At the Olympic Games he missed a medal by a few centimetres, at the World Championships Julian Weber was fourth again. This annoys the javelin thrower enormously, he would rather have finished fifth. Malaika Mihambo gives hope for precious metal and the decathletes are doing well too.
Bronze!!! The German team had longed so much for the first medal in these championships, which had been so messed up up to now... And then there were four first medals! A fantastic women's relay with Tatjana Pinto, Alexandra Burghardt, Gina Lückenkemper and the great final runner Rebekka Haase stormed over 4x100 meters in 42.03 seconds behind the USA (41.14) and Jamaica (41.18) to the bronze coup. "It's incredible, I'm incredibly proud of all of us," said Haase. The four have formed the core of the German season for seven years - and they rewarded themselves at the best possible moment.
... and sheet metal: Javelin thrower Julian Weber actually had the greatest hopes for a medal. But he ended up fourth, just like at the Olympics. "Fourth place was the last thing I wanted. I would have preferred fifth," said Weber. Unlike in Tokyo, this time he was not 14 but 123 centimeters short of his first medal. But that didn't mitigate the disappointment. The 27-year-old from Mainz scored 86.86 meters in the first round and was second. But after that nothing worked. Like in 2019, Anderson Peters (Grenada/90.54 meters) won gold.
Kaul's prospects: Decathlon world champion Niklas Kaul is only marginally worse than in his gold coup in 2019, and top favorite Damian Warner from Canada was injured in the 400-meter run at the end of the first day. So sounds good. However, Kaul is only 16th and would need a second miracle day similar to three years ago for a medal. "I regained a lot of self-confidence this afternoon that I had lost, and I would like to continue tomorrow," said Kaul on ZDF. The best German is the young US student Leo Neugebauer in ninth place. In the lead: Surprising Ayden Owens-Delerme from Puerto Rico.
Golden prospects: On Sunday, Malaika Mihambo could give this World Cup, which from a German perspective has been rather rusty for a long time, a golden coat of paint. In the qualification, the defending champion at least underlined that she is "ready to rumble", as it is said at the venue of the competitions: At 6.84 meters, the 28-year-old from Heidelberg surpassed the required 6.75 meters in the first attempt, and still did 17 centimeters on the board. "Everything worked out the way we imagined it," said Mihambo: "I felt very good, it was a good competition, everything is as it should be, I'm looking forward to tomorrow." The American Quanesha Burks flew two centimeters further than the Olympic champion, but only on the third and last attempt.
14. Gold? Actually, Allyson Felix had finished running. At least since Friday. The most successful person in the history of the World Athletics Championships had actually contested his last race - there had been bronze for Felix and the US mixed relay. Now Felix competed again in the preliminary heat over 4x400 meters and set the best time with the USA. It could be Felix's 14th gold medal on Sunday, regardless of whether it runs or not. If the 36-year-old were a country, she would be in 15th place in the "eternal" World Cup medal table - ahead of France (13 times gold) or Italy (12).
Message from Tigray: Sport at world level is political. Inevitably. Always. In Eugene, Ethiopia's Gudaf Tsegay's 5,000m victory drew attention to a conflict often overlooked in the affluent world. Tsegay comes from the Tigray region in the north of the country. Ethiopia's head of state Abiy Ahmed, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, has been using his troops against militias from the deposed regional government for a year and a half - a bloody crisis in an already stricken region. In Eugene, a larger delegation celebrated their world champion with the flags of Tigray on the one hand, and on the other hand protested against the reprisals at home with posters and in the form of a quickly overwhelmed speedster - from which sportswomen also suffer. "Gidey hasn't spoken to her family in two years," read one card. Letesenbet Gidey, also from Tigray, had won the 10,000 meters in Eugene.
