Denise Herrmann-Wick and Lukas Dauser are Germany’s athletes of the year. The basketball heroes of Manila cheer as the team is honored.
Glorious farewell for the biathlon “mommy”, deserved coronation for the parallel bars king: Denise Herrmann-Wick and Lukas Dauser are Germany’s athletes of the year 2023. The sprint world champion and the gymnastics champion received the ” “Oscar of German Sport”. When it came to choosing the team of the year, there was no way around the German basketball heroes.
In a pre-Olympic year full of great team successes, the historic World Cup triumph of the DBB team around captain Dennis Schröder stood out once again. The triumph of national coach Gordon Herbert’s team was too sensational, first defeating the USA in a memorable semi-final and finally defeating Serbia in the final in Manila. Not even with icon Dirk Nowitzki had a German team achieved such success.
“At the World Cup, that was amazing, the cherry on top,” said captain Dennis Schröder, who was broadcast live from Toronto: “We made Germany proud. That’s what we all wanted in the dressing room.” Niels Giffey, Johannes Thiemann, Isaac Bonga and Andreas Obst accepted the award; Herbert was absent for a short time due to a bereavement in the family.
The fact that a national basketball team triumphed on Sunday for the first time since 2005 hardly surprised the around 700 guests in the sophisticated Benazet Hall because of the special performance. Behind them, the 3,000 sports journalists entitled to vote praised the silver coup of the German ice hockey cracks and the associated first World Cup medal in 70 years even more than the World Cup gold of the German hockey men, who won the World Cup gold in India at the beginning of the year for the first time in 17 years had ascended the World Cup throne.
Herrmann-Wick just ahead of the gymnastics queen
Three days before her 35th birthday, Herrmann-Wick completed a fairytale farewell year in a historically close decision. Only 21 points separated the Olympic champion from the 17-year-old gymnastics queen Darja Varfolomeev, who, with five (!) World Championship titles, had become one of the great hopes for the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris. Ski jumping world champion Katharina Schmid (formerly Althaus) came third in the 77th election.
“It’s a huge honor to even be nominated,” said Herrmann-Wick on stage. There were “such great performances” from German athletes. But the award was “another real highlight emotionally.”
Herrmann-Wick said goodbye to his sporting retirement at the home World Championships in Oberhof with one gold and two silver medals. It has also been clear for a few weeks: the exceptional athlete, who has been dubbed the team “mom”, is expecting her first child with her husband Thomas Wick in April. A few weeks after the good news, Herrmann-Wick also ended a dry spell: most recently, winter athletes Laura Dahlmeier and Johannes Rydzek triumphed at the sports award in 2017.
Historic success for Turner Dauser
In the men’s category, Dauser relegated world champions Florian Wellbrock (open water swimming) and Oliver Zeidler (rowing) to second and third place by a large margin. For the first time since Fabian Hambüchen in 2016 and only the fifth time in total, the Sportsman of the Year award went to an artistic gymnast. Dauser won the first German World Championships gold on parallel bars in Antwerp since Montreal in 1985; the last time there was a German gymnastics world champion was in 2007.
Hambüchen jumped up in the audience and pumped both fists in the air when the election results were announced. “It was a super successful year,” said Dauser, but he also “had a lot of doubts and had to work hard. That’s why it’s particularly worth it in the end.”
The successors of the track and field athletes Gina Lückekemper and Niklas Kaul as well as the footballer from Eintracht Frankfurt were honored in Baden-Baden. Compared to previous years, there was something new in the voting process: for the first time, a list of suggestions was put together by squad athletes and thus – even if the ten names per category were not binding – a preselection was made from the scene itself. The sports journalists were each allowed to award five votes and five points up to one point.