KIT Swimmers Fight for DHM Titles
The last weekend in May from 27.05.2016 - 29.05.2016 the KIT swimming competition team spent this year in Göttingen. There, the German University Championships with a total of 499 participating students took place under the organization of the Georg-August University Göttingen. With 38 participants, 129 individual starts and 11 relays, Karlsruhe again provided the largest team.
A special challenge this year was the competition taking place in an outdoor swimming pool. Normally the DHM are held in an indoor swimming pool, but this year they took place outdoors. A big advantage of this year's format of the DHM was, besides the short distances between the tent area and the swimming pool, to use the complete outdoor pool, such as all pools for swimming in and out. However, a good success of the event and the successful course of the competition depended especially on the weather.
Weather plays along
This was a nail-biter until the very end, but in the end the weather played along. Except for a few small rain showers and a thunderstorm on Saturday evening, the Göttingen open-air swimming pool was spared from the storms that moved across Germany. Thus, the tent camp set up in the swimming pool in the specially set up athlete camp could be used by all participants without any problems over the entire weekend. During the day, the sun shone for the most part, which created a good atmosphere in the pool and at the poolside. Especially the cohesion of our team from Karlsruhe should be mentioned here, as every single swimmer was actively cheered on by his team mates and thus carried through the water. The 6-person team from Heidelberg, which was included in the bus, also benefited from this atmosphere.
The following successes were achieved by the swimmers from Karlsruhe:
Anne Neidhardt made it to the finals in the 100m butterfly as the 7th fastest in the heats and was 10th in the 50m. She also competed in the tough 200m butterfly event on Sunday alongside 4 other swimmers from Karlsruhe. Here she ended up in 9th place. Saskia Bluhm reached 10th place and in the men's event Michael Reize, Christian Marzi and Alexander Fuhrmann ended up in 6th, 7th and 9th and 11th place respectively. Anne rounded off her good results with an 11th place over 200m medley. Jan Schützke finished 15th in the 100m butterfly, with Paul Eigen only 3 hundredths of a second behind in 17th place. Hector Sauri Suarez finished 13th in the 200m freestyle in a well-staffed field and was 7th in the 400m freestyle. He also competed in the 200m backstroke, where he finished 9th. On this distance Tim Wicke reached the 7th place. Over one of the most strenuous distances, the 400m medley, 3 women from Karlsruhe competed at the same time. Pia Stammer, Birthe Roß and Constanze Hodapp finished 8th, 9th and 11th respectively. In addition, Birthe finished 15th in the 200m breaststroke and Pia finished 15th in the 400m freestyle.
The Karlsruhe team also achieved some successes in the relays. The women's 4x100m medley relay team of Pia Stammer, Birthe Roß, Anne Neidhardt and Saskia Bluhm achieved 8th place. The men's relay team of Tim Wicke, Dennis Sommer, Jan Schützke and Marcel Motteler followed directly behind and also finished in 8th place. The women's 4x100m freestyle relay team also finished 8th (Paula Ullmann, Janina Letz, Corinna Kipke, Anne Neidhardt). The men's 4x100m freestyle relay (Tim Wicke, Tiago Costa, Alexander Stein, Paul Eigen) finished in 10th place.
After three exhausting as well as successful and amusing days, the KIT swimming team returns to Karlsruhe on Sunday, 29.05.2016, exhausted but happy and satisfied. With strengthened team spirit, it now continues with the training in the university pool, because after the DHM is finally before the DHM. The entire Karlsruhe team is already looking forward to next year's DHM and other sporting challenges.
All in all, the event went very well and we would like to thank the organizers in Göttingen and the adh for the great event as well as our university sports for their support.