Gina Lückenkemper (SCC Berlin) said goodbye to the season break on Sunday evening with a bang over 100 meters. At the ISTAF Berlin, she improved her seven-year-old best time to a strong 10.93 seconds. In an interview, she talks about the race, her love for the Berlin Olympic Stadium and a special honor for relay colleague Lisa Maria Kwayie.
Jane Sichting
Gina Lückenkemper, congratulations on your victory at the ISTAF and your new personal best!
Gina Lückenkemper:
Thank you very much!
To be able to put on another race like this at the end of the season in your home stadium is impressive. How did you do it?
Gina Lückenkemper:
I just let it happen. I did what I should have done all year. My coach regularly tells me that you have to let speed happen. That you can’t force it. Because if you force it, you often get stuck and then a lot of things go wrong. Today I was able to just let it happen.
How did you perceive the race itself?
Gina Lückenkemper:
I really enjoyed everything here today. I really enjoyed the atmosphere in the stadium and it was just really beautiful. Even now – there is wonderful light here in this stadium. Today was just the perfect day.
What role did the audience play for you and your race?
Gina Lückenkemper:
The audience just celebrated us all and was excited about athletics. It was really nice.
What was different about this race compared to previous competitions?
Gina Lückenkemper:
Today I was up there from the start and didn’t have to go hunting. That’s always a bit difficult at 100 meters because they’re so short (laughs). Today was really amazing, it was brilliant.
Did you already notice during the race that something was different and that at the end you would have a new personal best on the timeline?
Gina Lückenkemper:
Yes. When I noticed that I could get ahead in this strong field and that no one was going with me because no one could do it at the moment – then I knew that it had to be fast. I was toying with the idea and hoped that it would actually be under eleven seconds.
Did you have any indication beforehand that you were in such strong form?
Gina Lückenkemper:
I had already felt the day before that it was possible and that my body could still do it. My coach had said to me so many times in the last few training sessions: “Gina, you can do it! You’ve got it.” All the training sessions had been pointing towards us finally doing it. To have achieved this here is something very special for me.
It’s no secret that Berlin’s Olympic Stadium is your favorite stadium. What gives it this honor?
Gina Lückenkemper:
I love this stadium. I love being in this city and always look forward to coming to Berlin. Berlin plays an incredibly important role in my personal athletics career. My first professional meeting was the ISTAF here in Berlin in 2015. That’s why I have a particularly big history with Berlin. I also won my first individual medal in the 100 meters in this city at the 2018 European Championships. So many things come together for me in Berlin. Berlin is very important in my life and I enjoy being here every time.
After the Olympic Games in Paris and winning the bronze medal with the 4×100-meter relay, you said that you would have preferred to go straight to Berlin to celebrate this success together with the ISTAF audience. How have you been patient over the past three weeks?
Gina Lückenkemper:
I slept a lot, so the time went by a bit quicker (laughs). I really needed to recharge my batteries.
You can certainly do that in the off-season too. Do you have a vacation planned before returning to the USA?
Gina Lückenkemper:
Absolutely! My coach is still here too – I need to talk to him again soon. I’ll be heading back to the USA in November.
Back to the ISTAF. At the moment of greatest joy over your new PB, you and your relay colleagues Rebekka Haase and Lisa Mayer took advantage of the attention at the finish and symbolically handed Lisa Marie Kwayie a bronze baton as a souvenir of Paris. What is that all about?
Gina Lückenkemper:
We traveled to Paris with six girls and in the end five of us took part. Unfortunately, the rule in athletics is that only those who were actively on the track receive a medal. Lisa did not actively stand on the track in the Olympic Stadium, but she was warming up the whole time. It hit us all a little hard that Lisa was the only one not allowed to go to the awards ceremony. That she was not rewarded, even though she had put in such an incredibly brilliant performance for us behind the scenes. That is why it was very important to us as a team to honour that here and to honour her in front of her home crowd, which hopefully included family and friends. So that they can all experience it with her again.
What role did Lisa Marie Kwayie play in Paris as a substitute runner for team cohesion?
Gina Lückenkemper:
Lisa was incredibly important to us. She gave us such incredible support. The last few years have shown us that it is not a given that you will have a substitute runner who is there for you so much. With the times she ran this year, she has clearly shown several times that she would have belonged on this track just as well as any of us and that she could have done at least as good a job.
How did you come up with the idea of surprising her with this bronze baton at the ISTAF?
Gina Lückenkemper:
I had the idea. Since Lisa is an athlete from Berlin, I asked the ISTAF whether she would be running here and whether it would be possible for us to honor her here in front of an audience. We didn’t want this to be something we would send her in the mail and say: Hey Lisa, you’re our MVP (laughs). She has worked so hard for this and has had to deal with a few setbacks in recent years. She deserves to be properly honored for what she has done for our team.
More about ISTAF:
Gina Lückenkemper, Julian Weber & Co. provide a great Berlin athletics fireworks display
