The handball players of the SG BBM Bietigheim recently won everything there was to win: 53 wins across all competitions are a historic achievement. In the past season, the women from Bietigheim won four titles: Supercup, European League, championship and last the DHB Cup. They’ve won every game in the past 14 months. No women’s handball team in Germany has ever been so successful. In the Bietigheim town hall they should actually be bursting with pride and have long since organized a big party. But the city of Bietigheim, with Mayor Jürgen Kessing, 65, is astonishingly reluctant to honor the superior team.
Bietigheim as a celebration “province”?
Many citizens of the district town, who are currently shopping at the weekly market, have little understanding for this: “A reception should have been,” says Monika Honigmann Bärbel Lang puts it more clearly: “The carnival events are celebrated big, but less so. There has to be I say Bietigheim is still a bit provincial.” For Sabine Roth it is clear: “If they are so successful, I actually expect the city of Bietigheim to reward them.”
The alleged reason for the missing party so far: There are said to be major discrepancies between Bietigheim’s OB Kessing and Eberhard Bezner, the long-time patron of handball players. The 86-year-old Bezner, senior boss of the main sponsor Olymp, has been supporting the women’s handball team since 2005. Officially nobody wants to confirm it, but the two alpha animals seem to be so at odds that the players also feel it.
Lena Backhaus, Managing Director of SG BBM Bietigheim Frauen since September 2021, says: “Our girls would have been super happy if we had come from the European Cup and been welcomed here by the city. We think it’s a shame that that didn’t happen.” The 39-year-old also suspects “personal reasons” behind the lack of party. She prefers not to say more on the subject.
Mayor Kessing is succinct
Bietigheim’s mayor Kessing is a sports enthusiast. The former pole vaulter and decathlete is President of the German Athletics Association (DLV). During his time as mayor of Dessau, he was president of the second division handball team Dessauer HV. It is all the more surprising that he tends to ignore the Bietigheim handball women when it comes to celebrations and appreciation. In the SWR interview he says about the successes of SG BBM Bietigheim: “You can only congratulate them. The handball women are of course a figurehead for our city.”
The answer to the question of how the city of Bietigheim wants to honor the successful team sounds surprisingly succinct: “Of course a reception in the town hall with an entry in the city’s golden book would be possible, but we are also able to go to training go. The book isn’t that difficult.” Isn’t it important to the OB to honor the top handball players in a dignified and official setting?
There was also recent confusion about the date for the “Team of the Year 2021” award, to which the handball players had been elected. The city’s sports department had suggested April 28 as the date. However, those responsible for SG had asked for the award to be postponed to July, as the date at the end of April was in the hot phase in the European Cup and in the Bundesliga.
Is Bietigheim losing a glamorous figurehead?
Now the Lord Mayor wants to use the date in July to bring all the awards to the stage at once. If things aren’t going well in the town hall, Kessing says he’s also welcome to come to training: “Then I’ll throw two or three balls at the goal there. We’ll discuss that calmly and then find a framework for doing it appropriately.”
Statements and procedures by the city of Bietigheim leave the SG managers with an extremely insipid aftertaste. The rifts that have to be overcome between the mayor and the handball women seem to be deep. The statement by Managing Director Backhaus can hardly be interpreted otherwise: “We are always open to discussions and to new cooperation and ideas. If not here, then gladly somewhere else.” Bietigheim could perhaps lose a glamorous figurehead in the future. What a bitter development.
Source: SWR