Questions from the press conference and the mixed zone to pole vault world champion raphael holzdeppe after his world championship victory in moscow.
Question: have you already realized what you have achieved here??
Answer: I think this is coming one by one. But to realize all this, it still takes a few days.
Question: did you even look at lavillenie’s last attempt over 5.96??
Response: i have been under a lot of tension. I knew of course that he can still jump over, he has already done so many times this season. I could not sit, had to walk around there somehow. But I watched the jump, I really wanted to see it. When he snapped, I just wanted to cheer and run towards the coach.
Question: was it also a revenge for the fact that lavillenie had won gold at the olympic games and at the european championship before you and bjorn otto?
Response: yes, of course there is a certain satisfaction in it. He was always in front the last rough events, also in most international meetings. We knew that we could beat him. But somehow it did not work. To manage that now at a rough championship is naturally all the more awesome.
Question: they seemed completely cool, took every high one on the first try.
Answer: before the first attempt, i was really nervous, because jumping in was disastrous. When the first attempt went very easily, I realized: okay, I’m in the competition. A stone has fallen from my heart. I have managed to always focus on the next jump. And then it happened…
Question: their coach chauncey johnson said: they knew exactly what they wanted. Was the gold?
Answer: i really wanted to win at least bronze. I knew I was the number two in the world. And the last training sessions at home were very good. I knew i was in great shape and could only really screw it up myself. I saw renaud as the clear favorite, but I also knew that he was not unbeatable. I already did it once this year in rome in the diamond league.
Question: and now the six meters are falling?
Response: I still have a few competitions this year, from the form it is in any case in it. And if it doesn’t work out this year, it’s definitely the goal for next year.
Question: you are the first german pole vault world champion. What does this mean to you?
Answer: that means a lot to me. There’s not very much you can accomplish as a first pole vaulter. There was the first six-meter jump by tim lobinger, there were all possible medals, there was also a german olympic champion. But the olympics won’t be here for another three years, so it really means a lot to me that I was able to achieve something that no one can take away from me, that I achieved first.