AWC 2024: Elena Essig and the World Championship Fairytale

The World Championships always write their own stories. Be it Husky Simon at the World Championships in Finland 2019. Or last Thursday the team run of the 73-year-old American Bob Daigle. And the World Championships are just such a story for Elena Essig and Border Collie Sye.

In May, after a nerve-racking qualification in Dortmund, she qualified as a reserve in the Intermediate category. For the first time ever that she had made it into the team. At that point, however, a use as a reserve team was rather unlikely. And now – a few months later, she is running in the World Championships in both the team and the individual competition. Due to a injury of two teams. Namely Tobias Wüst with Eve and Anne Lenz with Itzi-Bitzi.

Unfortunately, a month before the World Championships, Tobias Wüst and Eve needed to withdraw from a start. This meant that the young German was suddenly part of the team. Even if only for the team competitions. A start in the individual competition was practically impossible. Another 28 days later, she is suddenly and quite unexpectedly also a individual runner. This happened after Anne Lenz and Itzi Bitzi unfortunately had to give up on Thursday due to injury. She probably wouldn’t have expected that at all back in the summer. Even if the reason isn’t a nice one, she has confirmed with her great performances so far that she deserves to be part of the team. And now she deserves to be part of the individual competition too.

Her mother and sister also didn’t expect her to take part in the individual competition. They were able to get tickets in advance for the team competitions. For the individual competitions on the weekend, they had to find tickets in a makeshift way. Luckily, that worked out. And so her family will also be there on the weekend when Elena Essig and Sye represent Germany in the individual competition for the first time.

We would like to take this opportunity to wish all the teams that had to miss out due to injury a speedy recovery.

Picture: Milla Stöhr