ZKarla Borger and Julia Sude held their trophies for a “selfie” in their cell phone camera in disbelief. The two beach volleyball players did not understand correctly on Sunday evening that they had actually won the prestigious final of the World Tour. A good two months after the completely sobering Olympic Games in Tokyo, they landed the greatest success of their careers in Cagliari, Italy. And 150,000 dollars (just under 130,000 euros) was given as a reward at the end of the season.
“It was a huge honor for us to qualify for the World Tour final here. And now we’re standing here in the sand with the trophy in our hands. Unbelievable ”, said the 32 year old Borger and wiped the tears from her eyes. The victory at the tournament of the ten best teams in the world was very emotional for the duo from Stuttgart, who compete for DJK TuSA 06 Düsseldorf.
“We had such a tough season,” said Sude, reminiscent of the Olympics in Japan. At the peak of the season, the experienced team had big plans, but then failed in the preliminary round. One day after the end, the previous trainer Thomas Kaczmarek had terminated the cooperation. Without a real coach and only supervised by the sports psychologist Nadine Volkmer on site, there was surprisingly bronze at the European Championships in Vienna, silver at the German championships and now the overall victory in the final of the world tour.
“An unbelievable success”
“After the disappointment in Tokyo, we decided to concentrate more on ourselves, to find each other in the sand again,” said 34-year-old Sude. Borger, who took her gold medal to bed on Sunday and recorded it on Twitter, added after the sovereign 2-0 (21:13, 23:21) in the final against Canadians Sarah Pavan and Melissa Humana-Paredes: “We tried not to think too much. Just keep going back to the next point. “
That worked perfectly. “You defeated the Olympic and world champions on your way to gold and worked hard for this title at the end of a difficult season,” said President René Hecht of the German Volleyball Association: “An unbelievable success for the team and for German beach volleyball.”
Borger / Sude are the third German women’s duo to have won the gold medal since the competition was launched six years ago. In 2016 and 2017, the Rio Olympic champions Laura Ludwig and Kira Walkenhorst succeeded, in 2019 Ludwig also won with her new partner Margareta Kozuch.
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