Elisabeth Seitz is European champion on uneven bars, Emma Malewski European champion on balance beam.

Despite all the optimism, nobody expected that.

Least of all the 18-year-old Malewski herself, who happily repeated many times that she had "no words" for the moment.

The starting point for Elisabeth Seitz was completely different: she has already stood in three Olympic parallel bars finals and in numerous apparatus decisions at world and European championships.

The conclusion so far: Bronze at the 2017 European Championships and at the 2018 World Championships.

For both gymnasts, Sunday was a day when everything went smoothly, almost everything went well and the rest fell into place happily.

For Pauline Schäfer-Betz, who was also in the beam final, things didn't go perfectly with this performance: she got her start wrong and therefore had to do without a combination, and the somersault named after her was not recognized because the turn in the air was not completed .

Finally, on this memorable day, Kim Bui showed her last exercise ever, she had announced her retirement last week.

She finished fifth in the parallel bars final, received a standing ovation and said goodbye to the Munich audience after her exercise, crying and waving.

Kim Bui: 'Can't believe it'

However, Saturday was also one of those days, and for all five Germans together: The aforementioned apparatus finalists and Sarah Voss won the first team medal for Germany in the history of this competition.

In a competition that Italy dominated, not least because of the absence of the Russian athletes, the German gymnasts did not succeed in every exercise, but in the end more happened than the protagonists themselves had dared to hope for in advance.

"I still can't quite believe it, but it's here," said Kim Bui after the award ceremony, holding the medal firmly in his hand.

It was “one of the best feelings that we did it as a team.

We carried ourselves through this competition together, I couldn't have imagined something like that.” The colleagues emphasized this emphatically.

For Pauline Schäfer-Betz it was "crucial" that everyone had each other's backs, for Elisabeth Seitz the exercise went even better "when you know and feel that the whole team is behind you and pushing you through the exercise".

Sarah Voss, who ended the German afternoon with an excellent jump, said: "From the first step to the landing, I had the feeling that my team was shouting through me and letting me float." For 18-year-old Emma Malewski, who did very well as a starting gymnast in her first big competition with an audience, the whole thing was unbelievable.

Already here she reacted with: "I can't describe it in words."

From the point of view of national coach Gerben Wiersma, everything came together on this Saturday afternoon.

"It's great when everything comes together at the right moment - that's what I love about this sport," said the Dutchman.

"I'm incredibly happy for the gymnasts and also for the other coaches, it's a wonderful team." In general, the team.

It had already played an important role under Wiersma's predecessor Ulla Koch, who last year competed in the Olympic Games in Tokyo with four of the five women starting in Munich.

Wiersma now seems to attribute even more importance to this factor.

In Munich, the team gathered at various moments for a short discussion in a small circle.

“One, two, three – team!” is the motto that was loudly intoned at the end.

In the team final, Sarah Voss called her colleagues together again before the last apparatus and swore in.

Three successful jumps over the horse table later, all five women shed tears of joy.

Shortly afterwards, a lot of tears flowed, especially from Elisabeth Seitz, who after a short vacation in Stuttgart will be in the gym without Kim Bui: "I don't even want to think about what it's like in the hall without Kim." Kim Bui turned 33 in January, it is the longest international career of a German gymnast, which ended on Sunday.

Since 1999 she has been a member of the federal squad without interruption.

It's an impressive statistic: The first international appearance as a junior in 2003, twelve participations in European Championships, eight at World Championships, three at the Olympic Games.

When asked what he expected from the European Championships, Wiersma answered resolutely: "I'm not expecting anything, definitely not medals, I definitely don't want to put pressure on before the apparatus finals." Now he is responsible for the most successful European Championships in German women's gymnastics .

The cards will be reshuffled at the upcoming World Cup in Liverpool in ten weeks.

What is certain is that the team will be the focus again, the goal is a place in the top eight.