Allow: Gina Nazionale!

Germany is finally celebrating its athletics star again

Created: 08/18/2022, 09:45 am

By: Gunter Klein

Gina Lückenkemper celebrating.

© Sven Hoppe

Tuesday evening still resonates emotionally.

Gina Lückenkemper won gold.

The price of the pike at the finish is a laceration - now it's about the prospects of the relay.

Munich – You will never forget this moment of silence and its dissolution in a roar.

Only the seconds in which the noise level went down: Gina Lückenkemper had crossed the finish line, somehow pike more, her momentum tore her to the ground.

She then got up, not knowing because nobody had been able to decipher with the naked eye how this 100m final of the European Championships had turned out.

Lückenkemper was behind, she had caught up.

Medal, that was clear - but what color?

Silver or bronze, probably not gold.

But the display on the powerful screens that were set up for the European Championships in Munich's Olympic Stadium contradicted the first fleeting impressions: "1 Lückenkemper 10.99 seconds." The competition protocol noted 10.984 seconds for the German and 10.989 for the Swiss Mujinga Kambundji.

Five thousandths lay between them - at the start Gina Lückenkemper was the slowest in the eighth field.

The picture that illustrated sports history on Tuesday also had one color: red.

Gina Lückenkemper looked at her hand, which had blood on it.

It was from the leg, from the knee.

It didn't bother her at first, "because I was full of adrenaline, I didn't know how it happened either."

She was treated, the wound was bandaged, she ran a lap of honor, the German Athletics Association (DLV) spared her the usual media obligations and sent her to the hospital.

Because the question also hovered over the scenery: What's next for the EM?

The sprint relay needs Gina Lückenkemper.

Gina Lückenkemper celebrating.

© ANDREJ ISAKOVIC

At 1.10am she was back at the team hotel, everyone stayed up, big hello.

The 25-year-old now also had clarity as to how the injury had come about: she had cut herself with the thorns of her shoes.

That had to be sewn with eight stitches.

She took the mishap with Lückenkemper humor: "I've never driven an ambulance."

She dismissed the injury laconically: “I can still feel it quite well.

The left knee is patched, the right full of abrasions.

It works,” she said at the press conference on Wednesday afternoon.

The related news: She will not start in the heats of the 4x100 m relay, with which she won bronze at the World Championships in Eugene.

As for the final, which is expected to be reached because Tatjana Pinto, Alexandra Burghardt and Rebekka Haase are attuned to each other and can probably get along with a substitute runner, Lückenkemper is “in good spirits.

But there is no guarantee."

Gina Lückenkemper at the finish.

© Sven Hoppe

Substitute runner – that was her status a year ago in Tokyo at the Olympics.

At that time she had to go through her career low.

The popularity of the EM 2018 (silver) was gone.

She had to be asked what the point is that she trains in the USA.

What was once funny—her licking a battery to recharge—now seemed embarrassing.

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By August 16, 2022 at the latest, Gina Lückenkemper will have left all malice behind.

She's Gina Nazionale again (that's what Italians once called their Lollobrigida), and her stitched wound is the wound of the nation.