Shot putter Yannis Fischer (Stuttgart) won the second gold medal for the German para-athletes at the World Championships in Paris.
The 21-year-old debutant Fischer won the F40 class for short athletes with a world championship record of 11.43 m and celebrated the greatest success of his career so far.
One day after the golden start for the team of the German Disabled Sports Association (DBS) with the successful title defense of long jumper Leon Schäfer (Leverkusen), the 34-year-old javelin thrower Frances Herrmann (Cottbus) also won in the F34 class, as at the 2021 Paralympics in Tokyo Silver.
T54 wheelchair user Merle Menje (Singen), double European champion from 2021, had to settle for fifth place in the 800 m competition (1:47.06 minutes). T35 sprinter Isabelle Foerder from Erfurt finished seventh in the 200m final (33.84 seconds) and Nele Moos from Leverkusen in the 100m final in the T38 class (13.69).
“This is completely surreal”
Fischer, who beat Iraqi Garrah Tnaiash (11.28 m) and world record holder Miguel Monteiro (11.14) from Portugal, was amazed after improving his German record by 23 centimeters: “It’s completely surreal, I can I can’t really believe it yet. I never thought that I would be able to achieve such an incredible distance in competition. I thought anything over eleven meters would be nice. 11.43 meters is absolutely intense.”
The Swabian is one of the top talents of the German Disabled Sports Association (DBS) and was the flag bearer of the German team at the opening ceremony of the dress rehearsal for the 2024 Paralympics. When he won the title, the 2021 European Championship third and German record holder was only centimeters below Monteiro’s world record.
Herrmann was in the lead for a long time with her best jump of the season of 17.74 m. Only the Chinese world record holder Zou Lijuan snatched the title away from the three-time Paralympic medal winner as the last starter in the final with 20.74 m.
At the last World Cup 2019 in Dubai, the DBS team had won seven titles. With two more silver and two bronze medals each, Germany took ninth place in the medal table.