"You probably want to ask me how I'm doing," says Leila Künzel at 8.55 on Sunday morning, just a few hours before her big adventure at Bike on the ring ends. The woman from Leipzig has just emptied a cup of warm broth, her boyfriend Sven takes the container and makes a mark on a list that he presses onto the windscreen of a camper van. Here he records what Leila Künzel has been eating and drinking since yesterday lunchtime. The pot of boiled potatoes in the campervan has almost been plundered. Leila Künzel stands in the wind that sweeps across the Nürburgring Grand Prix circuit and answers the question herself: "I'm fine. My back hurts. But I have a podium place at the moment and my companions are pushing me to defend it," she says.
Even after 20 hours in the race at the 20th anniversary edition of Rad am Ring, Leila Künzel continues to do her thing undeterred. Cheered on by a friend in a red wig, she easily heads straight into the slipstream of three cyclists on the opposite side of the tarmac. She is already out of sight and heading for her 16th lap. In the end, Künzel, who was selected as a participant in a competition in TOUR and officially started the project at the end of March, will have completed 17 laps. at the accident-shortened edition by a good two hours achieve. 17 laps - that means second place in her age group (Masters 2) and sixth place among all women.
In the middle of the hustle and bustle of the "Green Hell" of Rad am Ring
In the morning, Künzel was "excited" after the meticulous preparation of the past few months, as she said at the mechanics' stand of her outfitter. bike-components admitted. She had recently tested and refined her form in the Erzgebirge, and had ridden 180 kilometres confidently in the relay at the triathlon in Roth. She had finalised adjustments to the saddle and the inserts during the week of the competition. But then she suddenly found herself in the midst of the hustle and bustle of the "Green Hell" and was already touched: She reminded herself not to get carried away by the euphoria of the start phase and to do her thing on the tightly packed start-finish straight before taking to the Rad am Ring track at 12.56 pm on Saturday.
A little snooze in the camper does you good
Leila Künzel succeeded in doing just that. When she got cold at half past three in the morning and felt a little tired, she got into the campervan that was parked right by the side of the track. Together with her boyfriend Sven, she dozed off for a while. "That felt good," reports Künzel at her pit stop shortly before nine. Her head is not tired, she says, although her speech already sounds a little slurred. The traces of the race are visible in her eyes and face, but she keeps going. Driven on by Katja, her friend who drew her attention to the TOUR competition in the first place. As Leila Künzel sets off on her penultimate lap of Rad am Ring, the organiser makes a loudspeaker announcement warning of upcoming gusts of wind and Katja tells it like it is. "It's exhausting anyway. Now she can push through and maintain her podium position." She will be exhausted afterwards anyway. "Whether she continues for another hour or not won't make it any worse." The motivation is right. In the end, Leila Künzel, the winner from TOUR, is also at the award ceremony of one of the toughest competitions in German amateur cycling.
