HStill lacking freshness. The legs are not yet ready to carry the body through ten disciplines at the highest level for two days. However, Niklas Cole is optimistic that he will break the rule at the European Championships in Munich in August at the all-around meeting next weekend in Ratingen. The bar is at 8100 pips. Not much of a challenge for the athlete whose best performance was 8,691 points in 2019, when Solheimer won the world title in Doha aged just 21.
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But it’s still very early in the season, and as this will be particularly long with two of the international highlights in quick succession – the World Championships in Eugene in July and the European Championships three weeks later in Munich – the athletes from USC Mainz and his parents and coaches Michael and Stephanie Cole They did not explicitly prepare for the performance in North Rhine-Westphalia.
“We only take a few days of training for this,” says the former budding world and European champion. Hopefully you will be able to quickly return to another block with several weeks of basic training without having to go through Götzis. If necessary, the traditional meeting at the end of the month in Austria provides another opportunity to recommend yourself in the continental title fights. Cowell was named World Cup Defending Champion.
He only returned from a ten-day training camp with the national team in Belek on April 23. On Sunday, Cowell tested his level in three disciplines at the Aviation Meet and the Remote Meet in Frankfurt. After 14.60s over the 110m hurdles, 45.22m with discus and 4.90m in the pole vault, fellow Eintracht heptathlete training Carolin Schäfer, who also started in Niederrad, came to a “very positive” result after a previously intense workload in turkey.
“I was very impressed by the many attempts”
However, in the last jumping game, he unexpectedly encountered great difficulties at first. Cowell ran ten times jumping in without swinging over the bar. “This hasn’t happened to me even in the last few months,” said the athlete, who already has strong nerves, a little surprised. Cowell then halted the competition before the third attempt, with his best performance of five metres. “I was touched by the many attempts,” he said. After all: “I never started the season at 4.90 metres.” This gives hope for improvement soon.
Originally, the focus at the beginning of winter training was on sprinting. Then Cowell’s knee problems slowed him down, and he had to resort to throwing rules. The pain is gone since the end of February. “Sometimes I can still feel something,” Cowell says. But not so much that it stops him from pursuing his passion.
The foot injury that led the Olympian to the early finish in Tokyo only hurts memory. Cowell wants an undisturbed summer tackle. “I’ve had so bad luck the past two years that it’s supposed to be over now,” he says.
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Cowell missed the 2020 season to undergo elbow surgery. A year later, after a 19-month hiatus from competitions, the talent is finding it difficult to regain the good feeling that accompanied it before, after a near-perfect career. When the knot finally broke in Japan, a slip in the high jump ended his solid Olympic performance to date.
This time, after his first test competition since August, the returner is feeling safer than a year ago, when Cole was only able to start training late, especially in the throwing bases. In his head he wants to remain relaxed. Even if the situation now is very different from what it was in 2019, when he was the youngest person in history to win the World Cup.
“I had already reached my goal for the season at that time,” Cowell says. As the European Under-23 Champion, the physics and sports student traveled to Qatar to finally make a big surprise there. Also this time, the German does not see himself as a favorite to travel to the United States after Eugene. “I don’t put too much pressure on myself,” Cowell says. He only looks at himself and not at what others have to offer.
Anyway, EM plays a bigger role for him. In 2018, the fourth-placed engine took part in one in Berlin; The “excellent” experience should be repeated then. “The idea is that we should check for jet lag in the first week after the World Cup and then train for another week.”
There will be a lot between the Decathlon World Cup on 23./24. July and in Bavaria on 15/16. It did not happen in August. By then, the legs should be fit enough to play in both widths.
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