BERLIN, 2 June 2004 — Franziska van Almsick is ready for the last challenge in her roller-coaster swimming career — gold at last at her fourth and final Olympics in Athens.
“I am fit and ready to go,” van Almsick told Deutsche Presse-Agentur ahead of the Olympic trials which start on Friday in her home town Berlin. The German capital should suit van Almsick just fine, as it was there two years ago at the European championships that she came back to stardom with a world record in her favorite 200 meters freestyle discipline.
The Athens Games in August will mark van Almsick’s career-end.
They come 12 years after the then 14-year-old van Almsick came out of nowhere to win two silvers and two bronze at the Barcelona Olympics in 1992.
The popularity of van Almsick, known as “Franzi” by then, matched that of Steffi Graf and Boris Becker.
But apart from a 200m freestyle world title in world record time 1994 in Rome she never enjoyed the same success as the two tennis icons. Two more silvers and a bronze followed in 1996 while she failed to win a medal at all at Sydney 2000, which seemed the end of her career. The Sydney disaster after several personal ups and downs led to malicious joy in some parts of the German media.
Van Almsick considered quitting, but in her darkest hour found new motivation through a relationship with flamboyant German handball star Stefan Kretzschmar, who had also fared below par at the Millennium Games.
A back injury denied her the entire 2001 season, but Franzi then silenced all the critics in 2002 when she bettered her world record to 1 minute 56.64 seconds at the Euro event in Berlin. Ever since, Van Almsick has had Athens on her mind. She trained far away from the public eye, coming to the trials with some 2,500 training kilometers in the pool and with less pressure than in past.
Her maturity at the age of 26 has also made her realize that there are more things to life than a gold medal. German chief coach Ralf Beckmann is convinced that van Almsick has the class to win the gold in Greece.
Van Almsick said she must first prove in Berlin that she is worth going to Athens, but the confidence is high despite tough opposition from the likes of Anja Buschschulte and multiple long-distance world champion Hannah Stockbauer.
