German distance participants at Olympics: Schlangen misses final and Höhne is walking 50km

August 19, 2008

In the 1500m-semifinal German Carsten Schlangen just missed the final by a close margin. After a tactical clever race, in which he mostly ran on 5th position (first 5 runners+2fastest times were qualified for the final) he finished 7th in 3:37,94min. This was just 17 hundreds of a second too slow to advance to the final. Schlangen stated: “it was a tactical race that started quite slowly. I felt good. As the pace quickened I had to react and I regretted that on the last 80meters, when I could not increase the pace anymore.” Schlangen is now optimistic for the World Championships 2009 in Berlin: “I just started running 3 years ago and just wanted to get German Champion. Now I could run in the Olympics and I enjoyed it. It was not enough for the final but may be it will work out next year in Berlin”.

Race walker Andre Höhne announced that he will also compete in the olympic 50km race walk on Friday. After a rather disappointing 25th place (1:23:13) in the 20km he decided on Tuesday that he has recovered well and that he will have another try in the longest distance in the track&field competitions. Höhne is the last male German distance athlete that will compete in Beijing. On the women’s side Sabine Zimmer and Melanie Seeger will compete in the 20km race walk on Thursday.