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Lennard Kämna wins mountain stage at Giro d'Italia: Dance on the volcano

2022-05-11T11:54:32.795Z


With the stage win at the Giro d'Italia, Lennard Kämna proves his great talent. The 25-year-old is so good because he has regained the desire to ride a bike. A year ago things were different.


Enlarge image

Lennard Kämna at the finish as the winner on Mount Etna

Photo: LUCA BETTINI / AFP

When an athlete says he's fully motivated, he's "really in the mood," then that's often just a phrase.

With Lennard Kämna it is a commitment.

Because it was very different with him.

On Tuesday, he impressively demonstrated how great the 25-year-old's enthusiasm for cycling is again.

At the first mountain stage of the Giro d'Italia this year up to the mighty Mount Etna, he kicked the competition to the ground.

A dance on the volcano.

In the final sprint, fellow escapee Juan Pedro Lopez, after all a proven mountain specialist, was no longer able to keep up.

But it was also worth it for him: The Spaniard slipped into the pink jersey of the overall leader.

Bora-Hansgrohe is already on target

Kämna's team Bora-Hansgrohe is already on target after four stages of the Giro, "that takes the pressure off us," said the North German after the stage win.

He now wears the mountain best's blue jersey and sits in a strong second place overall behind Lopez.

He already impressed in the time trial with eighth place, on the first stage in Hungary he launched a hard attack, where he was caught shortly before the finish.

The fact that Kämna is one of the great hopes of German cycling, just as strong on the mountain as in the race against the clock, is not new.

It is anything but a matter of course that he trumps so much this year.

A year ago, Lennard Kämna's career was still uncertain.

In May 2021, Kämna slammed the brakes and ended the season before it had really started.

No Tour de France, the tour where he had already impressed so much with a stage win in 2020, no Olympic Games, no Giro, no World Cup.

Instead, a full break.

Anything but cycling.

"I've lived my life wrong"

Kämna had lost interest in his sport, he told the “Weser-Kurier” last October that he had had problems “getting satisfaction outside of sport.

I've lived my life wrong."

He "missed opening myself up to other things, developing other interests."

He then caught up with verve, he got his sailing license, met friends, he was simply away from competitive sports for nine months, only returned in February and slowly felt his way back to cycling.

He took part in the Cape Epic, a mountain bike race in South Africa, just like that, without ambitions, “but when I saw the other riders fighting for victory, I got itchy feet again”.

Today he no longer wants to talk in detail about why he left last year: "I just didn't feel like it anymore," he says only - he's catching up on that now too.

Racing team demonstratively extended contract

He had the backing of his racing team last year.

When he announced his time off, Bora-Hansgrohe demonstratively extended the contract with Kämna until 2023. "I see my job as team boss as being to protect him and take him out of the line of fire, and that's why we decided to draw a line pull and restart after a reset.

He should first recover completely,” said team boss Ralph Denk.

It's not the first time that Kämna has taken a break.

That was already the case during his time with Team Sunweb, a reaction to the enormous pressures of a professional season.

In the SPIEGEL interview, he said at the time that it was simply “everything too much” and that he needed a kind of “summer vacation”.

Tom Dumoulin from the Netherlands, already crowned with a Giro victory and his captain at Sunweb at the time, had also suspended 2021 for months and explicitly justified this with massive motivation problems and the mental strain.

He felt as if he had "a 100-kilo rucksack on his shoulders," Dumoulin explained.

Kämna is still in contact with Dumoulin via WhatsApp, but the German has also gotten sports psychological help.

And now seems as strong as when he won the stage of the Tour de France.

At that time, even Richard Carapaz, top favorite for the Giro victory this year, could no longer follow him on the way to the finish in Villard-de-Lans.

Giro profile suits him

»I am the same driver as in 2020 with the same skills.

The feeling gets better and better from race to race,” says Kämna.

Actually, he is planned as a noble helper for his captains Wilco Kelderman and Emmanuel Buchmann at this Giro, but now he is the center of attention.

The route profile of the Giro 2022 is such that the stages that are in Kämna are yet to come: in the second and third week there are still numerous climbs in Abruzzo, in the Alps, as if baked for the German.

His sporting director Rolf Aldag said about him on the television channel Eurosport: "You just have to let Lenni do it, discussing a lot with him doesn't make much sense at all."

Just let him do it - then Lennard Kämna's desire will come back.

Source: spiegel

All sports articles on 2022-05-11

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