The recent publication by Athleten Deutschland e.
V. is a document of diversity – and of ambition.
Thanks to generous state funding, the representation of the top German athletes is independent.
With this and with its profound statements and suggestions - example Center for Safe Sport - it occupies a prominent position in the world of sports.
But she wants more.
In its paper from Wednesday, the association turns against calls for a boycott of the Olympic Games without knowing who is actually calling for this boycott.
The athletes reason that this could be a highly effective means if it were organized globally and across national borders - if it were something other than a state-ordered absence for political reasons.
If the athletes stayed away from arenas and competitions out of their own interest, the athletes' representatives imagine, there would be no dazzling television pictures, no records and no marketable billions in revenue. But this would not be a boycott, but a strike. But the athletes lack the solidarity for such an attack on the Olympia business model. Athletes Germany complains that they are not (yet) the most powerful group in the world of sport because their self-organization still needs considerable progress.
But the theoretical considerations of a labor dispute in the world of Olympia should not pass the practical test: if the first row does not go to the competitions, the second row opens up.
Or the third.
The athletes' plea against a boycott is actually a complaint: that they do not have the means of the strike as a weapon in their dispute with the all-powerful IOC.