European Athletics Championships: Owen Ansah wins bronze – but can he keep it? – Sports

Wen Ansah is a very religious man. The best German sprinter showed this again on Tuesday evening when he came out of the call room, the place where the athletes meet nervously before their name is called out and they go to their starting block one after the other. Ansah crossed himself and pointed up to the sky. He then tapped his heart twice with the flat of his right hand and pointed his index finger forward, saying: I’ll show you now! Then Ansah, almost at the starting block, took a sip of water from the bottle. First stage: done.

The second stage, his 100-meter final at the European Athletics Championships in Birmingham, started rather sleepily. Ansah struggled out of the starting block with the slowest reaction time of all eight finalists; he needed 0.165 seconds; the start is not his greatest strength anyway. But then he dug his way into the race, overtaking almost all of his competitors except Romell Glave and Jeremiah Azu, who won gold and silver for Great Britain to the delight of the 16,000 spectators at Alexander Stadium. Ansah crossed the finish line in third place because he had narrowly overtaken the Dutchman Elvis Afrifa at the end.

A German 100 meter sprinter wins a European Championship medal? The last time the GDR athlete Steffen Bringmann achieved this was 40 years ago at the European Championships in Stuttgart.

Alone, and this leads to the third, by far most difficult stage for Ansah that evening: the 25-year-old from Hamburg didn’t seem really relieved. Despite this almost sporting historical dimension of his success. And even though he had set his sights on a medal. He took a flag of his home country, put it around himself, grinned briefly into the cameras, high-fived his colleagues, but that was it.

“I can only influence how fast I am on the track,” says Owen Ansah

Ansah knew what questions were waiting for him. But he also mastered this mountain stage of the highest category with impressive calm, at least that’s how it seemed to the outside world: How big is the fear of having to give up the medal again? “Don’t worry, I trust in my team that stands behind me, they have my back and give me wings,” said Ansah: “I can’t influence others. I can only influence how fast I am on the track. That’s a bit of a difference for them too.”

The otherWhat Ansah meant and which stood like an elephant in the stadium that evening, at least from a German perspective, is the following: The National Anti-Doping Agency (NADA) accuses Ansah of refusing to take a doping test on July 9, 2026. On the Friday morning before the start of the European Championship – what timing! – NADA had announced that it was proposing a four-year ban against the sprinter. The reason: The investigation revealed “that the athlete violated the anti-doping provisions of the Anti-Doping Code of the German Athletics Association and, from NADA’s perspective, there was a violation of Article 2.3 of the National Anti-Doping Code (refusal or failure to submit to a sample taking).”

According to everything that is known, it is statement against statement, controller against athlete. NADA says its controller acted according to the guidelines, Ansah’s lawyer says his client didn’t refuse a doping test at all, Ansah protests his innocence. He was in a hurry at the time because he had to catch up at an international athletics meeting in Monaco at short notice and had to go to the airport; The inspector neither informed him of the consequences nor offered to take him to the airport and take the sample there.

If the inspector hadn’t encountered Ansah at all, nothing would have happened to the sprinter. But if an athlete is found during a check – even outside the one-hour window in which he has to be available every day – as happened in Ansah’s case, then he must be checked. Those are the rules. Only compelling reasons, such as a death in the family, can release him from this obligation. A spontaneous start at an international meeting is unlikely.

Ansah has had exactly 20 days to think about it since the conclusion of the sports law results management process, which NADA informed about on Friday – and after this period has expired, exactly two options that can lead him from bad to worse. Either he accepts the NADA “proposal”, then his ban would be reduced from four to three years. However, all results since July 9, 2026, i.e. both DM titles and the European Championship bronze medal he just won, would also be revoked. His participation in the 2027 World Cup in Beijing and the 2028 Summer Games in Los Angeles would be shelved. Or he doesn’t accept it, then the case ends up before the German Sports Arbitration Court – and possibly in the final instance before the International Sports Arbitration Court Cas. Exit: completely open. Process duration: probably years. And Ansah could receive a multi-year ban after the verdict, which – as of now – would not even apply retroactively as he is currently not provisionally suspended.

Ansah wants to win the next medal in the 200 meters

However, there are questions in this story: Why do both sides so blatantly insist on their completely opposite positions? Of course, NADA wants to protect its anti-doping regime and the athlete wants to protect his sporting future. But what if the inspector made a formal error? What if there were witnesses, as is often rumored? What if Ansah simply didn’t think about the consequences in his haste and therefore made a careless mistake with possibly the most serious consequences? The details remain obscure so far.

This gives Ansah’s case not only a legal level, but also a moral and sports policy level. Ultimately, it’s also about who retains the authority to interpret.

Ansah was allowed to run in the competition in Birmingham and has not yet been suspended. And he is receiving support, also from the German camp, as athlete spokeswoman Gina Brückenkemper said the day before: “In my opinion, Owen is currently doing the only right thing, he is concentrating on himself and trying to ignore everything else. He will be on the track here tomorrow and really attack, and we are all keeping our fingers crossed for him in this difficult situation. I believe that he will master it outstandingly.”

Ansah delivered. And he was even allowed to answer a few sporting questions after the race. “I’m super happy, I came here with the goal of leaving the 100 meter final with a medal, and I won the bronze medal,” he said: “I want to try to get Germany back on the map,” on the sprinter map.

And so to the fourth stage, which is on the program on Thursday and Friday with heats, semi-finals and finals: the 200 meters. Owen Ansah wants to compete there too and win the next medal. But the elephant will be waiting for him again around the stadium.