No medals - what luck
I don't want to sound cynical. Of course, athletes should be granted their success, especially at major competitions such as the recent World Championships in athletics. But when javelin thrower Julian Weber was the last medal hope of the German Athletics Association at the World Championships in Budapest on Sunday evening, I briefly crossed my fingers that he would come away empty-handed. Not because he was a bad thrower, but because the entire DLV team had not finished higher than fourth place until the last day. This was finally the chance to think fundamentally about the direction of sports funding. Even the last sports enthusiast had now realized that this debate was necessary. Athletes, coaches and sports scientists have been saying for some time that it is long overdue.
What does sport have to do with politics?
A lot. A glance at the medal table alone clearly shows that the framework conditions for athletes are crucial to their development and success. Or what reason could there be for a small country like Norway, with its current population of 5.4 million, to win two gold medals and finish in 9th place in the overall rankings with a total of four medals? Germany is not one of the 46 countries that appear in the mirror with at least one medal, nor are Nigeria and Haiti, nor are Denmark and Turkey. Success measured in medals is therefore not a question of how big or how wealthy a country is.
Rather, the promotion of sport and its budget play a decisive role here, and not only for elite sport, but also for popular sport, school sport and equipment in playgrounds. They all help to ensure that athletes reach the top of the world. In concrete terms, however, the comparison with successful countries reveals opportunities to shape and improve the conditions for athletes: for example, athletes in the performance centers in the Netherlands receive a monthly basic salary of up to €5,000 so that they can devote themselves entirely to their training. Germany's small neighbor has achieved 8th place in the overall rankings with 5 medals.
In contrast, athletes in Germany receive €600 a month in sports funding and usually have other jobs on the side. Many are employed by the German armed forces, the federal police or customs, where they have relatively good freedom to train. After all. Nevertheless, athletes complain that the duties involved disrupt their training program.
It's not just top performance that counts
The Netherlands is a good example of how the promotion of sport as a whole is seen as a political concept to promote social cohesion and integration for all. According to a 2013 study, the Dutch government is convinced that investing in clubs, sports facilities and, above all, local cooperation partners and voluntary work is a means of involving new groups in sport and achieving goals set in other policy areas such as social welfare and public health.
It's not the athletes, but the policy that needs to be criticized
The German athletes are not to be blamed, because they gave their best at the World Championships, some top 8 finishes, some best performances were achieved and two German records were broken, some medal contenders were injured. But: If you want to learn something from our neighbors, then it is difficult to see any sense in the fact that the sports budget will fall by almost 10% in the upcoming federal budget.