Shot putter Lammert shows new skills in the snow
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| Former European indoor shot put champion Petra Lammert of Germany has managed a very successful transition to being a bobsled brakewoman after injury cut short her athletics career. |
After barely a year in the sport, Lammert took a silver medal in the two-man event at the 2012 World Championships in Lake Placid, United States, providing the power for her driver and 2006 Olympic champion Sandra Kiriasis.
Lammert formally announced her retirement from athletics in October 2010, after continual problems resulting from an injury sustained in training to her right elbow in May 2008.
“The decision has not been easy for me. However, in the last two years I could not train 100 per cent because I always had pain in the elbow. It (retirement) was my personal decision to quit,” said Lammert in 2010.
However, she started training for the bobsled in the spring of last year and she adapted to her new sport so quickly that by September she was part of the German national squad for bobsleigh.
She then beat off competition over the next two months from two other contenders to accompany Kiriasis's during the 2011-2012 season, which came to a climax at the weekend.
"I'm just a woman of extremes. You have to be a little crazy when you are flying down an ice chute at more than 100 kilometres an hour in the ice chute. It provides a nice balance to my life,” said the 27-year-old from Potsdam who, when she has some spare time, is continuing her post-graduate psychology studies and also plays the cello.
As an athlete, Lammert was also the 2005 European Athletics U23 Championships gold medallist and she won a bronze at the 2006 European Athletics Championships. Here last major international championships was when she finished sixth at the European Athletics Championships in Barcelona two years ago.
“I still have a lot of love for athletics and keep in contact with many people in the sport but it was not possible to continue. The training and mechanics for the bobsled mean that I don't have the same problems with my elbow and my other athletic abilities are being put to good use,” she commented recently.
Lammert's big ambition in the bobsled is to go to the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, after her elbow injury ruined her summer in 2008 and meant that she did not go to the Summer Olympics in Beijing.
