The 24-year-old has made an impressive comeback and successfully defended the first of her three titles at the Track Cycling World Championships. Hinze confidently led the German trio with Friedrich and Pauline Grabosch to gold in the team sprint on Wednesday evening and thus celebrated a perfect start to the title fights in northern France. The men's team sprint secured bronze immediately afterwards behind the Netherlands and France.
Hinze had recently complained about the public pressure and the downgrading of her Olympic record with one silver medal. But this time things went very differently: the trio led by Hinze set a world record in the qualifying round, beating the Netherlands' best time from a fortnight ago in Grenchen.
Balm for shattered self-confidence
The dream start was extremely valuable for the recently somewhat shaken self-confidence, even if the two strongest opponents, the European champions Netherlands and Olympic champions China, were missing. The world record show - the third and final time was 46.064 seconds - is also relative to a certain extent: there were not many references, as the team sprint has only been held with three women instead of two since this year. Nevertheless, national coach Detlef Uibel was almost overwhelmed: "In my wildest dreams, I would never have expected us to win gold with three world records."
Hinze had emphasised in advance that her aim was "to have more fun and really enjoy it. I'm not doing it to prove to everyone that I can win gold every time." You could see that she was having fun this time. The trio performed flawlessly in qualifying, in the first round and in the final against the strong Russians. In this form, Hinze will also be one of the top favourites in the sprint (Friday) and the keirin (Sunday). Surprisingly, it was Friedrich, not Hinze, who finished first in the final.
Men take bronze
For the German men, the first of five days of the World Championships in the cycling capital didn't go so brilliantly, but at least it started well. In the team pursuit, Theo Reinhardt's foursome did not make it into the final races for the medals, which will take place on Thursday. In the team sprint, on the other hand, Stefan Bötticher, Joachim Eilers and Nik Schröter finished third in a decent qualification. Together with Marc Jurczyk, they took bronze late in the evening after clearly beating Russia in the battle for third place.
Hinze and Co.'s gold medal start will be followed on Thursday (from 18:25/Eurosport) by what is probably the biggest title opportunity of the entire World Championships. The quartet of Franziska Brauße, Lisa Brennauer, Mieke Kröger and Laura Süßemilch is already known as the gold foursome and, after winning the Olympic and European titles, will be looking to complete the triple. Brennauer and Kröger also won gold in the mixed time trial at the Road World Championships in Flanders.
© dpa-infocom, dpa:211020-99-671333/7
