Sabine Braun (© Allsport)
27 August 2002At the recent European Championships in Munich, Sabine Braun had a big wish, she wanted to win one more major international championship medal. Germany’s two time former World Heptathlon Champion fulfilled that ambition by collecting the silver medal with 6434 points behind the Swedish junior sensation athlete Carolina Klüft, who won the continental title with a new World junior record of 6542 points.
The Munich medal had a special meaning for Sabine Braun, because after 20 years of competition Heptathlon’s grand dame had decided to retire after Munich. Definitively. Heptathlon number 66 in the Olympicstadion was the last of her career, and the enthusiastic crowd duly paid tribute to the 37-year-old athlete’s achievements after she concluded her European campaign.
"My farewell couldn't have been more beautiful than in front of such fantastic spectators", said Sabine Braun, who was choking with emotion.
Perhaps even now, a week or so after Munich, Braun doesn't fully realise that that was the last time she would climb on to the starting blocks to run the 100 metre hurdles, the last time she would measure her run-up for the high jump or run the 800 metres, the final discipline of the Heptathlon which she always hated.
Will Sabine Braun miss the daily training routine, the journey to the stadium or weight room?
"It's not hard for me to retire", confirmed Braun. The athlete from TV Wattenscheid doesn't think, that life will be boring without training.
"I have a lot of friends who don't have anything to do with athletics and I think we will have a lot of things we can talk about and explore in the future".
Braun has spent the last 20 years on the athletics circuit. Five Olympic Games (bronze 1992), six World Championships (golds in 1991 & 1997, silver in 1993), and four European Championships (golds in 1990 and 1994, silver in 2002).
"I became a different person during those 20 years," Braun confirmed. In a wider sense her athletics career witnessed her development from a young girl to a successful woman.
Sabine Braun was always known as stand-offish, difficult and self-willed. However, people, who know her better, like her best friend and former javelin coach Beate Peters, say: "Sabine is a very critical person and she is not an easy character, but she has a big sense of humour. It`s a pity, that this side of her goes unrecognized very often."
Braun, who is the German record-holder (6985 points) in the Heptathlon, never was a person who wanted to be in the foreground. In fact she had big problems finding sponsors, as she was known as someone who was difficult to promote.
At the beginning she tried to counter such an opinion but she never let it change her.
"I noticed that I produced the opposite effect and one day I decided it it didn`t matter anymore what people thought about me.“
Even though she made a resonable living from her sport, Braun is quick to confirm she did not make a fortune. "It's not so much, I coudn’t pay for three round the world trips with it, but it's ok", she said with a smile.
Now Braun is looking to her future. For the immediate period she will go into coaching.
"At the moment I will take care of young talents at the Olympic base in Wattenscheid.“
But after 2004 she will get a full-time job.
In 1984 Sabine Braun participated in the Los Angeles Olympic Games. At that time, Carolina Klüft the young Swede who beat Braun this year in Munich, had only started to learn to walk. The teenager was born in February 1983 and didn't know anything about Heptathlon at this time.
In Munich this summer there was a change of generation, a changing of the guard in the Heptathlon.
Klüft stole Sabine Braun’s show in Munich. The Swede is the total opposite to Braun:19 years old, lively, refreshing and vivacious, Sweden’s blond World Junior Champion had a lot of fun during the two days of competition in Munich. She was laughing, flirting and joking with the spectators and crowd all the time. It was the perfect show.
Klüft was the favourite and handled the pressure in Munich perfectly, winning with a new World Junior record again, improving on her own performance which she had set only two weeks previously in Jamaica.
Sabine Braun took off her hat to Carolina Klüft In Munich. She knows what she is feeling. About 20 years ago Braun was a newcomer too. A young German girl, who came out of nothing and suddenly went to the top. Two World and two European golds later an unprecedented career is finished.
Farewell Sabine Braun, and welcome to "Heptathlon-World" Carolina Klüft!
