The fact that the Swiss women's sprint relay team has once again qualified for the Olympic final is anything but a coincidence. The enormous development in women's sprinting in Switzerland is systematic.
08.08.2024, 19:58
08.08.2024, 20:10
SDA
When Swiss Athletics launched the women's sprint relay project in 2010 with a view to the 2014 European Championships in Zurich, the national season's best time over 100 m was 11.70 seconds. This year, 16 Swiss women have stayed under this time so far; Salomé Kora was the third Swiss woman to break the 11-second mark with 10.95 seconds after Mujinga Kambundji (10.89) and Ajla Del Ponte (10.90). The latter two reached the Olympic final together in the supreme discipline in Tokyo in 2021 - an achievement thought impossible. Kambundji also finished 6th in Paris.
The next generation is coming
All of this underlines the pull of the relay project. In Paris, the Swiss women qualified for the final at the Olympic Games or World Championships for the sixth time in a row. At last year's World Championships, they even managed to do so without Kambundji and Del Ponte. "We do it every year, regardless of the line-up. It's cool and motivates young people. The next generation is coming," says Kambundji.
The 32-year-old from Bern is back in the Swiss team for the first time since the 2022 World Championships in Eugene. Last year, she missed out on competing due to a persistent inflammation of her plantar fascia, and this year she had other priorities before Paris and did not train with the team. However, the relay is a nice change, emphasizes Kambundji.
A lot of margin
The two-time European 200m champion ran the last section after Kora, Sarah Atcho-Jaquier and Léonie Pointet. She had never taken the baton from Pointet in a competition before, so they didn't take any risks. "We both had the confidence that it would work out," explained Kambundji. Tomorrow they could then build in less safety. She identified potential for improvement in all of them, with the quartet finishing in 42.38 seconds, 33 hundredths faster than the national record.
Three years ago in Tokyo, the Swiss finished fourth, two tenths behind third-placed Great Britain. At the 2019 World Championships in Doha, where they also finished in 4th place, they were just eight hundredths off the podium; in 4th place at the 2018 European Championships in Berlin, it was seven hundredths. The crowning glory of the project has yet to come.
Not thinking about a medal
It is only realistic that this will change in Paris if higher-ranked nations slip up, which is always possible in the sprint relay. Asked about her expectations for the final on Friday evening at 7.30 pm, Kambundji replied pragmatically: "We will try to compete for the medals, but there is not much point in thinking about it. We have to do a good job and then we'll see what comes out." Either way, the project launched in 2010 has more than paid off.
