The disappointment is there ", Laura Ludwig confessed after the end of her Olympic dreams in Tokyo," but luck outweighs. "The Olympic champion from Rio was satisfied with the overall good performance she and her partner Margareta Kozuch at the beach volleyball tournament 2021 was able to show: "We had great games," she said, almost beaming: "We had great moments."
Achim Dreis
Sports editor.
Follow I follow
After a total of two wins, one success without a fight and two defeats, it was not quite enough to make it into the medal round, because a few small things at the top of the world's elite make the difference. In the quarter-finals of the Tokyo tournament, Ludwig / Kozuch lost to the two Americans Alix Klineman and April Ross in two tight sets 19:21, 19:21. It was a memorable duel on equal terms between two teams that have a similar structure. Like Laura Ludwig, 39-year-old April Ross has been one of the defining figures on the beach scene for more than a decade. She was world champion in 2009 and won Olympic silver and bronze in 2012 and 2016. In contrast, her partner Alexandra Klineman, like Margareta Kozuch, played indoor volleyball until 2017,was a fixture in the American national team as an acceptance and outside player.
On the beach, however, Klineman / Ross formed an excellent team faster than Ludwig / Kozuch. They won silver at the World Cup together in Hamburg in 2019, and they are also showing themselves as a brilliantly well-rehearsed duo in the sand of Shiokaze Park in Tokyo these days. With five wins and only one loss of a set, they advanced to the semifinals of the Olympic tournament, where they will meet the European champions Johanna Heidrich / Anouk Vergé-Depré from Switzerland on Thursday.
At this point, Laura Ludwig and Margareta Kozuch will be on their way home again. Because according to the 48-hour rule, eliminated athletes must have left the country within that period. Before they leave, of course, they still have an appointment: “We'll shout the boys forward” announced Laura Ludwig for Wednesday at 2 p.m. CEST in the FAZ live ticker for the Olympics, on ARD and on Eurosport, when Julius Thole and Clemens Wickler compete as the last representative of German beach volleyball against the Russian world champions Vyacheslav Krassilnikow and Oleg Stojanowski.
Whether she would pick up a match ball at the Olympic Games herself was a question of whether or not she would pick up a match ball in Tokyo: “Paris is a beautiful city,” said the flag bearer of this year's opening ceremony for the Olympia 2024 option and the joy of seeing her three-year-old son Teo outweighs the anger over the premature end of the Olympics. "My heart is crying, I want to go home," said the 35-year-old, who has seen herself as a champion in the dual role of mother and high-performance athlete since her comeback. "I'm really looking forward to Teo: that's the other side of the coin".