Lena Anochili

Happy birthday to Germany’s sprinter Lena Anochili, who has just come back from her first global championships.

Lena was nominated to the German team for the World U20 Championships in Eugene over 100m, and the meeting finished six days ago. She earned the ticket the hard way, at the German U20 Championships in Bochum-Wattenscheid in July, taking silver over 100m in 11.26, a personal best, and then running 23.46 over 200m the next day, another one.

The twelve months behind that are the real story. At the start of 2025 her bests were 11.57 and 24.40. She has taken three tenths off the 100m and nearly a full second off the 200m inside a year, which in sprinting is the difference between a promising junior and a national team athlete. In February at the German U20 Indoor Championships in Sindelfingen she won both titles: the 60m in 7.27, decided by one thousandth of a second over Emma Goretzka, and then the 200m in 23.81. Her own words afterwards were overjoyed and overwhelmed, and that this title meant really, really a lot to her.

She made a decision to get there. In 2024 Lena was the German U18 champion in the 100m AND the long jump, and she was fifth in the 100m at the European U18 Championships. Then she gave up the long jump entirely to concentrate on sprinting, at seventeen, having just won a national title in it. Hamburg named her its Sports Talent of the Year the same year.

She races for Hamburger SV under Dominik Ludwig and sits in the Bundeskader NK1, Germany’s top development squad.

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