Kastening is eager for the home European Championship
DHB returnees cleared after drunk driving
January 2, 2024, 7:15 p.m
Timo Kastening’s drunk driving made the headlines, and now he wants to rewrite it during his comeback in the national handball team. He wants to make a big impression with the DHB team at the home European Championships. His role models are the basketball world champions.
Timo Kastening can hardly wait for his comeback on the big handball stage. “I’m burning,” the bundle of energy bubbles out. After difficult years with painful setbacks, Kastening is looking forward to the home European Championship, what feels like his first tournament in almost three years, like no other. “I really, really feel like it,” he emphasizes.
Despite his comparatively short DHB career, Kastening’s history in the national team provides enough material for his own biography. The faux pas by former national coach Christian Prokop, who asked the right winger his name during his tournament debut in 2020 in a team meeting in front of cameras and an audience of millions (“What’s your name?”) will never be forgotten. And the Corona case at the European Championships two years ago, when Kastening sat in isolation in the hotel room with a sore throat and headache instead of playing for large parts of the tournament, caused a stir.
Drunk driving as a low point
Kastening finally made the headlines, especially in the tabloids, with a drunken drive in January 2022, after which he lost his driver’s license. “A bad mistake,” says Kastening today, remembering the difficult days and weeks that followed: “Many children and fans didn’t believe I could do that because I was otherwise the cheerful person who was a role model When you do something that people don’t expect of you, it does something to you. Questioning my behavior really opened my eyes on this matter.”
Kastening consciously deals openly with the dark side of his past. He is reformed, the handball player of the year 2019 wants to be a role model again. “When this drunk driving happened to me, I immediately called my mother. She said, ‘You made a mistake, make sure it doesn’t happen again. A mistake is okay, if you make the same mistake two or three times, “It’s not all that crispy in your head. You have the chance to change and learn from it,” says Kastening and asks: “Why shouldn’t we deal with it transparently?”
Basketball world champion as a role model
Kastening’s focus is now fully on sport again. The World Cup, which he missed last year after a torn cruciate ligament, has been put aside. In the coming weeks, the left-hander wants to cause a sensation again as “Speedy Gonzales” with his specialty, lightning-fast counter-attacks.
Kastening’s role in the team has changed over time; at 28 years old, the smallest player in the German European Championship squad at 1.80 meters is now one of the more experienced players. “That doesn’t mean that I set the direction, but rather that I want to show in certain stressful situations: We’re sticking to our plan, everything’s okay, we’ll keep doing it like this,” says Kastening and sets a high standard for himself: “What that I want to be a role model in terms of behavior on and off the pitch, in terms of respect, in terms of passion, in terms of will.”
His own role models for this tournament are the German basketball world champions. “That was absolutely brilliant. We want to adapt this team spirit, this relaxedness, this desire for success,” he said: “I think all doors are open to us.” At the tournament next week with the world record game in front of 50,000 spectators in the Düsseldorf Arena against Switzerland (January 10th/8:45 p.m. in the ntv.de live ticker) begins, he wants to “create enthusiasm and a little hype” with the German team, says Kastening: “The best thing would be if this enthusiasm is reflected in the halls after the tournament. That we see even more children in the halls. That we Maybe we would be asked about it at the bakery. That would mean that people were happy to see us.”