Olympic round up: German athletes with good to great performances over the middle and long distance

August 16, 2008

After the morning session of the 2nd day of the track&field events half of the German middle and long distance athletes already completed their events. The results were mostly better as expected since the distance women ran personal records. In particular the performances were as follows:

Carsten Schlangen (1.500m heat): 3:36,34

In the last heat of the first round, Carsten Schlangen placed 6th and qualified as the fastest lucky looser with a time of 3:36,34 minutes. “It was an amazing feeling to toe the line in front of a crowd of 90.000 spectators” Schlangen said afterwards. “There was pressure from the very beginning of the race and the pace was high immediately.” Schlangen achieved his minimum aim by qualifying for the semi-finals on Sunday. If he would make it to the final it would be a pretty big surprise. For sure he has the abilities, but against a top-class field with a lot of experience he obviously is not more than a black horse.

Antje Möldner (3.000m heat): 9:29,86

In the heat of the women’s 3.000m steeple 24-year old Antje Möldner ran an impressive race but missed to qualify for the final by only a small margin. Only 1,34 seconds were missing for a big surprise, i.e. the qualification for the final. However, the time of 9:29,86 represent a new German Record by almost 5 seconds (previous record: 9:34,21, also A. Möldner). With a bit more experience – it was only the 4th steeple race of the former 1.500m specialist – the final would have been possible. Also Möldner herself said: “I had a huge respect for this event. If I would have started my final sprint a little bit earlier, I might have done it.” It was her first international championship and in the future (maybe already in the Berlin World Championships 2009) we can expect some good progress from this young, talented athlete.

Sabrina Mockenhaupt (10.000m final): 31:14.21

With a new personal best of 31:14.21min Sabrina Mockenhaupt took 13rd place in an amazimg 10.000m race. Even if all the experts (also the wanna-be experts) expected rather slow times in the distance events the race saw an Olympic Record , European Record, American Record and World U20-Record.

In a tactical clever race Mockenhaupt found her own pace early in the race and caught a lot of runners in the later stage of the race. With Eyegayehu Dibaba (ETH, former olympic silver medalist), Hilda Kibet (NED), etc. she left several well-known runners behind and could improve her 15th place from the Athens Olympics 2004. Mockenhaupt was happy after the race: “I am really lucky. I never thought to take 13rd place in such a quality-field of 32 athletes.” … ” Finally it was a race after my fancy – my nicest so far.” The 27-year old also said that it was the right decision to go back to her old coach and her familiar environment only 2 months before the Olympics. This way she “prepared for this event like for no one ever before”.

Andre Höhne (20km race walk): 1:23:13h

German hope Andre Höhne could not fulfil the medal hopes and took 25th place in 1:23:13h. In a race where all the top-walkers were faster on the second 10K, Höhne could only follow the pace until halfway. The 30-year old was quite frustrated after the race: “I am not satisfied with my place. The competition was pretty ok for this conditions. I was as fast as in the World Championships last year but this year I finished the race” (last year Höhne dramatically collapsed in 4th place with only 400m to go) “What the guys on the front did is normally impossible, but they did it.”

Höhne wants to decide later if he also wants to compete in the 50km race walk.