“We have important projects ahead of us, have just started work and will continue next week,” explained the old and new DOSB President Thomas Weikert after the general meeting.
Energy crisis, movement for everyone after the Corona standstill, reform of competitive sports reform, protection against violence and so on. Urgent problems that the newly elected Presidency has to deal with. As if that weren’t enough, a possible Olympic application should now also be prepared: “Are there any dissenting votes? The draft resolution was accepted unanimously.”
A possible Olympic application is to be launched
With great enthusiasm, all delegates spoke out in favor of a process that could end in 2024 with a public vote and then the decision for a renewed Olympic bid. Whether for summer or winter games and when is still open.
It should go forward, so the message. The years under the highly controversial Weikert predecessor Alfons Hörmann should finally be shelved. Martin Engelhardt, President of the German Triathlon Union and a critical mind, sees things differently. He is the only one of the more than 300 delegates to say this publicly:
“If we want a new beginning, also in terms of democracy, then we have to deal with what happened in the past.”
Hörmann took action against critics
The DOSB had set up a review commission for this purpose. In her report from mid-October, however, she saw “no criminal misconduct” by President Hörmann, who was responsible at the time. Although he had spent several hundred thousand euros in association funds to take action against critics.
Martin Engelhardt is one of them, reports: “That lists of enemies were created. Material was collected from critics in order to discredit them. Legal complaints against numerous individuals from associations, against journalists and so on. The report states: German sport had to pay 700,000 euros for these undesirable developments.”
For consulting agencies, law firms and IT companies that the ex-president had investigated against his critics. The individual items are broken down in the annual accounts. Ex-President Alfons Hörmann even commissioned language reports: 8,000 euros to find out who wrote the anonymous letter that criticized the President’s leadership style and accused him of spreading a “culture of fear”.
Despite all the criticism, the delegates also approved these annual accounts with a few abstentions.
Weikert explains Coping with the past for finished
President Thomas Weikert thanked Martin Engelhardt for his frank words and then declared that dealing with the past was over: “I think the educational work has been carried out by the current Presidency in a responsible and sufficient form. I just can’t do any more.”
Martin Engelhardt sees things differently. He refers to the promise made by the President of the DOSB, who in his opening speech described a path of transparency and openness to the delegates at the General Assembly that the Presidency wants to go. For Martin Engelhardt, this must also apply to the other anonymous letters that surfaced in October 2022 and are also available to our editorial team. One of them with allegations against the current president: “I would like more transparency, more openness, and more opinion on what is ultimately circulating here in the anonymous letters.”
“From my point of view, I can’t do more than that”
Even when we asked the President directly about the allegations made against him in the letter, he did not respond. Instead, Weikert had the press office respond with reference to the integrity check by the DOSB ethics committee. Like all candidates, he went through and passed it. Weikert also responded accordingly to questions about this in the final press conference:
“I submitted all anonymous letters to the ethics committee for review and submitted the relevant statements there. The committee also carried out all the checks, both on me and on the other members of the Executive Committee, and said that everything is fine. And I don’t think I can do any more than that. Please understand that I then also do not comment on things that happen in A in the anonymous area and then in B in the private sphere.”
Critical analysis of Olympic applications required
For Martin Engelhardt, this approach does not correspond to the promised values of transparency, openness and honesty. That is why he was the only delegate who voted against the re-election of Thomas Weikert.
Engelhardt agrees with all the delegates on another thing: he supports the strategy process for a possible Olympic bid. At the same time, after the last six unsuccessful applications, he notes:
“To this day I have never read a critical analysis of Germany’s failed Olympic bid. That’s part of it. I would like to see that included in the homework diary. And I think we all have a right to know that failed Olympic bids are critically examined when we set off.”