In a concentrated manner, Léa Krüger watches her opponent, she breathes deeply and then the battle begins in the training hall at the Olympic base in Dormagen. It only takes a few seconds, then the saber fencer lands her first goal.
After five points and a few minutes, Krüger pulls her mask off and thanks her training partner. Her eyes shine, she smiles and is visibly satisfied. “It was nice, that was just great.”
The 29-year-old has fun fencing again, when sport that she has successfully operated since she was twelve. “It came from a childhood dream. I always wanted to be a knight as a child,” she says in the DW interview. “Fencing has sparked a passion and a burning sensation, which I otherwise knew from no other area of my life,” said the athlete. But exactly this fascination brings Krüger to the edge of her performance in 2022 – physically and mentally.
Compulsive striving for perfection
Krüger’s career picks up speed early. It quickly becomes part of the German National National team, takes part in international competitions, world and European championships. “But then I always came into phases where my performance stagnated,” she recalls. “And then the pressure came.”
The fixed structures that competitive sports offers give her hold. Training plans, your law studies, regeneration times and nutritional plans determine Krüger’s everyday life and are becoming increasingly important. “Everything was clocked very precisely, and I also kept it very precisely. I wanted to perfect my performance in all areas.”
This striving for perfection develops into a compulsion over time. A feeling has developed not to be good enough. “In the fencing on the track, in the one-on-one fight, where every goal decides on victory or defeat, such strong feelings have developed with which I no longer got along,” says the fencer. “In order to get rid of these feelings, I started to hand over.”
Krüger: “I have it under control”
In retrospect, the athlete says that the bulimia had started at her in 2022 at the Saber European Championship in Antalya. Lost battles increased the feeling of not being good enough and let their fear of failure continue to grow. “After the competition, I went to the toilet to get it all out first.”
For Krüger, this is handed over to the “normality” and the valve – not only in competition, but also in training and in everyday life. After all, it is something that she can control herself. In addition, it was – in their eyes – something good, because the negative feelings were no longer there afterwards. “In addition, I also got the feeling that I am at least still thin when I can’t get everything else,” says the fencer.
A conversation opens his eyes
Her sporting performance decreases strongly during this time, Krüger can only keep up with the other fencers. The reasons for this are obvious at the time, because awareness of her illness is there, said Krüger. But the emotions have completely pointed out to change something.
Poor performance on the fencing railway always trigger negative feelings that she only believes by walking to the toilet can be controlled. “That’s how I got into this spiral.”
Only a conversation with her best friend Calvin opens her eyes, and Krüger understands that what seems “normal and controllable” for her is not normal. She is lucky and can start therapy as early as 2023. After the first session, the therapist Bulimia certifies her. “It was like a board in front of her head,” recalls the athlete. “I realized for the first time that I was somehow sick.”
The diagnosis helps Krüger, because you can handle diagnoses as a athlete. “How many times have I had muscle injuries? These were always diagnoses,” she says. “But mental diseases are not muscle injuries.” Dealing with it was difficult, said Krüger. With the support of the therapist, it lasts almost a year before she can accept that she has an eating disorder.
Krüger: “It was an overwhelming to be felt”
Krüger speaks to her trainer and her teammates. The reactions were positive, but in particular with her trainer “was also overwhelming in dealing with the topic and with me,” recalls the fencer.
As a result, she no longer gets missions in her team because her trainer wants to protect her – and also because her performance is no longer correct. But Krüger continues to train and tries to fight back.
“I needed the structures and didn’t just want to run away from the eating disorder,” explains the fencer. She makes it, comes back to the team and is back at a World Cup 2024 in Belgium. However, an injury in the first battle forces her to make a longer break and the decision to make her illness public in early 2025 as part of the campaign “‘Du first” of the Rhineland Olympic base.
That gave her the thought that you had to talk much more about mental health. “We have to make sure that it is no longer a taboo among the trainers, but also among us athletes, to talk about mental health,” said Krüger. Perception and dealing with mental illnesses in competitive sports must change and improve greatly.
Krüger calls for open handling
Scientific studies show that between ten and twenty percent of all competitive athletes suffer from eating disorders. But only very few dare to talk about it, knows Krüger, who also works at the independent association “Athlete Deutschland eV”. The fear of the loss of a squad square is too great. “It is not a torn muscle fiber that has healed again in six weeks, but in the hardest case it is a mental illness. And when such a disease is healed, it is uncertain,” says the 29-year-old.
“We have to manage that athletes can speak openly about it and find the courage to be able to express the man,” she says. In addition, the correct handling of mental illnesses must be anchored in the training of the trainers in order to sensitize them to the topic.
Krüger: “I want something to change”
Krüger’s “wish list” is long. It demands that the structures already exist in sports. And also an “independent point of contact for athletes, if they need help, as well as for trainers, supervisors and also for people from the closer environment of those affected”. In addition, the network of therapists must be expanded.
Krüger and some others from their surrounding area have taken an important step after the Olympic Games in Paris and organized a meeting under the working title “Safe Space”, in which athletes were able to speak openly about their problems and challenges.
Because going to the public, as Krüger did, is not easy. “Talking about my mental illness is nothing that I particularly like to do,” admits the fencer. “But I want us to talk about it openly, so I have to do it too. It’s about the topic and I want something to change.”
You can get more information on the topic at “Mental strengthened”a network initiative of the Psychological Institute of the Cologne Sports University in cooperation with the Robert-Enke Foundation, the Administrative Cooperative (VBG) and the Association of Contract Football players (VDV).