Angela Merkel Admits an Unlikely Fantasy: I Wish I Were a Gymnast

People in power often admit to dreaming of what they will do when they leave office. Some dream of making millions with memoirs and speech tours, while others may want to enjoy a lie-in. But Germany's chancellor Angela Merkel has an altogether more ambitious fantasy - mastering the balance beam.

In an interview with a women's magazine Merkel said she wished that she could be a gymnast and conquer the art of turning and leaping on the beam, the 1.25-meter-high apparatus used in women's gymnastics.

"I wish I could do gymnastics on the balance beam," she told Frau im Spiegel, adding that she would also like to brush up her French and study law. But before her critics were able to question the suitability of gymnastics for Merkel - whose physical prowess, by her own admission, stretches to walking, cross-country skiing and gardening - she added: "I have long ago come to terms with the fact that it is not my forte."

Merkel, 54, who last month was voted the most powerful woman in the world for the second time by Forbes magazine, has admitted that she was often terrified of sports lessons, especially jumping and gymnastics.

Merkel's remarks came as she toured schools as part of her campaign to put education at the top of her government's agenda under the slogan "no education, no prosperity".

A physicist who gave up science for politics nearly 20 years ago, Merkel said that physics had given her the ability to "distinguish between what is important and what is not, and to work very precisely".