In 2005, Kim Bui qualified for a world championship for the first time – a current team colleague in the German gymnastics squad was just one year old at the time. The 33-year-old is contesting her last major competition at the European Championships in Munich. And now does what there was no time for before.
An integral part of the German national team for 17 years – even Olympic bar champion Fabian Hambüchen can’t hold a candle to gymnast Kim Bui. With a gold medal in Rio 2016, the ex-world champion triumphantly said goodbye to the gymnastics stage, the native of Tübingen said goodbye quietly at the European Championships in Munich at the weekend – at the proud age of 33.
“Now it’s time to break new ground and to let new things into my life that I didn’t have time for before,” said the daughter of a Vietnamese and a Laotian about her resignation at “feels like 23 years old”. as Bui explained with a wink.
While teammates like the German record champion Elisabeth Seitz, the former balance beam world champion Pauline Schäfer-Betz or Sophie Scheder, Olympic bronze medalist on the uneven bars, were often the focus of attention, “Kimi” was the stabilizing and absolutely reliable constant in the team of the long-time head coach Ulla Cook.
The “Queen Mum” of German artistic gymnastics was not spared from various setbacks. At her first home World Championships in Stuttgart in 2007, Bui was only a substitute athlete, a year later she missed qualifying for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing by 0.001 (!) points. But not even two cruciate ligament tears in 2010 (left) and 2015 (right) stopped the Swabian.
“The joy of gymnastics was always there and kept growing. It was my motivation to continue,” said the long-time active spokeswoman. And so Bui has been doing gymnastics at world class level for almost two decades. Her current teammate Emma Malewski was just one year old when she first took part in the World Championships in 2005 in Melbourne.
Your motto in life and your self-image? “My basic attitude is determination,” the 2011 European Championship third place on uneven bars and former German all-around champion once described herself. Otherwise she would hardly have been able to reconcile her high-performance sport with her demanding studies in technical biology and, above all, to complete them.
