She triumphed, failed, found herself. The ARD documentary “Being Franziska van Almsick” tells the moving story of Franziska van Almsick, the first superstar of reunited Germany.
World records, medals, media hype. Swimming star Franziska van Almsick inspired the sports world as a teen. Cameras followed them at every turn. But as it really looked in her, nobody knew: “I always pretended to be fine. But actually it looks catastrophic itself,” she describes her mental health in some phases of her career today. “The only thing I could somehow decide was whether I eat or if I didn’t eat. And I just stopped eating.” Until her career end, nobody had experienced her eating disorder in public. Franziska van Almsick’s story is an impressive success, enormous pressure and the search for inner peace, as the new ARD documentary series “Being Franziska van Almsick” shows.
From the child prodigy to the young superstar
In 1992, at just 14 years old, Franziska van Almsick surprisingly wins four medals at the Olympic Games in Barcelona, twice silver and twice bronze. At home in Germany, a number of camera teams and photographers are already waiting for the young medalist at the airport. She finds the crowd around her as “terrible”. From that moment on everything is different. First advertising contracts, first cover pictures.
Their success and carefree provide stories for the press, many want to make a profit from the hype. “As long as I am fine, others are welcome to participate in my success. But there are limits and you shouldn’t exceed them.” But when a reporter, for example, asks her to open her sports bag and show her cuddly toys, her lucky charms, the boundaries of the young athlete are exceeded. Likewise as a sex symbol in a swimsuit. In retrospect, her then manager Regine Eichhorn also classifies this type of staging as “not appropriate and cross -border”.
Podcast tip: Our Franzi – Being Franziska van Almsick
“Our Franzi-Being Franziska van Almsick” is the coming-of-age story of a swimmer, the as Bright sports heroine and the first overall German superstar the 90s shaped. When she did not provide the hoped -for successes at the 2000 Olympic Games and the Boulevard you as “Franzi van Speck” and “shoulder”, that is that Low point of your career.
We tell your life and career to this point and How she struggled out of this crisis, to “swim the race of her life in her hometown of Berlin”.
The nation wants more from Franzi, cannot see each other. And Franziska van Almsick has to find a way to deal with all of this: the tabloids and the cameras can withstand, pubes, be the most popular Ossi woman in the west. “When I look at the schedules today, I have to say, it is inexplicable to me how anyone could do it,” recalls Eichhorn.
Enormous pressure and fail in the preliminaries
Two years later, the carefreeness of the first Olympic Games is no longer there, instead: pressure from the inside, but above all from the outside: “I have already noticed that I may not do it all alone anymore, I have to deliver it somehow.”
WM 1994: Germany expects Gold from Franzi, but it flies out in the lead. Teammate Dagmar Hase takes her final place. Franziska van Almsick swims world record in the final, becomes world champion. Franzi The Fallable. This does not detract from their popularity.
It is celebrated and persecuted almost everywhere by cameras. “From today’s perspective, it was far too much,” admits her manager at the time. Van Almsick’s market value continues to rise, not even of legal age is it multiple millionaires. At that time, nobody really knows what it looks like. You can guess when she fails in the lead again at the European Championships in Vienna at the age of 17 and then says in the cameras: “I’m fed up with being a superstar.” Because as a superstar she is not allowed to show any weakness.
Olympic Games 1996 – First self -doubt come
At her second Olympic Games, in 1996 in Atlanta, she wants to be the Olympic champion – only the gold medal counts for Franziska van Almsick. It was clear to her and everyone else that nobody, the world recordler and world champion, would win gold. In the end it is “only” silver again: “It was just very clear that you expected more from me. Then, I think I really had the idea for the first time in my whole life or in my career, it goes on or it doesn’t go on.” The first self -doubt came: “I thought you only loved me when I am successful when I bring money home and when I always smile.”
Start eating disorders – contact with the psychologist
The press complains about 18-year-old Franziska van Almsick, she feels strange. And slips into an eating disorder. “The only thing I could somehow decide was whether I was eating or if I was not eating. And I just stopped eating. But I was not even aware of this scope that it was about harm and yourself.” She no longer knew who she was, sometimes took three salt bars, a bite of the apple and three gummy bears a day. The swimmer gets help from a psychologist, at that time she needs someone who teaches her again, how to eat properly and someone who teaches her not to make her self -worth dependent on sporting success. “I learned to love myself as I am. And to love myself when things don’t go well. And that was important because I couldn’t do it for a while.”
Breaks and hurtful headlines
After a hand injury, she fights back because the dream of the Olympic gold continues to drift her. She works for this goal ambitiously. In Sydney 2000 then the renewed setback: she does not make it into the final. You hit the headlines from back then “Franzi van Speck” or “Gold”. “I was really very, very hurt,” she recalls today. At that time nobody knew about their eating disorder.
I learned to love myself the way I am. And to love me when things don’t go well. And that was important because I couldn’t do it for a while. ”
Franziska van Almsick in the ARD documentary series “Being Franziska van Almsick”
With Stefan Kretzschmar to EM-Gold: Franziska van Almsicks comeback
The then 22-year-old feels retired and at the low point. In Sydney, however, she gets to know someone who understands her: handball player Stefan Kretzschmar. He had seen things in her that everyone else no longer saw. The two have a relationship in the spotlight, always under observation. The pressure is also back at the home European Championship European Championships in Berlin. In the morning of the 200-meter freestyle competition, she can’t eat anything, does not want to make her way from the hotel to the swimming pool.
Psychologist gives inner peace and strength
Your psychologist comes over. She is the key to success for the 24-year-old in the situation, takes the pressure. This is exactly what she needed for her mental health: “someone who recognizes me who looks into my soul who shows me the way to myself.” The inner calm and strength that the psychologist gave her at the time never experienced her again before and after, Van Almsick says with gratitude. In the swimming pool, she has the pressure under control this time. She swims into five EM titles, surpasses her own world record. “Everything worked. I didn’t screw up anything, I didn’t mess up anything. I was everywhere as it should be in the final runs. It was terrific. The European Championship was already cool.”
“I reconciled”
Ancal to stop after this comeback is out of the question – just two years after the triumph of Berlin, the Olympic Games are in Athens. Franziska van Almsick wants to know again, one last time, wants to finally defeat the gold curse. She swims in fifth place and ends her career at the age of 26. For twelve years she was one of the main actresses in German sport, has set up world records, won medals – but never the longed -for Olympic gold. “It doesn’t hurt anymore,” says van Almsick, she reconciled, found herself.
Photo series
“Being Franziska van Almsick”
Van Almsick still employ eating disorders today
After the end of the career, she separates from Stefan Kretzschmar and writes an autobiography in which she reports on her eating disorders for the first time. Incidentally, these are “always there”. Learn to deal with it. “It’s like a alarm clock that starts and warns me that I am not in a good way.
Van Almsicks now lives with a man and children in Heidelberg
Franziska van Almsick is now 47 years old and lives with her husband and the two children in Heidelberg. She keeps her private life away from the public and is committed to young athletes. She wants to make the paths of young athletes better. Because she herself had to take a lot during her impressive career.
The broadcast on Tuesday, 9.9.20225 10:50 p.m., the first
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