyer, the organizer’s spokesman. You meet these requirements, “otherwise we wouldn’t be able to win a medal”. The trade fair is a great partner that offers a lot of space and the necessary infrastructure, so this location was perfect for the track bike races.
At midday in the team sprint, two Britons collide, but their fall ends lightly
You see the whole thing in two parts, says Kristina Vogel. On the one hand, she is happy that her sport is receiving so much attention through its inclusion in the European Championships. On the other hand – and this but is worth a few sentences more to her – the lack of 50 meters increases the pressure on the curves enormously. “The tactics are changing dramatically, it’s going to be very demanding for everyone,” she says, and: “The danger is increasing!” Because of the strong centrifugal forces. One hears that the barriers that separate the spectators from the athletes have been raised again for a short time. At the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham at the end of July there had been several serious falls, one of which catapulted the Englishman Matt Walls into the audience over such a gang. Vogel worries that bad falls will also occur here. The women reach more than 70 kilometers per hour, the men ten more, there are no brakes anyway – and who knows better than Kristina Vogel what can happen in this sport. The keirin, the combat sprint, is only scheduled for the final Tuesday, and some associations are apparently still reluctant to take part.
Matt Walls (above) of England, George Jackson of New Zealand and Joshua Duffy of Australia fall in the 15km scratch race at the Commonwealth Games.
(Photo: Alex Broadway/dpa)
In the afternoon there will be the first gold medals for Germany in the women’s team sprint and team pursuit
The silence is already over in the afternoon. The next day, on Friday, the hall is sold out for the first time, with around 1700 tickets. More spectator seats would not have fit under this roof.
At noon in the team sprint semi-final, two Brits fall and hit their helmets, but their delegation quickly gives the all-clear: both are fine. The German team sprint world champions around Emma Hinze come to the final, they will later get gold, the second medal for Germany at this European Championship on this track. In the team pursuit, the German foursome rolled around Brennauer like a machine through the semi-finals, prevailed with a lead of almost four seconds on his 4000 meters, against Great Britain, after all, final opponents at the Olympic victory in Tokyo. Nevertheless, Franziska Brauße (Metzingen), Lisa Brennauer, Lisa Klein (Saarbrücken) and Mieke Kröger (Bielefeld), who are also world champions and hold the world record, almost even caught up with the Brits in the end, so almost took half the lap from them to win the the two teams start the race staggered. They prepared in Augsburg, the track there is similar.
It remains tricky, says Brennauer, but you’ve gotten used to the more difficult corners. And at the end of her career? That hides her, lets her know. On Saturday she will take part in the one-man pursuit, after that she will also take part in the street races, taking everything she can with her. The finale in the afternoon brings no surprises. The German women also beat Italy in the team pursuit. In an incredibly exciting race, in which they are only three kilometers behind, they take the first gold medal here at the fair. And there were no Wild West scenes either.