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“The medal is already safe in your pocket,” he smiled at the European Track Cycling Championships in Bulgaria, winning a bronze medal in the men’s sprint. Vasily Lendel. “I’m very happy.”
The gold was won in the sprint race by German Maximilian Levy, whom the Lithuanian landed in the semifinals, and Russian Denis Dmitriev adorned silver. In the fight for bronze, V. Lendel defeated the Greek Sotirios Bret 2: 1.
V. Lendel admitted that the medal was fought for the European championship. “There were a lot of training sessions, we were perfectly prepared for the championships,” the athlete told sportas.lt.
European Bronze is the first 25-year-old cyclist trophy at the Old Continent Championships. In recent years, only Lithuanian women have reveled in medals at European championships. Lithuanian men haven’t won any medals since 2012, when Gediminas Bagdonas won a bronze medal on the bus.
“This medal” tastes good, “laughed V. Lendel. – It seems I still don’t understand what happened. I feel a little tired after two difficult days. Maybe that tiredness prevents you from enjoying yourself. Semifinals? The German athlete was definitely faster. , there was nothing I could do. I was a little slow for him. Oh, and I lost a race in the final. The reason? Yawning I made a technical error. But the eyes are already brighter looking ahead when the medal is up. in your pocket. I understand that there is room for improvement. I still lack the technique, the sharpness, the strength to be completely satisfied with myself. But in our sport it is mainly determined by technique and experience, and we have not had a competition for a while, so the initial excitement was quite a lot. I can say that it was psychologically more difficult than physically. “
V. Lendel said he liked the preferential conditions dictated by the pandemic, say, an empty arena, with no spectators. “Maybe it’s good that everything went without spectators, I didn’t feel any pressure. It helped get rid of the emotion, ”the athlete laughed.
For the moment, V. Lendel is cautious about his sporting future. “The next European Championship, the world championship …”, he named his plans for the future. – I want to give my best everywhere and climb the highest rung. Olympic Games? I don’t have an entry yet, so I’m not thinking about them yet. “
The cyclist’s coach, Dmitrijus Leopoldas sportas.lt, stated that he believed that V. Lendel would bring the medal to Lithuania.
“It was clear that Vasily was fighting for the medal, the athletic form was really good.” Maybe the training process was somewhat hampered by a pandemic, it was more difficult to train qualitatively, but we survived everything and prepared for the start, said the coach. – Another problem: it was the first outing after the world championships in March. We have not seen the competition, we did not know what form the competitors have reached. But Vasily was driving really hard today. “
Let us remind you that V. Lendel made his debut at the European Track Championships in 2014, at that time he ranked 8th in the men’s sprint competition and was 4th in Keirin’s match. In 2015, the rider won a bronze at the European Youth Championship and two years later he became the winner of the World Cup. This year V. Lendel won three gold medals at the Baltic Track Championship. At the Berlin World Championships in March, the rider was ranked 28th in the men’s sprint race.
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