GERMAN MEETINGS: DÜSSELDORF – European champion Cindy Roleder challenges Olympic silver medallist Nia Ali at the PSD Bank Meeting

As early as at the meeting’s premiere in 2006 – then still lacking the stands on the finishing straight – no lesser an athlete than Susanna Kallur left her mark in the city on the Rhine river. 

The then world indoor record holder from Sweden dominated the race clocking 7.88 seconds. Then German Cindy Roleder was just 16 years old, with a personal best of 8.68sec. She is now among the world’s top, reigning European champion, world runner-up, fifth at the Olympics and boasts exactly Kallur’s 2006 winning time as her personal best! 

But one result is still missing in the impressive vita of the 27-year-old: a victory at the PSD Bank Meeting.

2015 and 2016 Cindy Roleder was narrowly beaten by Alina Talay.

The Belorussian will of course compete again at the 12th edition of the PSD Bank Meetings in Duesseldorf on February 1. But the hot favourite is another athlete: Nia Ali. The 28-year-old US American finished fourth at her Duesseldorf debut in 2016 and then turned up her performance during the season. First she successfully defended her world indoor title in 7.81sec, then gained Olympic silver in Rio thus celebrating the greatest success of her career.

She wore the US shirt for the first time at a major championship in 2013. Two years later she gave birth to her son Titus. Nine months later she did the round of honour after her triumph at the World Indoor Championships at home in Portland with her son on in her arms. “Natur-ally being a top athlete and a mother at the same time isn’t easy. But I don’t want it otherwise“, Nia Ali says.

The spectators can see for themselves how much power the sprinting mother radiates at the PSD Bank Meeting on February 1.

Cindy Roleder showed in the past years that the sprint hurdles is no longer the domain of the US Americans. In the slipstream of the world silver medallist the event has greatly progressed in Germany. Two further German hurdlers knocking on the door to the world’s top, Pamela Dutkiewicz and Ricarda Lobe, will also compete in Duesseldorf.

They want to hold their ground in this top field and – if possible – reach the final. 

Source:  PSD Bank Meeting Düsseldorf