Things don’t stop grinding in German athletics. The World Cup in Budapest was ruined with a historically poor result – not a single medal for the German athletes. Since then, the head national coach has been transferred and there has been a lot of speculation as to what was going wrong: At one point it was said that the officials led a decadent life and chose the training locations based on where the best red wine was available.
Then some people diagnosed German athletics, German sport or even German society as lacking performance ability, but above all in the will to perform. The Germans had become comfortable and were resting on what they had achieved. Demanded four-day weeks, no longer wanted to compete at the Federal Youth Games and then didn’t win any medals.
Others complained that there is simply not enough money for competitive athletes in Germany, so there is no sensible life planning around the sports careers of enough promising young athletes – and then no top results at international championships.
Complaints in the debate
When asked about the prospects for the Olympics, many would rather talk about the 2028 Games in Los Angeles and 2032 in Brisbane than Paris next year, which is much closer in terms of location and time. At the same time, the leaders of politics and sport are pushing forward a reform of competitive sport in Germany, which is agreed in the traffic light coalition agreement: An agency staffed by the German Olympic Sports Confederation (DOSB) and the Ministry of the Interior is to become the central hub for funding – although many of those involved complain that that the debate about what the underlying objectives are for top-class sport in Germany is not being held and that DOSB and the ministry have so far largely decided on their own.
The debate in Berlin is far away for many in German athletics – for athletes and coaches it is decided on site what works and what doesn’t. Athletics facilities where you can train for major championships are not available in every town, but compared to many other Olympic sports they are much more common.
In the Rhine-Main area, a number of athletes who have already won international medals and have hopes of taking part in the Olympics train at the university sports club in Mainz, at Eintracht Frankfurt and at the federal base in Frankfurt.
Focus on the decathlon: Niklas Kaul is injured at the World Cup: Image: dpa
At Eintracht Frankfurt and USC Mainz they agree that the needs of the clubs that still practice competitive sports should be taken into account: the volunteers need support from full-time employees, the training facilities need maintenance. Michael Krichbaum, head of athletics at Eintracht Frankfurt, also complains that private sector donors are not sufficiently involved in competitive sports in this country.
The sports infrastructure cannot be provided by cities and municipalities alone; that is not the case elsewhere either. Krichbaum says that there is far too much fragmentation in “absolutely top-class sport in Germany” – in successful countries, especially smaller ones, the structures are much more concentrated.
