The favorites won the race: The biathlete Franziska Preuß and the decathlete Leo Neugebauer are Germany’s athletes of the year 2025. This year’s winners were announced on Sunday evening at the gala in the Kurhaus in Baden-Baden. The men’s national basketball team was named Team of the Year.
“The magnetic effect of Baden-Baden is special this year,” Klaus Dobbratz, head of the organizer Internationale Sportkorrespondenz (ISK), told the SID in advance. Around 720 guests, including numerous well-known world and European champions as well as Olympic champions, gathered in the festively decorated Benazet Hall to watch the gala broadcast on site by ZDF.
However, they only saw the newly crowned athlete of the year on screen: Franziska Preuß was connected because she had been on World Cup duty in Le Grand-Bornand, France, at the weekend. In March she won the overall World Cup ranking, capping an outstanding season with four World Championship medals, including gold in the pursuit. “It’s really a great honor and a reward for all the work you put into the sport,” said the 31-year-old on ZDF.
For rhythmic gymnast Darja Varfolomeev, however, five World Championship gold medals were not enough to be named athlete of the year like she was in 2024. The Olympic champion in Paris finished just 48 points behind Preuß; The swimmer Anna Elendt, who sensationally won the World Championship title in the 100 m breaststroke in a German record time in Singapore, came third.
The vote among the approximately 3,000 voting members of the Association of German Sports Journalists produced a clear result for men. Decathlon world champion Leo Neugebauer was crowned king of the track and field athletes at the World Championships in Tokyo, and now he is almost 1,000 points ahead of second-place swimmer Florian Wellbrock, who made sports history in 2025 with four World Cup gold medals in open water. Cyclist Florian Lipowitz, who sensationally finished third in the Tour de France in the summer, came third.
Andreas Obst: “It’s nice to be up here again”
“I was here two years ago as Newcomer of the Year, I’m so happy to be back,” said Neugebauer, who received the trophy from his father’s hands: “This thing will be really celebrated tonight.”
The basketball players’ selection as team of the year was hardly a surprise. This was the reward we deserved for winning the European Championship title in September. The team had already been honored in Baden-Baden two years ago, when the basketball players were crowned world champions in Manila. “It’s nice to be up here again,” said Andreas Obst.
Also honored in the spa town were the men’s national hockey team in second place, which triumphed at the home European Championships in Mönchengladbach, and the women’s 4×100 m relay team in third place, which sprinted to World Cup bronze in Tokyo.
For the first time this year, a Special Olympics Female Athlete of the Year was chosen on the edge of the Black Forest; the laudatory speech for the victorious short tracker Sophie Dziadek was given by former ski racer Felix Neureuther. Special Olympics is the world’s largest sports movement for people with intellectual disabilities. The gala also remembered former biathlete Laura Dahlmeier, who died in an accident in July.
