Dietloff von Arnim is the old and new president of the German Tennis Association – with 1.5 million members, the third largest sports association in Germany. However, the Düsseldorf resident was only elected in the third round. After Robert Hampe, President of the Westphalian Tennis Association, withdrew his candidacy.
In the first two rounds of voting, Dietloff von Arnim missed the majority with 50 percent of the votes cast. His opponent, Robert Hampe from the Westphalian Tennis Association, received 40.8 percent of the delegate votes in the first two rounds of voting.
A break was necessary to find a solution. The originally planned ten minutes were not enough. In some cases attempts were observed to spontaneously persuade people to run for office.
Opponent Hampe withdraws his candidacy
“And then we sat down together in all common sense and found a solution,” said opposing candidate Robert Hampe after the meeting. Before the third of the secret ballots, Hampe withdrew his candidacy and ensured a solution. This meant that Dietloff von Arnim was confirmed in office in the third round of voting with almost 90 percent of the votes.
“In the end, the DTB came together very unanimously and that was a good thing,” von Arnim commented on the vote. Robert Hampe was then unanimously elected to the Presidium as the first of the five Vice Presidents. After the structural reform has been approved, the Presidium will act as a supervisory board of a full-time DTB board.
The delegates at the general meeting assessed differently that three rounds of voting were necessary to confirm the incumbent president in office. For some it was a vote of no confidence, others spoke diplomatically of one “clear work order”, something to change. Still others, like Sabine Schmitz from the Lower Rhine Tennis Association, where van Arnim comes from, called it “democracy”: “At the end of the day, association work is always a compromise and in the end we came to a good result.”
Some regional associations apparently dissatisfied
Apparently some of the regional associations were not satisfied with Arnims’ leadership and asked the new Vice President Robert Hampe a few weeks ago to also run for president.
Dietloff von Arnim came under criticism, among other things, for his handling of the allegations of abuse of power against Dirk Hordorff, the former and now deceased DTB vice president. State associations had complained about a lack of transparency in dealing with the case. Ombudsman Georg von Waldenfels recorded this in his annual report for the general meeting. He advocated making the report prepared on the case by a law firm commissioned by the Presidium available to the presidents of the regional associations. von Arnim rejected that.
Processing Commission still delivers Final report
The DTB has now set up an “independent review commission” here. They announced interim results yesterday, explained von Arnim. The commission’s final report had been postponed and is now planned for the first half of 2024. Among other things, it is intended to provide recommendations for action on how to deal with the issue of physical, psychological and sexual violence in sport.
In this context, there is also a decided change to the disciplinary regulations: In the event of misconduct in relation to interpersonal violence, there is now the possibility of license revocation.