When the decathletes didn’t get their medals either, the praise for personal bests and self-sacrificing fifth places came to an end. The European champion and former world champion Niklas Kaul was eliminated injured, the previous year’s best Leo Neugebauer was beaten by his nerves and four competitors. Eight out of nine days of the World Athletics Championships in Budapest had passed without a single victory for German athletes. Then Jörg Bügner, the new sports director of the DLV association, proclaimed the end of satisfaction.
He complained that German athletes were no longer present in former parade disciplines such as shot put, discus and hammer throwing, and middle-distance disciplines took place without German participation. “We’re going home with a huge package of tasks,” he told the FAZ, even before the last medal candidate, javelin thrower Julian Weber, who finished fourth on Sunday evening, had gone empty-handed: “I’m happy about personal bests from individual athletes,” said the sports scientist: “But I’m not satisfied.”
