The concentration of a professional athlete is finite.

Even if you are in the last duel of a tournament and an Olympic bronze medal winner like Michelle Kroppen.

The 25-year-old lost the final of the German championship on Sunday.

Her teammate Elisa Tartler won 6: 4.

Kroppen, who had fought her way into the final as fourth in qualifying, only scored 22 points in the third and fourth sets, Tartler reached 27 and 28.

Kim Maurus

Volunteer.

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For the meeting of two favorites, the result was unusually clear. On Sunday it was sunny and windy in Wiesbaden, not the best conditions for the shooters on the bowling green in front of the Kurhaus. But it wasn't just the weather that bothered Kroppen.

24 hours earlier, the shooter hadn't looked as if she would believe in the final.

“It's just a torture.

I have pain.

The season was long enough, ”she said after the first half of qualifying at the Kleinfeldchen sports complex.

In the second half there was heavy rain, and the athletes wore umbrellas and ran the 70 meters back and forth to the target to check their hits.

Trainers barely covered their binoculars with rain jackets.

Officially, no spectators were allowed, the archery enthusiasts who came nevertheless hid on the covered grandstand.

That doesn't happen every day

Michelle Kroppen struggled through, ignoring her aching shoulder as she shot arrow after arrow. Later that afternoon in the round of 16, the rain had stopped, she won 6-0 over Judith Icking. In the quarter-finals against Lea Marie Schweer, it took four sets for Kroppen to move into the semi-finals after the 6: 2. Apart from Elisa Tartler, who needed five sets to win with Nicola Koch in the quarter-finals, Kroppen's team mates Lisa Unruh and Katharina Bauer won their round of 16 and quarter-finals with no counterpoint.

Now all four of them were in the semi-finals, the favorites of the tournament: Bauer versus Tartler, Kroppen versus Unruh.

Kroppen could see the effort against Unruh, the silver medal winner from Rio.

She won the first set, lost the second and third.

Then you get ten points three times in the fourth set.

In the fifth, Kroppen made 29, Unruh only came up with a very unusual 25 for her. Michelle Kroppen never stopped shining, 6: 4 against Lisa Unruh, that doesn't happen every day.

"It could have been any of us"

“We puzzled, I don't think I've ever beaten it in a German championship,” said Kroppen later. And: "When I think about how I went here ... to be in the gold final now, that's great." It didn't help on Sunday. Tartler said after her victory: “It could have been any of us, it always depends on our daily form. Today I can be at the top. ”In the bronze final, Lisa Unruh lost to Katharina Bauer 2: 6 in the fourth set.

In the men's recurve finals, Johannes Maier (bronze) prevailed against Moritz Wieser and Maximilian Weckmüller (gold) against Felix Wieser. Niklas Hammann won the juniors over Lars Utscheid. “It's a nice end to the junior class,” said Hammann. The same applies to Charline Schwarz, who started at the Olympics together with Unruh and Kroppen. The 20-year-old won in her senior year in the young class. German champion and Olympic medalist, there wasn't much time to process: "Let's see what happens when I put the sheet away next month, when all the impressions come," she said.