Nils Schumann wins in Sydney (© Getty Images)
Nils Schumann hasn’t appeared in public very often in the last few months, come to think about it, the last few years. The 2000 Olympic 800m champion last ran in 2003 at the German Indoor Championships in Leipzig. After this race the tall blond guy disappeared from the scene.
For about two years the German athlete, who will become 27 years of age on 20 May 2005, was injured and couldn’t run anymore. Two Achilles tendon operations, in June and November 2003, made any hope of running impossible.
A few days ago he came to a small meeting to Pliezhausen, Germany, a village close to Stuttgart airport. A lot of athletes were testing their shape but for Schumann this meeting was too early, rather he was joining his girlfriend Korinna Fink, who is a sprinter.
Yet even if Schumann still couldn’t run, he is now quite optimistic about his future. “I just came back from a training camp in South Africa and everything was working quite well.”
But it is a very long competition absence from which to come back successfully, and naturally Schumann doesn’t want to tell anybody when he will first set foot on the track to race. “I gave up arranging timetables,” comments Schumann who broke to world attention after winning the 1998 European title.
Also he is not openly making any plans "because if he was to run in Germany everybody would watch him and comment on his every step. But he needs to be left in peace", said his coach Volker Beck.
However, any return will not be in time for this summer’s World Championships, although he speculates about a late season return, with the focus rather being on the 2006 European Championships in Gothenburg.
Schumann has been training with Beck, who as an East German in 1980 won the Olympic 400m Hurdles title, since November 2004. Beck is the German national coach for the 400m and 400m Hurdles.
Beck is based in Frankfurt and as such Schumann has now joined the local club, LG Eintracht Frankfurt, with whom he has negotiated a contract until 2006. He has rented a house a few kilometres outside of the city of Frankfurt in an area called Taunus, and lives there with his girlfriend and his dog.
“I fell very well and I think I did the right thing,” said the bronze medal winner of the European Championships in Munich 2002. “I want to come back, and I try it step by step,” said Schumann, “I have found the rhythm again for the competitive sports.’
And even though he couldn’t run for about two years, he has got a new contract with adidas who is his new main sponsor. So he is one of the lucky few injured athletes who have never had problems with money even during his layoff since 2003.
“I earned good money after the Olympic victory and I am not the person who needs a lot of luxury.”
“I am 98 % healthy and if I have problems it is not the Achilles tendon anymore, rather they are now just the same the problems which everyone faces when they train very hard.”
The Sydney Olympic champion has found his motivation back, and is able to train almost everyday again, but the definition of the word 'time' has another meaning now for Schumann. Time is relative. It doesn’t matter now if he needs to wait a few months more before making his comeback.
“I am on the right path and I don’t want to make a mistake on the finish line. I am different now, compared with five years ago. I have been thinking a lot about the situation and must find a new definition about myself as a person,” and as a runner.
Ursula Kaiser for the IAAF