Sport is private, it is solidarity and it is political. Chancellor Olaf Scholz made this clear during his first visit to the annual club sports holiday, the awarding of the Golden Star of Sports in the DZ Bank at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. First of all, he confirmed that he hadn’t been able to do anything with sports in primary school: “Not even in secondary schools.”
However, he was happy to show that he could swim, which led to the DLRG youth swimming pass being the only sporting award he won during his time at school. As First Mayor of Hamburg, Scholz rowed on the Inner Alster, and as Chancellor, as everyone knows, he is a committed jogger who sometimes has to wear an eye patch after a fall.
Recognition for people
The Chancellor speaks of the life-changing experience that once brought with it the need for personal protection. Now, when an early morning run was entered in the diary, an athletic companion was at the door on time – as Scholz revealed, he couldn’t turn over in bed and go back to sleep. Next level of togetherness? The sports club. “The fact that in Germany these are all clubs and not GmbHs makes a big difference,” shouted Scholz to the cheers of the club athletes: “We can be proud of that.”
The stars of the sport, being held for the twentieth time, are a sign of recognition for people who don’t do things with the intention of being recognized, praised Scholz. The founding of the German Foundation for Engagement and Volunteering in 2020 should soon be followed by “a major engagement strategy,” he promised. The aim is to support “the popular volunteer movement” as much as possible.
“Fair play, respect and cooperation”
The 2024 European Football Championship in Germany and the subsequent Olympic Games in Paris should be an opportunity to “carry deep within us what is associated with the Olympic idea, namely that we want to live in a peaceful world, where peoples can live together and very different people is possible if we want it,” said Scholz: “Sport can bring us together.”
Thomas Weikert, the President of the German Olympic Sports Confederation, also moved from the personal, his experiences as a table tennis player, to the political. For the sporting year 2024, he not only called for more medals, but also “fair play, respect and cooperation in all clubs and in society” and concluded: “As we all know, this is happening from time to time at the moment, especially from those on the right trampled on. We all have to fight back, especially in sport.”
FAZ authors Published/Updated: Recommendations: 15 A comment from Michael Reinsch Published/Updated: Recommendations: 6 Michael Reinsch, Berlin Published/Updated: , Recommendations: 22
The Eichsfeld running and endurance sports club received two awards in Berlin, ahead of the fifteen other state winners who came to the capital with their delegations. He initiated the “Guide Network Germany”, in which blind and visually impaired runners across Germany can find partners to guide them and in which guides can register for running and walking.
The range now includes around 700. In addition to the Golden Star, worth 10,000 euros, the initiative also won the audience award. The Hanover gymnastics club came in second with its “swimming offensive,” while the Hamburg fire department’s company sports club came third with the “Toughest Firefighter Alive” competition.
