Originally written in German. Translated to English by AI — please excuse any awkward phrasing.
… and Groundhog Day strikes again …
Last year I missed the World Championship qualification by a laughable 96 seconds. This year it would be an even more mind-boggling 13 seconds … simply unbelievable. Especially if you were there for the slot allocation — it was completely detached from reality. In every other age group, roughly 30% of athletes declined their slot — in some age groups it was even over 50%. And then my age group comes up and the unthinkable happens. Every single person placed ahead of me takes the slot. Every. Single. One. I’ve never seen that before, and many of the others there said the same thing…
My disappointment right now is beyond words. I’m mentally and physically completely wrecked, there’s a huge emptiness inside me, and the physical pain is nothing compared to that. You train for so long, give everything you have in the race, put together the best performance of your career — and then it falls apart at the one single point you can’t control yourself.