It’s rumbling in the German Pentathlon Association: After the riding scandal at the Olympics in Tokyo, the sport is only held as a four-way fight. A lawsuit is pending against the election of the President.
The Modern Pentathlon is used to operating under the public radar. The combination of swimming, fencing, horseback riding, running and shooting usually only comes into the focus of larger crowds of sports every four years at the Summer Olympics in Germanyfans.
And so the seemingly revolutionary innovation of the sport at the International German Championships was more in the small print: According to the official announcement of the modern pentathlon as part of the multi-sport event “The Finals” on the last weekend in June, only four disciplines will be held in Berlin. riding is absent.
In the broadest sense, this is related to the scandal at the Tokyo Olympics. When her horse repeatedly refused, the German Annika Schleu, who was in the lead at the time, used the whip and her trainer boxed the horse. An international one followed Shitstorm and criminal proceedings that have since been discontinued.
“Threats of violence to the point of murder”
“We’re doing a four-way battle so as not to give anyone a target to attack and also to protect the athletes, since the animal rights activists were relatively radical after the Olympic Games.”says Patrick Dogue, the athletes spokesman in the German Federation for Modern Pentathlon (DVMF), “Threats of violence up to and including murder landed in the mailboxes of almost all German pentathletes in a wide variety of social media.”
The World Pentathlon Federation has even decided to replace the riding discipline after the 2024 Olympics. Obstacle course will be tested. The crisis relentlessly exposes many structural weaknesses for a larger audience.
The German scene is also in turmoil. The biggest excitement nationally is currently the realization that electoral votes can be purchased in the association. It is no coincidence that most of the oddities have their origin in one person: the former Darmstadt teacher Klaus Schormann had led the German association for decades from 1984, and he has been the head of the world association since 1993.
Scientific work at the University of Aarhus
After he had saved the sport from remaining in the Olympic program for a long time, the impression is now hardening that Schormann has converted the associations he leads into a kind of controlled democracy. First and foremost, whatever the President had in mind could be elected. A sports show contribution in May revealed how he has been in power internationally with tricks and tricks for almost 30 years, leading the association in a non-transparent, autocratic manner. And how he makes deals with the army-related Putin friend and oligarch Vyacheslav Aminov.
Even scientists from the University in Aarhus, Denmark, have dealt with the abnormalities in Schormann’s tenure and published the work entitled “Athletes accuse: Fight for the future of modern pentathlon”.
Failed election
New findings show that even as honorary president in Germany, Schormann continued to pull many strings in the background after he gave up his official management position in 2014: whether he helped select his successors in selection committees or paved the way for them to take office. The election of the incumbent German President Michael Dörr is now even being dealt with by a German court.
When the German association was due to elect a new president last September, former national coach Michael Dörr was challenged by Berlin state association president Jan Langrehr, a clinic chief whose daughter took part in the Tokyo Olympics. Dörr says they have a search committee “Ultimately a recommendation to the Association Day” delivered, “who assessed me as the more suitable of the two candidates. Klaus Schormann then agreed with this assessment.”
But on the actual election date in September, according to the minutes of the meeting, Honorary President Schormann intervened. Suddenly he wanted to set the voting ratios of the voting state associations differently than noted in the invitation to the meeting. Some participants got the impression that he feared that the challenger from Berlin could get a majority of votes.
Lawsuit in Darmstadt
The elections collapsed and had to be postponed. The time leading up to the elections in January is said to have been primarily used by state associations close to Schormann to organize votes. In the German association, this procedure is covered by the statutes: state associations receive more votes, the more athletes they register with the federal association and have a starting license issued. Children, young people, no matter who.
Schormann left an ARD list of questions about his approach on the national and international stage unanswered. A lawsuit by the Berlin state association is now pending at the district court in Darmstadt, which points to an unusually large number of licensed athletes in Bavaria, North Rhine-Westphalia and Hesse, who would have brought additional votes. The aim of the lawsuit is to have the procedure declared illegal and the elections declared void. Michael Dörr, the new man at the top, sees his election as legitimate. But even he admits that the articles of association need to be changed. The modern pentathlon just doesn’t come to rest.