Elizaveta Ryshich of Germany celebrates winning the Pole Vault (© Getty Images)
There are three reasons why 16yearold Elisaveta (”Lisa“) Ryzih - this is the correct way of spelling her last name and not Ryshich - is one of the most interesting participants of the 4th World Youth Championships in Marrakech.
First, she is the daughter of a 5.40m-pole vaulter and a 1.91m-high jumper. Lisa won the Pole Vault at the World Youth Championships in 2003 (4.05m) and the World Junior Championships a year later (4.30m) becoming the youngest-ever winner at 14 and 15 years of age respectively.
Second, it was not the first World Champion title for the Ryzih family, who emigrated in 1991 from the Siberian city of Omsk to Germany. Anastasia (“Nastja“), Lisa’s elder sister of 11 years, was World Indoor champion in Maebashi in 1999 winning the pole vault with a height of 4.50m.
Exceptional success story for German Pole Vaulters
And third, since the Pole Vault was introduced to international junior competitions in 1997, the German women’s team has won eight out of eleven possible gold medals in addition to five silver medals!
At the European Junior Championships in 1997, the gold medal went to Annika Becker with 4.00 m (she is still the youngest-ever European Junior Champion). At the World Junior Championships in 1998, the gold medal went to Monika Götz with 4.20m. At the World Youth Championships in 1999 Floe Kühnert took silver with 4.05m. At the European Junior Championships that same year, Yvonne Buschbaum and Annika Becker took gold and silver respectively.
At the 2000 World Junior championships, Annika Becker was second with 4.10m. At the World Youth Championships in 2001, the gold medal went to Silke Spiegelburg with 4.00m. Floe Kühnert took gold at the 2002 World Junior Championships with 4.40m and Lisa Ryzih cleared 4.05m to take top honours two years ago in Sherbrooke.
At the European Junior Championships in 2003, Germany doubled up with Silke Spiegelburg (gold) and Floe Kühnert (silver), a result which they reproduced at last year’s World Junior championships with Lisa Ryzih (gold) and Anna Schultze (silver).
Fascinating duel with Stefanidi
If Lisa Ryzih wants to be the first ever German athlete to defend her title at the World Youth Championships, she must beat the holder of the new World Youth Best Ekaterina Stefanidi from Greece (4.37m in Athens on 20 February).
This will not be an easy task for Lisa because she could not practice in winter due to an injury. Thus, the 1.77m tall athlete weighing only slightly more than 50kg lost a lot of valuable practice time. In spring, she cleared only 4.15m. However, she believes in herself stating that “in important competitions I have always been able to improve.”
The best proof of this statement was her performance at the 2004 German Junior Championships where she defeated Silke Spiegelburg and took her spot in the German team for last year’s World Junior Championships in Grosseto. This is even more impressive considering the fact that Silke jumped 4.40m just a week later which qualified her for the German Olympics Team. Silke underlined her great talent jumping this height again in the qualification round in Athens.
Other athletics lineage in World Youth team
In addition, 800m runner Robin Schemberra and 3000m runner Christina Kröckert, part of the German team consisting of 17 male and 13 female athletes, have championship lineage as well. The 16-year-old Robin follows in his mother’s footsteps who, under her maiden name Antje Schröder, was a member of the DDR team at the first-ever IAAF World Championships in 1983 and qualified for the 800m final; she improved her PB during that season by approx. eight seconds to 1:57.57 minutes. Robin led the 3x1000m-relay of Bayer Leverkusen, the best athletics club in Germany, to victory in the German U20 Championships beating athletes who were more than three years older.
Christina’s brother Mario, being more than a decade older than her, qualified in 2002 for the 10,000m race at the European Championships (15th in 29:08.86 minutes). He is more well-known in Japan, however, because he was the most important pace maker for Naoko Takahashi when the Sydney 2000 Olympic Champion ran 2:19:46 on 30 September 2001 in Berlin becoming the first female marathon runner to run below the barrier of 2:20 hours. More than a million Japanese spectators watched this sport historic race live on TV.
Visits of Morocco planned
Traditionally, the fan club “Freunde der Leichtathletik“ (Friends of Athletics) finances one extra-day following the competitions of each U18 and U20 World Championships so that the young athletes have the chance to get to know the country and its people a little bit better. In Morocco there will be two extra-days; a Monday trip to the Atlas Mountains is planned and on Tuesday, a visit to Essaouira which is located on the Atlantic coast.
All members of the German team will meet at the sports school Kienbaum on the 8th of July. Two days later the team will fly via Madrid to Marrakech. Jan Kern, Technical Director of the DLV and Uwe Mäde, the new team coach went to Marrakech for a site visit to get to know the competition sites and the accommodations.
“Our team members can look forward to their accommodations which are in a five-star hotel with a big, shadowy garden,” reveals Uwe Mäde.
Gustav Schwenk
