BGina Lückenkemper offered blood, sweat and tears when she became European champion with a furious sprint in the Munich Olympic Stadium. She stumbled as she threw herself at the finish line and fell, injuring herself with the spikes on her right shoe. She only realized how serious the injury was when, after bewilderment, cheering and crying, she had to call a paramedic; the wound bled more and more. Instead of being in front of the television cameras, the fastest woman in Europe went to the hospital; the wound was sewn up.
As great as the surprise of her victory is, the planners of the program were confident. After the final of the decathlon, which Niklas Kaul won, and after the men’s hundred meters, the women’s sprint was the final and high point of the evening. Lückenkemper knew how to use it.
Lückenkemper did everything right
“Mission to hold hands accomplished,” she wrote wryly on Instagram as she left the hospital after midnight. The sprinter from Soest in Westphalia, who lives in Bamberg, trains in Clermont (Florida) and competes for SCC Berlin, proves with the title that she has done everything right. Although she is only 25 years old, she has dominated the sprint in Germany for so long that the end of her career is predicted for every weakness.
This is one of the reasons why she decided to switch to the American coach Lance Brauman. However, injuries and the restrictions of the corona pandemic, in particular the entry ban to the United States, forced her to spend a long time in Germany. When she wasn’t seeing a doctor or a physical therapist, she would drive the nails of her starting block into the ground in parks and gardens to train.
About the work in her international training group with Olympic and world champions, to which she returned in early 2021, she says that it takes place with an almost unbelievable intensity. She trains less than before, but is often on the verge of throwing up. There was still time at the stadium Tuesday night to hug Brauman; that night she thanked him for kicking her butt.
Gina Lückenkemper not only works professionally in sports, but also in self-marketing. Fans have digital access to the Lückenkemper cosmos, which is inhabited by the new European champion, the horse Picasso and a miniature dachshund with their own Instagram account: “Akira.the.mini.sausage”. Occasional lack of seriousness on the part of the sprinter should not be confused with aimlessness. Five years ago she was the first German to run under eleven seconds since the doped Katrin Krabbe, for the fifth time in her greatest success to date in Munich.
