Alfons Hörmann, the outgoing President of the German Olympic Sports Confederation (DOSB), sees himself acquitted of the charge that his management style has created a culture of fear among the employees of the association's headquarters in Frankfurt.

"The bottom line is the valuable conclusion: If the term culture of fear is mentioned only once out of 159 employees with 1272 answers, that is one too many, but the confirmation that the blanket assumption from the anonymous letter in none Way applies, ”he said in an interview with the German press agency on Thursday.

He refers to a cultural analysis that the DOSB commissioned and the summary of which he presented on Tuesday.

Michael Reinsch

Correspondent for sports in Berlin.

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In the interview, Hörmann assesses the recommendation of the DOSB ethics committee chaired by Thomas de Maizière, which led him to resign at the general assembly in December: "Of the specific allegations from the letter, only one was criticized, namely, that the presidium and board of directors in two or three meetings adhered to the legal requirements, but not to the higher DOSB requirements imposed on us with regard to the mask requirement. The second central allegation was the alleged culture of fear. This cannot simply be proven or refuted and therefore very difficult to get rid of in a short time.Surprisingly, the ethics committee then came up with an additional sport-political classification and the associated recommendation of early elections and a vote of confidence.

The Presidium then decided to take the route of new elections. Vice-President Kaweh Niroomand and I have decided not to do this. ”In the recommendation from June it said:“ In the opinion of the ethics committee, such a different assessment of the people involved and the structures in this way cannot be used in German sport move on. ”Obviously, there is a lack of mutual trust and the necessary trust in the abilities of the employees. Self-reflection, demotivation and rumors, dissatisfaction and ambiguity must also be related to the leadership behavior of the presidium and board.

When asked how he perceived his role as the bogeyman of German sport at the time, Hörmann describes his retreat as a fall: “We now have a lot of information and documents about conspiratorial meetings that have taken place about precisely this form of overthrow in the To bring about the top of the DOSB.

Current candidacies for the successor also make it clear why some of them quickly picked up the microphone and called for a new beginning.

You don't have to be trained tactically to guess where the real motives were and with whom. "