At 21 and 22 years old, Paul Kohlhoff and Carolina Werner from Kiel were the youngest German sailors in Rio - the Olympic Games were a gigantic experience, especially for the newcomers. After returning home, the Nacra 17 crew look back on their journey to the Games and the events in Brazil and look ahead to the future: Tokyo in 2020. They have recently found new role models for this next challenge - they are colleagues.
Her Olympic balance sheet in a nutshell:
An incredible journey lies behind us. A journey that took us through ten countries on three continents and saw us spend a total of more than 500 days abroad. The past 32 months have taken us to Rio, to the Olympic Games and the biggest sporting event in the world.
Our aim was firstly to qualify and then to repay all the trust placed in us during these eventful months and achieve a good result.
We managed to do the former, albeit only at the last moment and after the hardest of setbacks during the second half of our qualification series, when we were unable to match our performances from the 2015 season, first off Clearwater, Florida and then off Hyères, France, and failed to fulfil the criteria set for participation in the Olympic Games.
But we made it, thanks to a great team in the background, consisting of families, friends, supporters, coaches and thanks to the German Sailing Federation, who believed in the young Nacra 17 crews and their potential and gave both teams one last chance after failing to fulfil the Olympic criteria, which we successfully used.
However, we were unable to achieve our second goal, because our 13th place in Rio feels like a big defeat, as so much more would have been possible. Everyone involved did an outstanding job, nothing was lacking and the organisation and planning for the German Olympic Sailing Team in Rio was flawless, for which we would like to take this opportunity to say a special thank you. We are proud to have been part of the team and would like to be again in the future.
It is difficult for us to put into words and understand this wealth of events from the last few months. What is certain is that we enjoyed the time immensely and did our best, even if we were unfortunately unable to demonstrate anything like our abilities in the end.
Rio has taught us an incredible amount, and now we need to draw conclusions and process everything in order to make plans for our personal and sporting future in the coming weeks and months. First of all, we have to wait and see what the international sailing federation World Sailing decides regarding boat classes for 2020, and we are also eagerly awaiting news from the German Sailing Federation, which is currently restructuring the Olympic sailing sport and announcing some changes that will hopefully contribute to German success in Japan in 2020.
Despite our performance, the last few days in Rio and the Olympic Village have given us a lot of joy. It was an incredible experience and we are extremely grateful to all those responsible and the team for the great spirit and this (for now) unique opportunity.
We would particularly like to emphasise the performance of our 49er team colleagues Erik and Thomas: With a clean series and incredible week, the two of them finally brought home another German sailing medal. We are all incredibly proud of their success and use them as role models for the years ahead.
