Canoeist Ricarda Funk: After Olympic gold she commemorates flood victims

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Olympia 2021
Canoeist Ricarda Funk wins the gold medal and commemorates flood victims

Ricarda Funk

© CHARLY TRIBALLEAU / Getty Images

Ricarda Funk took first place in the canoe slalom and won the first gold medal for Germany at the Olympic Games in Tokyo. But despite the great joy, the sportswoman also takes a serious note and remembers the victims of the current flood disaster, which has also hit her homeland hard.

After the Olympic qualification didn’t work out five years ago, Ricarda Funk, 29, now has reason to be happy: She won the canoe slalom and thus won the first gold medal for Germany. But even during the greatest success of her career, her thoughts were in her home in Rhineland-Palatinate and addressed moving words to the flood victims.

Ricarda Funk: Emotional words after the award ceremony

At this milestone in her career, Ricarda Funk is emotional for several reasons. During her victory, she has the people in her head who have just lost a lot: After the medals have been awarded, the athlete thinks of the people in her place of birth, Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler, who are suffering from the flood disaster. “It was just terrible to see all the pictures, my condolences go home. The Ahrweiler district is strong, together we are even stronger. I keep my fingers crossed that we can get through together,” she says.

She kept asking her family and friends about the state of health and the development of the disaster. The stretch in Sinzig, on which Funk sat in a canoe for the first time, has since been destroyed, as the “SWR” reports. “It’s super sad, that’s where I grew up and that’s where it all started. […] It hurts my heart to see my homeland like that. “

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First Olympic gold

The canoeist can hardly believe her luck when she notices that she was the first to arrive at the finish. In 2014 and 2018 she became European champion, with the Olympic gold a long-awaited dream is now come true. “I just can’t believe it,” the 29-year-old repeated several times on ARD. In the last pulls she only knew that she had at least bronze for sure, but she was not aware that she would also complete the course ahead of the Spaniard Maialen Chourraut and Jessica Fox from Australia. “I could never have dreamed of that. It’s amazing,” Ricarda explains emotionally.

Sources used: ardaudiothek.de, swr.de, instagram.com

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