When the German chancellor Olaf Scholz went over to congratulate the kayaker Max Rendschmidt after his team’s gold medal-winning run in the K-4 500m sprint in Paris on Friday last week, the exchange – according to onlookers – was curt.
Rendschmidt, though euphoric about his Olympic win, used the opportunity of meeting Scholz to speak frankly about the challenges he and his fellow athletes are facing, including budget cuts and poor training conditions. He told the chancellor his colleagues did not want to be taken seriously only because they had enjoyed success.
“It’s important that politicians are not just here because they’re thinking about the next election,” Rendschmidt said after the meeting.
The athlete’s dispirited nature – even in light of his own personal success – was reflected elsewhere, as Team Germany’s failure to secure a higher position in the medals table prompted soul-searching over how the nation can get its performance back on track.
Germany came 10th in the table, beaten not only by European heavyweights France, the UK and Italy but also by the Netherlands, its much smaller neighbour.
Sport commentators have claimed that German sport is stuck in a rut, lacking clarity over its future. Cuts in funding, short-term contracts for trainers who often prefer to go abroad, and an overburdensome bureaucracy are just some of the many difficulties it faces.
Since German reunification in 1990 “Team D” has had a continuous drop in its medal- winning tally.
Germany won 33 medals this year – 12 golds, 13 silvers, 8 bronzes – much lower than the 82 its athletes won in Barcelona in 1992. In Athens in 2004 the figure sunk to 49, while in Tokyo in 2021 it was 37 (including 10 golds).
Thomas Weikert of the German Olympic Sports Confederation (DOSB) praised the overall performance of Team Germany, saying that its goal to be 10th or higher in the medals table had been reached.
Among the high points of Germany’s games was the unexpected victory of the 3×3 women’s basketball players, a flurry of gold medals for equestrian events, golds in the shot put and rhythmic gymnastics, the 400m swimming, rowing and the triathlon, as well as the kayak successes.
But the DOSB has also readily admitted it is unhappy with the result. Olaf Tabor, its “chef de mission” for Paris, said: “Many of the German team’s performances have been exceptional, but we are self-critical enough to admit that we have had a very difficult journey … which will continue,” he told the newspaper Welt am Sonntag. “And we have been registering the backward trend in the medal table for some time.”
Tabor said tackling excessive bureaucracy, increasing government subsidies, and forming a national sport agency should all be immediate goals and ones for which the DOSB is expected to lobby.
A midterm goal should be fifth place in the medals’ table, he said. Whether that includes the 2028 LA Games is unclear.
In Germany 28 million people belong to the estimated 86,000 sport clubs or associations in the country, which 10 million more people than the entire population of its neighbour, the Netherlands, which managed to come in one place higher on the medals table than Germany. So why does the apparent German enthusiasm for collective sporting not translate into greater Olympian success?
Tabor said he believes the Netherlands’ standing is down to the country’s more efficient process of recognising talent early on, and then nurturing and supporting it.
Of Germany, he said: “We need to be more creative. Maybe our system has been a bit too rigid … We need more flexibility and tactics more individually focused on specific types of sport.”
Ingo Froböse, a professor of sport science at the University of Cologne, said success in core sports such as gymnastics, swimming and athletics had waned. The weaknesses were made blatantly evident at the World Athletic Championships in Hungary last year, when Germany failed to win a single medal.
Froböse believed that success in sport as a status symbol in Germany is also not what it was, blaming in part the reduction in its importance on the school curriculum, and a decrease in the emphasis on competition.
“Look at athletes in America, they see sport among other things as a way of improving your status in society … in Germany this is simply not recognised any more.”
The answer, for some would be for Germany, like the UK did in 2012, to host an Olympic games itself. The UK experience, commentators have noted, was after all credited with reforming the whole structure and funding of elite sport in the UK, the effects of which – with GB having secured third place three in the Paris medals table – is still felt today.
Scholz, on his recent visit to Paris, said: “I hope this will be a little bit contagious.”.
After months of internal discussion the German government recently signed and submitted a declaration of intent to host the Games, paving the way for it to put in a bid for 2040, an event which could neatly coincide with anniversary celebrations to mark 50 years of German reunification.
Thomas Bach, the outgoing president of the International Olympic Committee who is German, said: “I would be extremely happy if the Olympian sparks would catch on in Germany.”