Hurdle sprinter Rosina Schneider is not going into the German indoor championships this weekend in Leipzig as the favorite. But the U-20 double European champion from Jerusalem 2023 has already made a name for herself in world class athletics. At the start of the season, when she ran the 60 meter hurdles in Sindelfingen in 8.23 seconds, eleven hundredths of a second better than last year, Jamaican coach Reynaldo Walcott sent congratulations.
When the nineteen-year-old was training with him in Kingston in December, his champion athlete Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, three-time Olympic sprint champion and five-time world champion, noticed her so pleasantly that she was invited to Christmas dinner. The athlete from Wiesenstetten, a district of the 450-inhabitant community of Empfingen between the Black Forest and the Swabian Alb, can still hear the greeting of three-time hurdle sprint world champion Grant Holloway ringing in her ear, who called out to her during an encounter in Florida: “Hi Rosie, how are you you?”
Rosina Schneider is on the move. With the 13.06 seconds in which she won in Israel, she is number two on the German annual best list. None of the great German hurdlers of the past years and decades had such speed at their age. But the only title that awaits her in Leipzig is her award as Youth Athletics Athlete of the Year on Sunday. She will be the youngest in the adult championship race on Saturday evening (6:30 p.m.).
13 seconds is the sound barrier
It was only a year ago that the runner decided to make hurdle training, which was scheduled once a week, the focus of her season. To her own surprise, she became U-20 European champion. She won her second gold medal in Jerusalem with the sprint relay. She is still a sprinter at heart. “Hurdles, that’s a lot of technique,” she says: “But if you’re not fast, it’s no use to you.” She wants to run a personal best time on the sixty meters with five hurdles: “Anything under 8.23 is a success. “
Rosina Schneider has already made a name for herself: Image: picture alliance / ULMER press photo agency
“So far it’s always been about changing the number after the decimal point,” she says with regard to summer. “Now it’s about changing the number before the decimal point.” 13 seconds is the sound barrier. It is six hundredths of a second away. If she undercuts the mark by two hundredths, she has the qualification standard for the European Championships in Rome.
The Paris Olympics six weeks later are not an issue. The qualifying standard is 12.77 seconds. “Beyond my imagination,” says Rosina Schneider, “but: nothing is impossible.” Sven Rees, her coach in Stuttgart alongside Cathleen Tschirch, would like her Olympic premiere not to take place until 2028 in Los Angeles: “So young this year Coming into this circle and getting hit on the head straight away wouldn’t do her any good.” He doesn’t want to speculate when his athlete will beat 13 seconds. “There is no plan,” he says: “But we won’t be able to prevent it from running so fast at some point.”
German team number one at the U-20 European Championships
The German Athletics Association produces numerous world and European champions among its young talent. At the U-20 European Championships, the German team was number one with eight titles and 23 medals. The challenge for coaches and associations is to enable the young champions to become competitive among adults – something that far too often fails, as the Germans’ performance without a single medal at the World Championships in Budapest last year shows.
In Stuttgart, the track and field athletes, the state sports association and sponsor Puma teamed up with the promising sprinter to enable her to travel to the workshops of the best in her sport after graduating from high school. Rees once trained heptathlete Beate Schrott, who is now married to triple jump Olympic champion Christian Taylor. The Taylors were happy to welcome the athlete from Germany into their home in Gainsville, Florida, and especially during her Olympic preparation.
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During the two and a half weeks there, Rosina Schneider met Holloway and Anna Hall, the top heptathlete and outstanding hurdler. In mid-October she flew to Los Angeles via Phoenix (Arizona) – for performance diagnostics, training and a foretaste of the Olympic city where she wants to compete in 2028.
“Slept a lot in Jamaica”
A tourist break in New York and training in Florida was followed by three and a half weeks in Coach Walcott’s Elite Performance Track Club, which, in addition to Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, has also included the double Olympic champion in the sprint at Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2021, Elaine Thompson, since November -Herah. “The Jamaican athletes have a different mindset,” says Rosina Schneider, since she trained with them from five in the morning to nine and another four hours in the afternoon: “That’s twice as much as my training in Stuttgart. I slept a lot in Jamaica.”
The athlete’s decision to pursue her sport professionally was given a solid basis by the study trip. Rosina Schneider knows her goal, knows the stars and has gained composure. “She left as a girl,” says coach Rees, “and she came back as a woman.”