resistanceThis Saturday, Onald Rauhe won the gold medal in a four-person kayak and had a fascinating final sprint in a one-on-one match. The victory with hitters Max Rendschmidt and Tom Liebscher and Max Lemke was the highlight of the Germans’ last weekend in Tokyo. Not only because this is an exciting game. But also because the German Olympic champion, at least in the male version, becomes rare in the summer of 2021. You can almost say: to an endangered species.
In Tokyo, only two German men have successfully left the global game behind: the tennis player Alexander Zverev With swimmer Florian Willbrook. Two specimens that stand out in many ways. Zverev was the country’s first men’s Olympic tennis champion, and Verbrook ended the golden dry period in the swimming field that had been going on since 1988. Zverev, Wellbrock and the four-man kayaks now around Rauhe are an exception to the male rule in these competitions.
Because if you look at who is on the top of the podium, you will find that not only competition from other parts of the world has left the Germans behind. In terms of gender comparison, German women have also achieved admirable success. Before the last day, she had seven gold medals in her account. 7:3. The stronger and more victorious gender at the Summer Olympics: it is female, this is the first time.
Troublesome male record
Rauhe’s extraordinary career ended in Tokyo and is a special male role model in German sports. The 39-year-old canoeist won a medal in Sydney as early as 2000 and became the Athens Olympic champion in 2004. It may not be wrong to say roughness: roughness comes from another era. The victories of German athletes still seem to be taken for granted-and German athletes are only a minority. A person who must work hard to gain recognition and awareness goes far beyond what is to be done today.
But the Tokyo Olympics also showed that women’s encouragement and self-empowerment had a positive impact on German sports. Olympic victories in wrestling competitions like Aline Rotter-Focken, slalom kayaker Ricarda Funk or track and field cycling quads are all victories in sports that have been reserved for men for a long time. In terms of the number of games, most of them are still today.
Saturday at 9 a.m.
Given the frustrating men’s balance sheet, one can also ask what side effects the increasingly critical and changing perceptions of masculinity in the German sports world—and everything related to testosterone—may have over the years. Therefore, if there is no pure strength to develop and stick to one’s will, nothing will work. Perhaps the idea of becoming a male sports hero is no longer as attractive as it used to be. Women do not have this burden, and some things appear happier and freer in competition.
In recent years, women and girls in this country have gained wider and wider support to prove themselves in “male” occupations and those long regarded as “male” sports. This fact is not only reflected in almost equal measures The number of people participating in the Olympics.
In Germany, it also shows how much the balance of power on the podium has changed. Since the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, there have been 77 men’s and 43 women’s Olympic victories. About thirty years ago, the German team won 33 gold medals there: 21 men and 11 women. The team dressage gold medal went to a mixed team. This is also in line with the changes of the times: in Tokyo, the winning German dressage team consisted only of women.
