With Malaika Mihambo you never know exactly who you are. Is she a long jumper? Or rather a sprinter? Even a discoverer could have been lost to the 25-year-olds. But all of this goes well together, and perhaps the mix best explains why Mihambo is one of Germany's most successful athletes at the latest with the Qatar World Cup.
On the last day of the competition in Doha she had come to "three blasts", Mihambo later said, happy and above all relieved she was. "I train all year, from season to season, of course you want to be on top of the podium." But she had not quite finished all that, especially this one blast that had clattered much louder than the others. So loud that the jury could immediately award the gold medal.
In the third attempt Mihambo had jumped 7.30 meters. Better: she had flown over the sand pit. A distance that has not existed for years, of course, it was enough for Mihambo to say goodbye to the World Cup in Doha with the gold medal in the long jump. Mihambo was 38 centimeters ahead of second-placed Ukrainian Maryna Bekh-Romanchuk, 39 centimeters from Ese Brume of Nigeria, who won bronze. These are long jump worlds.
The Mihambo year
The gold medal for Mihambo should not cause a quake, as the completely unexpected title of Niklas Kaul in the decathlon. The sensation of these competitions from the German point of view. The gold medal for the 25-year-old was almost planned, since she had won each of her nine competitions on the way to the World Cup, at 7.16 meters stood her previous year's best. She was more like the competition from the competition month after month.
But who appears so dominant, is also exposed to pressure, even to yourself wants to deliver. And at first it looked as if the high-flyer had wanted a bit of nervous flutter, a little too much. "I seemed nervous already," Mihambo said of her early days.
DIEGO AZUBEL / EPA-EFE / REX
Malaika Mihambo is currently the fastest long jumper
A first safety jump (6.52 meters) was followed by a miss attempt, another failed jump and she might not have been in the last three jumps. "That could not be a miss," Mihambo said about the third attempt that had caused this loud bang: "Something had to come, at least something valid, but that the jump was so good then - just incredible."
In the footsteps of Heike Drechsler
The incomprehensible can be explained in words like this: Mihambo exceeded their previous best spread by 14 centimeters, it was the world's longest jump since 2016, in Germany flew only long jump legend Heike Drechsler (7.48 meters) on, Mihambo is now on place twelve of the historical leaderboard. She jumped in Qatar in the fifth and sixth attempt each over seven meters, even with these experiments she would have become world champion.
But how does she do that? One answer is their sprinting speed at startup. Of course, the whole process is much more complex, not just to reduce its launch speed of about 35 kilometers per hour. But her leg muscles are so much more pronounced than those of the competition, which of course is an advantage. She was the fourth-fastest German sprinter this year, she could have done more than 100 meters, if Mihambo had wanted that.
But the danger of a cold was too big. If you wanted to go to Khalifa Stadium in Qatar, you had to switch between very hot temperatures and high humidity outdoors and cool, dry air inside the stadium several times. Mihambo did not want to do the constant change between the climatic zones for the 100 meters. So she kept the cold risk low, especially since she looked well prepared with onion look and ginger tea anyway, as she told the SPIEGEL before the World Cup.
New strength found in India
Now Mihambo wants to go on a discovery tour again. On Monday morning she will be on a plane to Bangkok. With the backpack she will spend a month exploring Thailand. Meeting people, trying things, broadening the horizon. "I have only four weeks off a year, which I want to fully enjoy," said Mihambo, who has been to India in the past.
Some say this was the starting signal for their leap to the top of the world; For a long time, that was not foreseeable. In 2017, her career almost ended in deadlock because of an injury. But then came India, a break from the sport, where she found peace, developed mental strength, it was a "hard and intense" time. Mihambo then became European champion in Berlin, of course, because she trains the other eleven months a year.
It will be interesting to see what strength she will bring from Thailand. A medal at the Olympic Games, they are still missing, and then there is also the record of Heike Drechsler. "You do not jump 7.30 meters every day now," she said once more about her blast and a possible hunt for Drechsler, and she added, "I'm only 25, so I have a few good years ahead of me . " It should be more Mihambo years.
