Stephan Mayer described the hearing of the so-called temporarily Olympic associations in the sports committee of the Bundestag on Wednesday as a "hodgepodge of calls for help".

Michael Reinsch

Correspondent for sports in Berlin.

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Representatives of the German Alpine Club, which has been part of the Olympic program with climbing since the Summer Games in Tokyo 2021 and will make its next Olympic premiere with ski climbing at the Winter Games in Milan and Cortina 2026, the leadership of the German Roller Sports and Inline Association as home the skateboarders, the German Dance Sport Association, whose almost 200,000 members suddenly have to get used to breakdance hip-hoppers, and the German Surfing Association made it clear to the deputies that they are struggling with different, but major difficulties.

As the CSU MP and former State Secretary Mayer pointedly concluded, the Alpine Club will be put on the same level as the German Football Association, which is financed by professional sports, in terms of funding, namely - surprisingly for those involved - not supported by the federal government.

However, the millions of assets that made the association rattle through the subsidiarity check are in mountain huts and climbing halls, which are used by hobby hikers and leisure climbers and thus by the majority of the 1.4 million members.

Since 2020, the Federal Ministry of the Interior and the Alpine Association have been in a legal dispute over the short-term refusal of funding.

Parliamentary State Secretary Mahmut Özdemir (SPD), a former skateboarder, made it clear that he expected more flexibility from the planned Sports Funding Act and thus support in such cases.

What the associations concerned have in common is that they lack full-time trainers and managing directors as well as sports facilities.

Tom Delaveaux, vice president of the wave riders, whose association is supported by only six clubs, which holds its German championships in France and employs a head coach from France, described his athletes as "individual, disorganized, freedom-loving and subcultural".

This is new in German sport, but not unique.

The dance association, hitherto characterized by standard and Latin, is experiencing an influx of social projects that are reorganized as sports clubs.

With diabolical joy, Left-wing MP André Hahn asked the question that medal strategists also ask in their efforts to make top-class sport more efficient: whether the diversity of sport is so important or whether it would be better to do it temporarily Olympic federations – most of which, however, should also be present in Brisbane 2032.

He asked the surfers if they didn't see a contradiction in establishing surfing in a country where there were practically no waves.

He got the contradiction he wanted.

MP Tina Winklmann (Greens) assured the guests of the committee: "They are the modernizers of the sports world."