Cologne athlete Joshua Hartmann makes a false start in the 200m European Championship final. ZDF commentators criticized him harshly. The duo was especially surprised by one mistake.
False start drama surrounding ASV Cologne's Joshua Hartmann: one day after his 25th birthday, the sprinter was disqualified in the 200m final of the European Athletics Championships.
This meant that the Cologne native was no longer allowed to participate in the race and had to watch the Swiss Timothe Mumenthaler (21) cheer. The 21-year-old sensationally took gold after 20.28 seconds.
“You learn that at school”: the ZDF duo destroys an athletics star
“I can't say exactly what happened in the end. The fact is that I started wrong, that's why I was rightly expelled,” Hartmann said on ZDF: “I will take it like any defeat that happens to me and I will get up, move on and come back stronger.”
There was harsh criticism in the ZDF, where Marc Windgassen (53) and Fabian Meseberg (48) commented. Hartmann's false start is unexplained: “In what was perhaps the most important race of his career, he made a false start that was technically completely dirty. He stumbles out of the blocks, too soon. “This is a big disappointment.”
The fact that the sprinter did not have his hands behind the line before the start was a cause for concern. in ZDF-Team for amazement: “You learn in school, when you are ten years old, that they are the ones behind it.”
With his best time of the season, Hartmann would have won silver at the European Championships
Filippo Tortu won the silver (25/20.41/Italy), the bronze went to William Reais (25/20.47) and therefore also to Switzerland. With his season best of 20.36 seconds, Hartmann would have won silver; Last year he achieved a German record of 20.02 seconds.
Two years ago, in Munich, Hartmann was the first German since 1986 (Jürgen Evers (60) had won silver in Stuttgart) to reach a European Championship 200m final and place fifth. Defending champion Zharnel Hughes (28/Great Britain) decided not to start in Rome.