European Athletics (EAA) – News – Ariane wants to be high and mighty again

After two tricky years, when injuries have rocked the career of Ariane Friedrich, the German high jumper can report good news. Her sights are set on the World Championships in Moscow.

"I am incredibly happy," Friedrich told leichathletik.de. "Training is good and I am pretty relaxed. But I will not forecast any heights."

In 2009, Friedrich, from Frankfurt, won gold at the European Athletics Indoor Championships in Torino, a few months later she won bronze at the World Championships in Berlin and the following summer she was back on the podium after finishing third at the European Athletics Championships in Barcelona.

But at the end of that year, a training session put pay to 2011 when she ruptured her left Achilles tendon and though she competed at the Olympic Games in London, she was not her normal, dangerous self and did not make the final.

She holds the German record of 2.06m from 2009 – the joint fifth-best height of all time – but at the Olympics was only 14th in qualifying with 1.93m.

But the turnaround for the Friedrich, 29, will see her plan her first competition in May with Moscow at the top of her priorities.

It has been quite a time.

A virus ruled her out of last summer's European Athletics Championships in Helsinki and then she suffered a shoulder injury in the autumn, which put her out for six weeks.

It meant no indoor season because she could not do more than "basic training".

Now that has been consigned to the past and the next few months look good.

When she is fit, her record at the big events speak for themselves, going all the way back to 2003 when she won her first major title with victory at the European Junior Championships in Tampere with 1.88m.

A decade on, she still wants to be up there challenging again.

European Athletics (EAA) – News