With the chance to set the world championship record, track cycling Olympic champion Kristina Vogel will be entering the title fights from Wednesday in Apeldoorn, the Netherlands. The nine-time world champion is missing two more gold medals to draw level with the Australian Anna Meares, who leads the “eternal” ranking with eleven titles.
It is one of the great goals of the 27-year-old from Erfurt, Germany, to end her career as the world’s most successful track bike sprinter:”I’m not putting any pressure on myself,”said Vogel to the SID,”if I’m going to win gold once a year, it would be great and that’s good enough for me,” she already has the opportunity, however, if she achieves an optimal yield at her starts in the team sprint, Keirin and Sprint.
Last year Vogel won gold in the Keirin and Sprint, in this World Cup season she dominated her disciplines almost at will. It is getting more and more difficult every year, the fall height is getting higher and everyone wants to beat me,”said Vogel, on which the Bund Deutscher Radfahrer once again relies as a model athlete. She is an “outstanding athlete”, said BDR sports director Patrick Moster:”If the bird flies, there may be more to it than 2017.”
Furthermore, BDR is accompanied by some question marks. In the men’s team sprint, the disappointing performance of the previous year is to be forgotten, but the World Cup title seems out of reach:”Everything is possible between third and sixth place,”said Moster. With Robert Förstemann, Joachim Eilers, Stefan Bötticher and Maximilian Levy, BDR relies on experience. Bötticher, sprint world champion of 2013, recently celebrated a surprising comeback in the World Cup after a break of many years.
The four-man horse has to cope with the failure of Domenic Weinstein, who cannot start due to illness “Weinstein is the engine of the four-man horse. It will be difficult to replace him,”said Moster, who nevertheless hopes for a “good result”. The four-man is currently ranked eighth in the national ranking.
Moster dispenses with a general medal specification:”You won’t hear any numbers from me. It is much more important for us to shape a point from a width. Only with an appropriately strong team can lasting success be guaranteed.”