The unrest is back in the German Speed Skating and Short Track Association (DESG), if it really disappeared than ever. Jenny Wolf, the sprint icon from the golden days of German speed skaters, resigned as national coach at the end of last week after less than three months in office. With this surprising step, she exposed the apparently still existing tensions within the association.
Matthias Große, who has been President of DESG for six months, is not entirely innocent of the difficulties. The real estate entrepreneur and partner of Claudia Pechstein presented Wolf as the desired solution at the end of September and conjured up the common, uniform line. “These gentlemen are the technical management of DESG,” said Große at the time about Wolf and the members of a new coaching committee who were also present: “These people set the course. Anyone who drives this course is there. If you don’t, you can’t stay here. ”
Wolf is no longer there. Others lead the way. “Diverse and multi-layered” are the reasons, said the 41-year-old. Ultimately, the decisive factor for her decision is the “no alternative” and “very tough and straightforward course” of the new association management and the associated structural changes, which she would have imagined differently, as she explained on her homepage.
Uncertainty in the whole association
A little more than a year before the Olympic Winter Games in Beijing, speed skaters are once again faced with uncertainties. “A few weeks ago I received questions from athletes who wanted to know who their coaches and contact persons would be,” said athletes spokesman Moritz Geisreiter. Talks have not yet removed this uncertainty. Farewell to Wolf as head of the coaching committee made him “skeptical about how well the coaching committee’s work could have started and how sustainable this construct really is,” said Geisreiter: “Obviously not as much as some had hoped. «
The short trackers also hoped for more from President Große. After the DESG was renamed, they have at least been in the name of the association recently, but nothing more happened. “The mood is modest,” said Leon Kaufmann-Ludwig. The 24-year-old was a critic of the new DESG president as an athletes spokesman, was then hired as an assistant national trainer in September and dropped out at the beginning of December – after almost three months without an employment contract and salary. “We short trackers have been left out, especially since Matthias Große took office, because nobody is really interested in us and people hardly talk to us,” said Ludwig-Kaufmann. It is also “not badly wanted to have external feedback.”
An association on stormy seas
Frustration spreads. “Many promises that were made in conversation with the athletes are now unfortunately turning out to be nonsense,” said Ludwig-Kaufmann, who criticized the lack of a culture of communication and discussion as well as the “many personal crusades” by the association leadership: “It will worked a lot with personal matters. The pride of some is higher than what should unite us in the name of sport. “
In order to illustrate the situation of DESG, Grosse used the image of a capsized tanker that had to be erected and given a direction. On Friday, the new captain of the lurching freighter wants to draw an interim conclusion on his term in office so far. One thing already seems clear: the sea remains stormy. SID / nd
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