interview
The German athletes crashed at the last World Cup in the medal mirror. Is this also because the performance no longer counts in physical education, as Chancellor Friedrich Merz claims? The sports teacher Rüdiger Heim contradicts in an interview with the sports show.
Sports show: The World Athletics Championships in Tokyo will start next Saturday. At the World Cup two years ago in Budapest, Germany came in 47th place in medal mirror. Can the Germans no longer run quickly, throw and jump?
Rüdiger Heim: There are different explanations for the crash of medal, an important is the demographic development that not only affects pensions and skilled workers. Let’s take the year 1983, in the Boomer generation there were 15.8 million young people between the ages of 15 and 24, in 2024 it was just 8.3 million. The number of talents from which top sport can develop has decreased by almost 50 percent. In addition, the number of active athletes in the clubs, roughly valued, has reduced around two thirds.
To person
Professor Rüdiger Heim, 65, is the director of the Institute for Sports and Sports Science at the Ruprecht-Karls University in Heidelberg. His research focuses on children’s and youth sports and the relationship between competitive sports and school.
Between 2004 and 2006 he carried out the office of spokesman for the sports pedagogy section at the German Association for Sports Science. In 2007, home became a member of the working group “Educational standards for the subject sport” on behalf of the Sport Commission of the Cultural Ministers’ Conference. Since 2017 he has also been a editor -in -chief of the magazine for sports pedagogical research and has been a member of the leaf publishing collective since 2012.
The focus in Heim’s scientific activity includes research in the field of child and youth sports (also high-performance sport in adolescence), school sports, aspects of the sports teacher profession and the relationship between competitive sports and school.
Sports show: At the beginning of the year, CDU boss Friedrich Merz asked in a speech that Germany was at the top of the medal mirror, and criticized that young people had lost will at peak performance. Is he right?
Home: I don’t know how Merz gets on it. We know from general youth research that the majority, 80 to 90 percent of adolescents, is quite performance -oriented. Even the empirical data with regard to sport do not provide that the attitude of the young people have changed to performance.
“Federal Youth Games were never festivals of Competitive sports “
Sports show: Merz has established the undesirable development in the reform of the Federal Youth Games, complaining that there are only participants and no winning certificates at this sports festival at schools.
Home: First of all, this is completely wrong: there are still honorary and winning certificates. The false claim also testifies to an educational ignorance, which would be as if we would connect the number of storks in the Sauerland to the number of births there. Federal youth games were never festivals of competitive sports. As a teenager, I could have wallpapered the wall of my room with countless certificates of honor from the federal youth games, but only made it to a third -class volleyball player. In addition, the clubs in Germany are the basis of competitive sports, not schools as in the United States.
Sports show: What was the goal of the reform of the federal youth games?
Home: The committee, which developed the reform for the first two classes of the primary school, wanted to increase the attractiveness of the federal youth games and carefully introduce the children to sporting comparisons.
“The children shouldn’t stand around for so long”
Sports show: The thought is behind Merz ‘criticism that no performance is generally no longer required in physical education. Is this assessment correct?
Home: Modern physical education pursues various goals: on the one hand, he should take young people into account who want to compare themselves in competition. But others are looking for conviviality, want to maintain their social contacts, do something good for their health or improve their fitness. Exactly this variety serves physical education.
Sports show: Former IOC President Thomas Bach has also criticized that the competition in primary schools is abolished “Pure effort would be choked”.
Home: A few cautious changes were made with the reform of the federal youth games, of course there is also the goal of running or jumping as quickly as possible. But the width is measured in zones and provided with different points. This wants to significantly reduce the waiting time in the competition. The children should no longer stand around and get bored while measuring every jump with the measuring tape.
Sports show: Shouldn’t schools be able to promote top performance in sport?
Home: German lessons are not expected to prepare the children for the Georg Büchner Prize or in physics for the Nobel Prize. Pupils should be prepared for what they expect in life.
“No interest in school sports studies”
Sports show: What about physical education in German schools in general?
Home: We actually don’t know anything about the current situation. The federal government and the federal states are not interested in promoting appropriate studies. I can sing a song about how the ministries of culture drain all initiatives more or less with shrugs, the same applies to the large private foundations. The last and only reliable study for Germany dates from 2006, so it is almost 20 years old. At that time, physical education lessons got a good grade. The students felt more comfortable than in school as a whole, they experienced their physical education as varied, intense and physically exhausting.
Sports show: It is often complained that pupils only bind and no longer want to move. What is the physical condition ordered?
Home: I know the complaints from the press about the general deterioration in sporting performance, many young people could not even run backwards. But the studies are contradictory, some compare apples with pears. There is no general trend. But what we certainly know: A bad social situation and a migration background have a negative impact on motor performance. Disadvantaged adolescents are less healthy, have a lower performance and are much less common in sports clubs. And there are no signs that this would change in the near future.
“There is no royal path”
Sports show: Do we have to get used to the fact that there is a permanent downward trend in traditional sports such as athletics?
Home: Probably yes, we know from studies that athletics is a typical entry -level sport in childhood. The youngsters then switch to other sports, especially the big sports games such as football or basketball. Athletics also obviously reached athletics much less socially disadvantaged, which has a few other sports like riding or tennis.
Sports show: If Chancellor March is so important in March, what could he do to bring the youth back?
Home: There is no royal route that we could go to with a short political decision. Top -sporting performance is a very, very complex process. A journalist once has the concept of “Genetic Freaks“ used for maximum performance athletes. But the talent, genetics is only the prerequisite for success. The path to the world champion is very lengthy, where I can make a lot of wrong decisions. I could not formulate worldwide recipes for more medals.