Manuela Schär is competing in her last track races at the Paralympics in Paris. The 39-year-old from Lucerne is not doing so with melancholy, but with the aim of winning another medal.
Manuela Schär has been doing something in the last few months that she has done many times before. She is preparing for the Paralympics. She is competing for the sixth time in Paris among the Paralympic Agitos. The 39-year-old has a lot of experience. She knows what her body needs so that she can deliver her best performance when it counts.
And yet: at some point during the countless hours of training on the track in Nottwil or in the training hall next door on the roller, Schär realizes that preparing for the prestigious major event feels different this time. That a "boulder", as she calls it, is suddenly no longer weighing on her shoulders.
The Lucerne native is sitting in the training hall in Nottwil at the end of July when she gives the Keystone-SDA news agency an insight into her emotional world. She looks back on the difficult years. To 2012, when, after disappointing Paralympics in London, where she failed to win a medal, she asked herself the question of meaning. She asked herself whether she really wanted to continue in the relentless four-year cycle in which Paralympic athletes live. Even in 2016, when she again left Rio de Janeiro without a medal.
Liberation in Tokyo
It is experiences like these that make the weight of the imaginary boulder on her shoulders heavier. Because despite numerous medals at World and European Championships, despite two bronze and one silver medal at the 2004 and 2008 Paralympics, despite the fact that she has become one of the most successful marathon athletes ever since refocusing on long distances after 2012 - something has long been missing from Manuela Schär's medal cabinet: a Paralympic gold medal.
Almost exactly three years ago, Schär was able to make up for this shortcoming twice at the Tokyo Paralympics. First she won gold in the 800 m, four days later she triumphed in the 400 m. Thanks to three more silver medals, she became the most prolific medal collector in the Swiss delegation in Japan. But what is much more important for Schär is that a gap in her palmarès has finally been closed.
"It's super nice that the pressure of having to win a gold medal is gone," she says. Her coach Claudio Perret, who has been coaching her for twelve years, puts it this way with regard to her sporting goals: "Manuela no longer has to do anything and can actually do everything." Schär knows that she would have put herself under a lot of pressure for the Paralympics in Paris if the dream of gold had not yet been fulfilled, that a boulder would have weighed on her shoulders, so to speak. Because she also knows that she will be competing in her last races on the track in the French capital.
Los Angeles in the back of her mind
A decision that has matured over a long period of time. After the games in Tokyo, she was already thinking about whether she should just focus on the marathon, she says. Schär realized that she still wanted to compete on the track. But now the wheelchair athlete has reached the stage in her career that catches up with all top athletes at some point - no matter how fast they have previously whizzed around a tartan track.
She is doing things for the last time that have shaped her life for decades. In May, Schär stood on the starting line for the last time at the ParAthletics athletics meeting in Nottwil - and even improved a personal best time. Now she will experience a few more last times in Paris. First on Saturday over 5000 m, then over 800 m, 1500 m and finally over 400 m on September 5.
"It feels right," says Schär. "It was clear that I would cut back at some point, and it was also clear that I wanted to do it gradually." She will also be on the marathon course after Paris. After all, after three major marathons as the leader, she currently has a good chance of winning the prestigious marathon series, which stops in Tokyo, Boston, London, Berlin, Chicago and New York, for the fourth time. As long as she is doing so well and enjoys the marathon so much, she will certainly continue, says Schär, who has deliberately not talked about competing in her last Paralympics in Paris. Because if she feels well, the Lucerne native can certainly imagine competing in the marathon in Los Angeles in 2028.
Triumphant run on the Champs-Elysées
But in the immediate future, the Paralympic marathon will take place on September 8, running along the Champs-Elysées and finishing at the Esplanade des Invalides. It will provide the visually stunning sporting finale to the 17th Paralympic Games.
Perhaps Manuela Schär will have the opportunity on this day to win her fifth medal of these Paralympics, as she did in Tokyo. Perhaps she will add another exclamation mark to her impressive track record with the gold medal for the 42.195 km. The athlete herself remains reserved: "To win another 'Plämpu' like this at the end of my track career would be cool and would make me mega proud."
