track bike
World Cup bankruptcy for women’s four: “Was the worm in there”
For the German women’s four, it was only enough for seventh place at the World Cup. photo
© Tim Goode/PA Wire/dpa
Two years ago, the German women’s foursome was still an Olympic champion, world champion and European champion. At the World Cup in Glasgow, he crashed in seventh place. Time is running out until Paris 2024.
In the end nothing worked. The German The women’s track four fell apart completely, Franziska Brausse and Co. rolled sporadically across the finish line at the World Championships in Glasgow and experienced a huge disappointment two years after the furious Olympic victory in Tokyo.
“It was a worm. It didn’t go well the whole time,” said national coach André Korff after Brauße, Lisa Klein, Lena Reißner and Mieke Kröger had only come in seventh with a very poor time of 4:18.527 minutes.
No comparison to his own world record two years ago in Tokyo (4:04.242), when at least Brausse, Klein and Kröger were part of the team. At that time, the foursome – led by Lisa Brennauer, who has since retired – was on everyone’s lips. Olympic champions, world champions, European champions – and to top it all off there was the honor in the Kurhaus in Baden-Baden as Germany’s team of the year.
Since then, however, the performance curve has gone down – with the low point in Glasgow. “It didn’t go well, you could see that. I already said in the box: We win together, we lose together. Today we rather lost,” said Brausse of the dpa. Especially the 22-year-old Reißner, who came on the team for Laura üßmilch, could not keep up with the pace. “Lena is a super young athlete who definitely has potential, also in the direction of Paris. Today may not have been her day,” said Brausse.
So the German team was only in the role of spectator in the finals. The national coach also found it difficult to investigate the causes. “Replacing Lisa Brennauer is not easy,” said Korff, but also pointed out: “We’re not in top form. We should think about how we can improve towards the Olympics. There are still some reserves.”
The team and coach want to stick to the goal of the Olympic medal. “We’re still on the right track for next year,” said Brauße and Korff emphasized: “The first two teams were relatively far away. But from third to seventh place it was relatively close together.” The national coach doesn’t see any changes in the team: “I assume that this is the way towards the Olympics.”
This means that both German foursomes are not ready for a medal a year before Paris. The men’s team also took seventh place on Friday, continuing the wait for a World Championship medal after 21 years. From the former success story in cycling – German men’s teams drove in the past five Olympic victories and 16 world championship titles – not much is left. The dry spell for women should not last that long.