The ethics committee of the German Olympic Sports Confederation (DOSB) has been working on the Alfons Hörmann case for a week.

She wants to find out whether anonymously raised allegations against the president, which are said to have led to a “culture of fear” in the umbrella organization of German sports, are true.

To this end, the committee interviewed people in various functions in sport.

One person reported himself: Thomas Bach, the President of the International Olympic Committee (IOC).

He is "very worried".

Namely about the "credibility and thus also the functionality" of the DOSB, it says in a letter that became public on Tuesday from the German fencing Olympic champion from 1976 to the umbrella organization of German sports.

The accusation: disrespect

Not that Bach

would be carried away

expressis verbis

into a judgment

. That doesn't happen to him. But he insisted on a kind of unsolicited description of the case: that the DOSB has left the letter from Kirstin Kloster Assen, the chairman of the “Future Host Commission” at the IOC, unanswered. She wrote to Hörmann on March 26th to stop “misinformation”. You have to know that the DOSB had criticized the IOC for the suddenly appearing award of the Summer Games to Brisbane on March 1st and claimed to have been surprised by the procedure. The IOC then stated that it had informed the Germans very well. Ms. Assen made a mistake, however. The meetings did not take place in February, but in January. She has now been waiting for an answer for a good seven weeks.

From his point of view, Bach's reminder documents what others have accused Hörmann of for years: disrespect. The IOC boss goes one step further in his letter when, with a view to the dispute, “in the well-understood interests of the DOSB”, he declares that a “cure is required, especially since” the position of the DOSB “in the international sports organizations continues to suffer Has". This is undoubtedly a major loss report from the pen of the man who, thanks to his vast network, knows best what the DOSB is about in the big world: frightening.

At this point, Bach no longer shows his familiar formal reluctance with which he asks for “clarification” at the beginning of the letter and for “any necessary consequences, if possible before the summer games in Tokyo”. Such offensives can be counted, if at all, in the more than forty years of the Tauberbischofsheimer's sport-political career. He only comes out of cover when he is sure to hit a hit, to win. The most powerful man in world sport will never officially declare that he considers Hörmann's style to be unworthy and that he as President of the DOSB has failed. But his letter says nothing else.