Criticized in Rio, marathon twin awarded victory at home

Lisa and Anna Hahner finished 81st and 82nd in last Sunday’s race, and say they chose to hold hands at the spur of the moment after Anna made a late push to catch up with her sister toward the end, reports the New York Times.

Anna Hahner and Lisa Hahner are twin sisters from Germany.

Anna and Lisa Hahner, both 26, finished 15 minutes under their personal best times, coming in 81 and 82 place respectively – giving further fuel to the criticism.

“It looked as though they completed a fun run and not [an] Olympic [race]”, German Athletics Federation director Thomas Kurschilgen told reporters.

In an email to the New York Times, Anna Hahner insisted that crossing the line together was a spontaneous decision.

“Still, every athlete in the Olympics competitions should be motivated to demonstrate his or her best performance and aim for the best possible result”.

“Their main aim was to generate media attention“, he later told The New York Times. This is what we criticise.

It was another heart warming Olympic moment for most who watched the women’s marathon – just not those from their homeland.

Others defended them on social media. A German marathon runner who was criticized for holding hands with her twin sister as they crossed the finishing line at the Olympics in Rio has been awarded a belated first place for a race in her home country.

According to Cosmopolitan, a columnist at Die Welt, a German newspaper, agreed with that sentiment, saying, “At the Olympics all athletes should go to achieve maximum performance, not the most sympathetic photo opportunity”. But as the Times reported, the Hahners’ race times were far from their best.

The sisters placed 81st and 82nd overall in the event.

And Anna hit back at claims they were merely pulling off a stunt to claim a big sponsorship deal.

But, they took consolation in the fact that, serendipitously, they were close enough to each other they could finish the race together, holding hands. She explained she had a faster start and that Lisa caught up later. “I invested all I had and 300 meters before the finish line, I was next to Lisa”, she said. They chose to make the best of the situation and hold hands like the loving twins they while crossing the finish line. “We trained the last four years to participate in this marathon”, Anna Hahner said. “We did not think about what we were doing”.