Artistic gymnast Lena Bickel, the youngest member of the Swiss delegation in Paris, impresses with a personal best in the all-around and hopes to be an inspiration for talented youngsters in Switzerland.
Lena Bickel takes several deep breaths after the vault, her final discipline, and then a smile flashes across her face. The 19-year-old from Ticino is going crazy with emotion. After last year's World Championships in Antwerp, where she won the quota place for the Olympic Games in Paris, she was plagued by physical complaints. Until the end of the year, she almost only took a break, and when she wanted to start rebuilding in January, the next setback followed.
"It was never 100 percent good. I had to find the balance to be able to do gymnastics without any major complaints," Bickel told the Keystone-SDA news agency. As a precaution, she decided to forgo the European Championships in Rimini at the beginning of May. And now, in the packed Bercy Arena, she achieved a score of 51.131, which she had never achieved before. She was "very, very" nervous before the uneven bars, but after the dismount everything fell away from her. "After that I was calm, I enjoyed every moment," says Bickel. Just being there in Paris was a great success for her.
Bickel is used to being the youngest member of the Swiss delegation - she celebrates her 20th birthday on December 22 - so she doesn't see it as anything special. Instead, she hopes that her good performance after a difficult time will set an example for the younger generation in Switzerland. "I hope they have seen what is possible," says Bickel. Because she no longer wants to be the only Swiss gymnast at the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles.
Unsurprisingly, her role models were Ariella Käslin and Giulia Steingruber. She followed the former at the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, after which she also wanted to have such a "robe" and took up artistic gymnastics. She takes a lot of self-confidence with her from Paris. "I proved to myself that I deserved my place," says Bickel. She will remain in the French capital until August 4. She will recover in Greece. After that, her first goal is to "get 100% healthy so that I can train at full throttle for the next four years."
