Meditating helps.
Or just think.
Look at things from a different angle.
Then draw the right conclusions if possible.
Malaika Mihambo can do that. She does not only practice high-performance sport from the analytical side, but life as a whole.
Achim Dreis
Sports editor.
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"I am grateful that I am standing here as the best version of myself," she said after her Olympic victory in the long jump. The saying corresponds to a guiding rule of the mindfulness philosophy, which is about focusing on yourself and your abilities, using your personal skills in a targeted manner. Malaika Mihambo had recently won the final of the long jump competition by three centimeters. She was exactly seven meters when it came down to it. “The most important seven meters I've ever jumped,” she said. A sentence that was worth gold.
First European champion, then world champion, now Olympic champion. Three big competitions, three big wins. She has been voted Germany's Sportswoman of the Year twice in a row, and there is now no athlete in sight who could contest her honorary title in 2021. It would be a very special hat trick, and yet Malaika Mihambo is far from seeing herself as an athlete.
"I notice that I am successful, but that has not really changed me," she said after her coup in Tokyo: "Because I am much more than just this success." An environmental science student, for example, after she had already completed a political degree Has. Ambitious piano player with a passion for classical music. Holiday travelers with a backpack, without external luxury, but with the inner happiness of being able to afford their own view of the world.
Such a vacation is planned again. She does not yet know where to go, three weeks are blocked - of course only after the season. They still have to meet their sporting obligations by mid-September. She still wants to start at the final of the Diamond League in Zurich, also at the Istaf in Berlin. It is precisely there that Malaika Mihambo will take center stage, as an attraction in German athletics. And yes, she will enjoy it. Because despite all the modesty, the 27-year-old is also given the opportunity to savor the glamorous moments in life. At the gala for the sportswoman of the year she competed in a gold dress, at the Ball des Sports she enjoyed walking the red carpet. She finds it gratifying that there is a Malaika Barbie doll in an athletics outfit. With this, too, she made it to the role model for girls,not only thanks to her work in a social project for children.
The sponsorship contracts help her to make a living from competitive sport as a student, which is not a given in Germany. She is grateful for this, but she could manage with little money. Her father comes from Zanzibar, her mother from Germany. She was brought up “sparingly” from an early age, says the Heidelberg-born girl, lives in a rather minimalist way, has been driving the same car for years, and lives in familiar surroundings.
Broaden your view, see what's up? And don't lose your goals either. “I'm driven by how far I can jump.” Her record is 7.30 meters, which she set when she won the World Cup in Doha two years ago. In the "eternal" world best list of her discipline she ranks twelfth, in Germany behind Heike Drechsler (7.48) in second place. But these are categories of the outside that should have no meaning in the sense of mindfulness. Why compare yourself with athletes from another time, from another century?
Malaika Mihambo wants to exhaust what she can get out of herself. This is one of the reasons why she is sticking to her plan to train with long jump legend Carl Lewis in America in the future. She finds the idea of trying out a life in the New World interesting because it could certainly help her "humanly" too. Your curiosity has not yet been satisfied. But the moment is also to be enjoyed. At the weekend she would like to celebrate with a small group at home that she managed to appear as the best version of herself in Tokyo when it mattered: "It's a humble feeling of happiness that I really enjoy and appreciate."