Vorarlberg trio miss targets at European Athletics Championships

The European Athletics Championships in Birmingham ended with disappointing results for three competitors from Vorarlberg, ORF reports. Lisa Redlinger, Theresia Mohr and Isabel Posch all missed their target finishes.

Redlinger finished 17th in the 5,000 metres final, missing her hoped-for top-10 place. The athlete from Lustenau ran 15 minutes 57.19 seconds, while Italy’s Nadia Battocletti won in 15:37.84.

“I am very disappointed,” Redlinger said after the race. “I did not come here for this time and this placing. That is really unfortunate.”

Mohr finished 22nd in the half marathon walk in 1 hour, 40 minutes and 59 seconds. Austria’s first female race walker at a European Athletics Championships said she had suffered from side stitches from the first kilometre.

“Shit, I cannot put it any other way. That was not good,” Mohr said at the finish. She said she had considered stopping, which she had never done before, and had briefly come to a standstill to try to recover.

Mohr said she had been unable to consume even 100 millilitres of the 500 millilitres of refreshments available. At kilometre 14, the pain had made it difficult for her to breathe. She continued because many people had travelled to support her and others were watching at home.

“I did not want to disappoint anyone. So I just kept going slowly,” she said. Mohr added that she had experienced the problem for two months and did not know what was causing it.

Posch competed in Austria’s 4×100-metre relay team, which finished ninth and missed the final by 0.24 seconds. The team had been aiming for a top-eight finish and a place in the final.

The race had gone according to plan for the first 300 metres, but the final baton exchange to Posch was not optimal. “We have to look at what happened at the end, whether I ran off too early,” said Posch, who competes for TS Lustenau. She said the team had expected a record and that having to slow down during the exchange had cost valuable time.