It was a very busy year for Iga Baumgart-Witan, who in Tokyo won the gold medal in the 4×400 meters mixed relay and silver in the women’s relay race over the same distance. However, she paid for these successes with a lot of pain and suffering – she revealed earlier that she was struggling with an Achilles tendon injury, and now she sheds even newer light in an Instagram post.
What a difficult year it has been! I started it crying and I am ending it too …
Of course, these are completely different tears, some of sadness and the other of enormous relief and happiness, only me and my family know what I was going through every day from January to the Games. I only confessed to them that my stomach ached from stress every morning, what the day would bring, and whether I would be able to do the training. Stomach ached, body and soul hurt, even going to Tokyo. I endured… I have no idea how, but I held it even though I was on the verge. I thank myself and those who were close! I turned tears and pain together with the girls into gold and silver of the Olympic Games. Thank you, Baba, because neither of us had any problems. I wish us to reach Paris with less pain and tears of sadness. We did something that no one else would have done, and certainly not alone. Thank you!
– writes Iga Baumgart-Witan, thanking her friends from the relay: Ma³gorzata Ho³ub-Kowalik, Natalia Kaczmarek, Anna Kie³basiñska and Justyna ¦wiêty-Ersetic.
A similar entry was published by ¦wiêty-Ersetic, who also won gold and silver at the Olympic Games, and additionally won individually silver at the European Indoor Championships in Toruń:
What a year it was !! Still uphill from the very beginning. Happy? Hellish difficult? Gorgeous? Tiring? A constant pursuit, will I be able to do it for sure, or will I be able to do it? Checking my character? Bringing to tears practically every day? Exhausting, monstrously mental? Making dreams come true? Yes! This is what 2021 was like for me. Constant injuries and diseases.
The road to the top was extremely bumpy and fucking difficult. But guess what? If I were to go through it all again, I would! And all this to make my biggest sports dream come true, something I worked terribly hard for, not for a year, for two, but for a good few years!
The support of the Family, Trainer, Team, Physiotherapists, Doctors and many people led to two medals at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics !! I couldn’t have imagined a more beautiful end to this season. Someone once told me that a wounded animal is the strongest, and you know what? There is something in it! ??
2021 despite the winding road THANK YOU! . 2022 I hope you’ll be a little kinder to me
Source: Sport
Tristin is an accomplished author and journalist, known for his in-depth and engaging writing on sports. He currently works as a writer at 247 News Agency, where he has established himself as a respected voice in the sports industry.
