Alfons Hörmann is history as President of the German Olympic Sports Confederation (DOSB).
He will not apply for a continuation of his term of office in the event of an extraordinary new election during the general meeting at the beginning of December.
The Allgäu's opposition breathes a sigh of relief after this decision on Wednesday.
Hörmann's supporters take off their hats rhetorically. The extremely divergent reactions alone show how necessary it was to put an end to the back and forth of the past few days. German sport is deeply divided. And in this constitution, virtually leaderless, at least not as capable of work as he should be.
Completely independent of the question of how pronounced the “culture of fear” in the DOSB may not be alone in the Frankfurt headquarters, the leadership of the umbrella organization not only offered a line of argument that ran across all areas of work; both in domestic and foreign policy. The Federal Ministry of the Interior as the most important donor looked skeptical to Frankfurt, the International Olympic Committee is in a dispute with the DOSB leadership, large and small member organizations no longer wanted to go along with it.
It is doubtful whether the promising chancellor candidate Armin Laschet, unlike Angela Merkel a friend of the whole sport, would have gotten to know Hörmann again after the theater about the application of Rhein-Ruhr. But Laschet has a lot of imagination for the 2036 Olympic Games in the Ruhr area, for example. Hörmann missed them, as he explained at the beginning of March. A sports director who is loudly canceling the Olympics at home?
At least that's strange. Like the six-month transition phase with Hörmann at the helm. There is much to be said for an orderly transition. But in these times more for a quick withdrawal by Hörmann. His passion to get involved cannot be helpful for the most important, most difficult step in German sport for decades: namely to quickly find a leader who can, who can fill in all the trenches, who is able to use the concentrated strength of the greatest Use membership organization profitably.
It is about much more than increasing the federal government's funding for top-class sports or the Olympic Games. The pandemic has shown organized sport where it is in the ranking of socio-political forces. When it came to getting children and senior citizens moving again to enforce acceptable openings, Berlin more or less ignored the DOSB. The game is not over because the pandemic will continue to be with us. And other difficult tasks are just around the corner. After the Olympics in Tokyo a few months later, the Winter Games in Beijing, highly controversial, politically charged. For the well-being of the grassroots as well as the top, the DOSB quickly needs strong, intelligent leadership. He can no longer afford to be led by a "lame duck" for a day.