Wednesday July 21, 2021
Made the jump from politics
The gymnastics fever just won’t let go of Gienger
He was world champion on the horizontal bar, won Olympic bronze, invented his own somersault – and was for the CDU in the Bundestag for 19 years: Eberhard Gienger. The sport is still his thing, even if he doesn’t always understand the current top stars. Shortly before the Olympics, Gienger celebrates his 70th birthday.
At some point in the second Corona spring in a row, even the restless and always agile Eberhard Gienger was physically and above all mentally exhausted for decades: “I always tried hard, but at some point all the batteries were empty.” And so Germany’s former gymnast urgently needed a break, the 70th birthday today is only celebrated in small groups.
“Ebse” was more and more the man for the big train station and not for the small siding. Once world champion and three times European champion on the horizontal bar, German record champion with 34 national titles, before a certain Fabian Hambüchen trumped him. After his sports career, he continued at full throttle: businessman, sports official and a political career that took him to the German Bundestag for 19 years on a CDU ticket.
To let go there, that decision was made more than a year ago. Letting go of the horizontal bar, the Swabian cannot and does not want to do that to this day. “Sports and gymnastics have made it better, I feel I’m on my way up again,” said Gienger. And at the beginning of the week he didn’t present a Gienger somersault in front of the camera, but it did have impressive giant wheels.
“Then the heart beats twice as fast”
The two-time athlete of the year can more than sympathize with the current generation of gymnastics and their sensitivities. Because 41 years ago Gienger also trained in an Olympic uncertainty. Olympia in Moscow yes or no – this was the subject of highly controversial debates in Germany. Ultimately, two months before the games, German politicians decided to boycott the event because of the Soviet troops in Afghanistan.
Therefore, the father of three sons was and is responsible for hosting the Games in Tokyo, even in times of the pandemic. “We must continue to learn to live with this virus. I believe that organizers and athletes will behave sensibly,” said Gienger.
In the Japanese capital, he trusts Elisabeth Seitz on the uneven bars and Lukas Dauser on the parallel bars to win the bronze medal, which he won in 1976 in Montreal on the horizontal bar: “You can definitely reach the final. And then your heart beats twice as fast as normal, and there is no stopping the front. “
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