Silver for Merlin Hummel at the European Athletics Championships: Strength lies in meditation

Unlike in the qualification, when he struggled a lot and was comforted arm in arm with his girlfriend on Broad Street near the athletes’ hotel in the evening, Hummel simply didn’t allow himself to be disturbed. “It was like at the World Cup,” he said, “I was focused, I had it in my head the whole time: You can do this.” Hummel surprisingly won silver at the 2025 World Championships in Tokyo. Now he has confirmed his rise to the top of the world with the next medal.

Hummel often ran up and down next to the throwing ring, sat on the floor, did dry exercises and meditated between attempts. “I was in a meditative state throughout the entire competition. When little fantasies arise: Reset! Reset! Reset!”, said Hummel: “The point of meditation is to keep coming back. And during the competition I definitely brought myself back a hundred times.”

According to his own description, he discovered meditation five years ago, but “let it slide a bit”. Now she also helped him “to fight back from a position of extreme pressure, where my own expectations and those of the public are huge.”

His mother experienced his start at the Olympics as “like he was getting into a rocket and flying into space.”

Hummel actually comes from Kulmbach, deepest Upper Franconia, 20 kilometers north of Bayreuth. His love for the hammer throw began there during a holiday offer by the UAC Kulmbach-Stadtsteinach, as his mother Claudia said two years ago Sunday paper said: “Merlin saw Simon Lang throwing and said he wanted to throw 80 meters and go to the Olympics.” At the Summer Games in Paris, Hummel came tenth. For his mother, his journey felt like “he was getting into a rocket and flying into space.”

The rocket rose and rose, in 2025 Hummel became the first German hammer thrower to surpass the 80-meter mark in Halle an der Saale in May since 2007, followed shortly afterwards by the great World Cup success in Tokyo. But then came the break with his long-time trainer and sponsor Martin Ständner. Hummel separated from Ständner because of different training philosophies, who felt ignored and mistreated. In the dispute, Hummel left his homeland and, together with his younger brother, joined the strong group of throwers led by coach Kathrin Klaas at Eintracht Frankfurt at the beginning of 2026. You have signed a contract there until the end of the Olympic cycle in 2028. And Merlin Hummel has changed a lot since then, in terms of his technique, his diet and his training in general.

The rocket seems to have landed safely; Hummel communicated again and again in Birmingham with Klaas, who was sitting in the stands. Until it finally worked with his silver distance in the fifth attempt. “Being top of the world was a goal that I wanted to achieve maybe in five years. I’m so grateful to have gotten to a point so quickly,” said Hummel before he left. And a breath of fresh air can’t hurt before the next big flight into space.