Lia Flotow

Happy birthday to Germany’s sprint hurdler Lia Flotow, who took a national medal and a European Championships qualification three weeks ago.

On 25 July at the German Championships in Bochum-Wattenscheid, Lia ran **12.83 over the 100m hurdles for the bronze medal**, a personal best by nine hundredths, and in doing it cleared the direct qualifying standard for the European Championships in Birmingham. It was the third German senior podium of her career and comfortably the best race of it.

Her indoor season produced something rarer. On 6 March at ISTAF Indoor in Berlin she ran **8.03 over the 60m hurdles**, and that mark **broke the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern state indoor record of 8.18 — set by Anke Behmer in 1988**. Behmer was an Olympic heptathlon medallist. The record had stood for thirty-seven years, which is to say sixteen years longer than Lia has been alive. She had already taken the state U23 indoor record twice on the way.

Before that came Jerusalem, where she won the **bronze medal in the 100m hurdles at the European U20 Championships**, and a German U18 title over the same barriers. Like a lot of the best hurdlers she came from combined events, and it shows in the way she moves between them.

She races for 1. LAV Rostock under Birger Voigt, on the Baltic coast, in a state that produces far more athletes than its size suggests and has now had one of its oldest records rewritten by one of them.

Alles Gute zum Geburtstag, Lia! Gesundheit, Glück und Erfolg im neuen Lebensjahr, und noch viele schnelle Hürden. Hoch soll sie leben! 🎂🎁🎉🫶🫶🇩🇪