My plan was to follow the tactics which was prepared by my coach today and he also gave me an advice about the race. My tactics was to start slower and then to speed up towards to finish but it was really hard to keep this pace till the finish line. The weather was not very good for 50 km race walk today. I want to thank my coach, Victor Chegin, for trusting me and for his help. The last 4 years were not very good for me and he helped me to find myself and to win this race today.
The last 20km were very hard, but I kept the pace, I kept the faith. I kept pushing, always on the offensive, and around the 35th km, I started thinking I had my chance. I was strong today. My family and my team have always been very supportive. It's my 10th championships in eleven years, and now the work pays off.
To celebrate my medal I will run the New York marathon this year. Germany is a good country for me: In 1993 I won the gold medal at the World championships in Stuttgart. I have family here in Germany, they came as immigrants. So I like to be here. And now I won the bronze medal. These are my ninth World championships and this is my forth medal. Next year in Barcelona, I want to get the gold medal and I guess that the heat and the humidity there will help me. When the pace at the beginning was so high, I knew that the Australians and Russians they were going to 'die'. I very soon I saw that I was right, this gave me a lot of confidence. Why the beard? Oh, this is just a new look.
