It wasn't just the weather that spoiled Rebekka Haase's mood.

Once again she did not achieve the fastest time she could manage, and this time it was not too strong a tail wind, but rain.

The sprinter was even more depressed that she left Gina Lückenkemper far behind in her run in 11.23 seconds, friend and fastest German sprinter in recent years.

Michael Reinsch

Correspondent for sports in Berlin.

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    When the athletics enthusiasts who had come to the Midsommar Sports Festival of the SCC Berlin turned their backs on the televisions and the national football team, which was fighting against failure, for the duration of a sprint on Tuesday evening, when the deadline expired, Olympic standards in athletics to meet, Gina Lückenkemper may have lost her race for a place in the Olympic relay. She needed 11.52 and 11.53 seconds for two sprints - a good half a second more than at the 2017 World Cup in London, when she ran 10.95 seconds, the unofficial best time for united Germany.

    “I know that Gina only wants to hit the track with us if she's helping us,” said Rebekka Haase: “Today she had the only chance to prove whether she was fit or not. I'm afraid your body isn't ready this year. "

    Gina Lückenkemper judged that she ran faster even with a torn muscle fiber. But at least: finally painless. In May, she crossed the finish line in Boston in 11.49 seconds, despite an injury to her thigh. “That one lousy vertebra,” she grumbled, had led to imperceptible tension in the left quadriceps. The muscle tore as soon as it was out of the block. In one fell swoop, the hard training she had undergone with her new trainer Lance Brauman in Florida was ruined. She shed blood, sweat and tears in America. "It's really bitter to be like that in the Olympic season after all that."

    In five weeks of rehab, first in Salzburg, then at home in Bamberg, Gina Lückenkemper followed all the races in which "the fast girls" justified their hope for an Olympic medal in the team: Tatjana Pinto with a time of 11, 10 seconds in Leverkusen, Lisa Mayer with 11.12 in Mannheim. She cheered them on on the screen, cheered with them, and when Alexandra Burghardt became German champion in 11.14 seconds in Braunschweig, she cried with her on TV. Then these three and Rebekka Haase ran together faster than any season this year: 42.38 seconds. Gina Lückenkemper did not provide an argument in Berlin to oust any of them.

    How will she react if the team is nominated without her in the next few days? "Then that's the way it is," said Gina Lückenkemper bravely. "Then I'll stop yelling at the television at the Olympics."