A corona infection in preparation for the World Cup made Elisabeth Seitz tremble again as to whether she could even be there in Liverpool. But as soon as we arrived, “Eli” was 100 percent there. Now she is in the final.
“I’m just happy,” says a beaming Elisabeth Seitz at the team hotel in Liverpool. The German delegation lives just a few meters from the hall and can walk to training and the competitions in a relaxed manner. And Elisabeth, called “Eli”, Seitz still has a competition. She made it to the final on uneven bars. She just about got the last place in the final. And that is not a matter of course for this year’s European champion.
Corona infection in preparation
A few weeks before the World Cup, the Stuttgart native had a corona infection. The time to get fit was short, your participation was on the brink. But Seitz has been in the business for a long time and could rely on himself: “With my experience, I was able to make up a lot and that’s why I ended up here at the World Championships and now even in the final.”
The tenth World Cup for Seitz
For Elisabeth Seitz it is already the tenth world championship of her career. Once it was enough for a medal on her favorite piece of equipment, uneven bars, in 2018 she came back from Doha with a bronze medal. She knows everything, the processes, the people, the excitement. Nevertheless, a World Cup is always special for Seitz: “I think if that special, that beautiful thing about a World Cup is somehow lost, then maybe it’s time to stop doing it.” But Seitz continues and has already shown in Liverpool that she is still one of the best in the world.
She delivers when it matters
In the qualification, she did without the all-around with all four apparatus, but did gymnastics on the vault and of course on the uneven bars, where she showed a strong performance. With 14.4 points, Seitz almost matched her score from the European Championship victory in the summer. In the weeks before, she hadn’t often managed to do that – but in the competition she delivered reliably. “Now I knew I’d done exactly this exercise so well this year. That’s why I had to be mentally fit, trust myself a lot and say: OK, I can do it, I just have to at the moment when it what matters is to be as physically ready as possible because I knew mentally I was ready”. And that’s exactly what worked. If it had been different, according to Seitz, she could not and should not have been angry after her corona disease.
Seitz has rightly lost its reputation as a “competitive type” for a long time. Her DTB teammate Lukas Dauser is also impressed by her: “I think Eli is Mrs. 100 percent, I would say, she’s always there in the competition, it’s really amazing. It doesn’t matter whether it’s from injuries, from illness-related absences, if the in the competition hall, then she does her thing,” explains Dauser.
Without pressure in the final
Thanks to her wealth of experience and trust in herself, Elisabeth Seitz is also relaxed about the World Cup final on the uneven bars: “I just don’t want to put any pressure on myself at all, on the contrary, I just want to make sure that I train until then in such a way that I know: I can do my exercise, I can do it well again and if I do it well, then I can be proud and satisfied with myself and that’s my biggest goal”. No placement, no score, only your own performance counts for Seitz.
Teamwork in the DTB team
And even if the young team around her didn’t make it to another final, she’s not alone in her final. All the gymnasts stayed in Liverpool to support Elisabeth Seitz – just as Seitz supported her. The gymnast, who turns 29 the day before her competition, is by far the oldest and most experienced woman on the team. For the others around balance beam European champion Emma Malewski, it is the first world championship. Veterans like Sarah Voss and Pauline Schäfer-Betz had to pull out due to injury. This is how Seitz became the “mother of the squad”. A task that she was happy to accept: “I just said right away: I would like to answer any questions that arise, especially before the competition, so that as few questions as possible arise during the competition.” Her colleagues gratefully accepted.
Seitz supported her team and on Saturday in the uneven bars final the other girls will do the same for her. And if everything goes as usual with the “competitive type” Elisabeth Seitz, then the competition can only be good.
