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Richard Ringer on the way to the winner's party
Photo:
IMAGO/ERIC LALMAND / IMAGO/Belga
Richard Ringer was already gone, he didn't seem to be able to get into the fight for gold anymore.
There was so much road, time and meters between the German marathon runner and the leader Maru Teferi that he should have caught up.
And Teferi didn't give the impression that he would break down at the European Championship marathon in Munich.
If Ringer had just finished his race, without any increase in pace, he would probably have finished fifth, maybe fourth, and this result would also have been a great success.
But Ringer didn't let that sit on him.
Suddenly the former track runner started.
His strides got bigger and bigger.
"He's flying," yelled the TV commentators on ARD.
With a magical sprint to the finish, the 33-year-old rushed past his competitors. Ringer was already grinning in the last meters, he knew that he was getting faster and faster - and that everyone else wasn't.
When he was level with Teferi, the Israeli allowed the overtaking manoeuvre, in the last few meters of the marathon almost nobody has the strength left for a counterattack.
Only Ringer just didn't seem to run out of breath.
“The home straight was so long.
I was fine air wise but had cramps all over the bottom.
My feet hurt,” Ringer said.
After 2:10:21 hours, Ringer crossed the finish line – as European Champion.
This triumph is a sensation for the man who only switched from 5000 meters to the marathon two years ago.
»It was only my fourth marathon, all before that were tough.
But today it was easy because we had the team.
That was totally motivating.
The fact that this result comes out in the individual is crazy,” said Ringer.
It quickly became clear that Ringer's track experience was a good basis.
Before him, a certain Eliud Kipchoge, the fastest man in the world, switched from middle distances like the 5000 meters to the marathon.
In addition to his enormous basic speed - in 2016 he won bronze at the European Championships - Ringer also has great endurance.
Already with his marathon debut he managed to qualify for the Summer Olympics in Japan.
The training for the 42.195 kilometers for the former sprinter from the track feels like going for a walk, Ringer once said, but his career is now moving at a rapid pace.
Munich was the crowning glory of Ringer's young marathon career.
The fastest runners in the world may have been missing in Munich, the Kenyan Kipchoge of course, or the currently fastest European Abdi Nageeye from the Netherlands, who finished second in the Olympics last year and has the fastest season of a European in a marathon.
But that in no way detracts from Ringer's European Championship victory.
Unlike most marathon runners, Ringer doesn't train at the heights of Iten, Kenya, but is drawn to the US where he trains with a running group.
With the selection of the training camp, Ringer also tried to prepare for the climatic conditions in Munich.
The impending high temperatures have been a contentious issue in the past few days. On the day of the race in Munich, it wasn't quite as hot as expected, but the humidity of almost 60 percent drew all the nutrients from the runners' bodies.
Ringer was prepared for it - and a Covid infection in May, which had disturbed his preparation for the EM, was no longer a problem.
Part of the Ringer runner story is that he is a confident and brave athlete.
Before the games in Japan, he said that you always have a chance in title races at the Olympics or a European Championship without a pacemaker.
Now Ringer has proven that he can take advantage of this opportunity.
The last German medal in the men's marathon was a long time ago: Herbert Steffny won bronze in Stuttgart in 1986.
Ringer's gold victory is sensational, but a medal for Germany didn't come as a complete surprise.
The German marathon sport has developed particularly broadly in recent years.
There are now several candidates who can run strong times, this also has to do with more professional training groups or more accessible training camps in Kenya or the USA.
Germany's fastest man remains without a medal
The symbol of this development is Amanal Petros.
Germany's fastest marathon runner could almost have entered the list of individual medalists in Munich, but Petros fell back to fourth place in the final meters.
Also because Ringer passed him with his sprint.
As a consolation, Petros got the silver medal with the German team.
A German marathon runner had previously had a similar experience.
Miriam Dattke sat on the tarmac staring at the scoreboard above the finish she had passed seconds earlier.
2:28:52 hours was written next to her name, Nienke Brinkman also had the same time, but the Dutchwoman was a step faster, a little step.
She won bronze.
It was the dramatic conclusion of a spectacular women's European Championship marathon, which almost ended with a medal for the 24-year-old Dattke.
It would have been a sensation, but even so it is a great success for the runner, who finished a marathon for the first time in Seville in February.
"I'm super happy, of course I would have liked to get a medal," said Dattke, who made sure that with the German champion Domenika Mayer in sixth place (2:29:21) and Deborah Schöneborn (2:30:35) in tenth place the German team won the team classification.
This success was achieved even without Germany's fastest runner, Melat Kejeta, who is currently taking a baby break.
Before the race, Dattke was not one of the favorites.
But now, in the streets of Munich, she seemed completely undeterred, the high humidity didn't seem to bother her, the much greater experience of her competitors didn't scare her.
Up to 38km she was level with Aleksandra Lisowska from Poland, who went on to win gold at the end.
At 40 kilometers Dattke made a late decision to leave the ideal line, she reached for a sponge at an aid station to cool her body a little, but she couldn't get hold of it.
In a marathon, little things can make all the difference, and the women's race over the 42.195 kilometers from Munich was one that was so close that every little thing made the difference.
The men's race, however, decided no small matter.
It was the show of strength that Richard Ringer had shown on the home straight.