By 2028, Germany’s athletics should again be among the top five in the world. However, the World Championships in Budapest turned into a debacle: For the first time, a German team didn’t win a single medal. Javelin thrower Julian Weber misses the last chance. However, the problems go far beyond individual services.
It seemed a bit as if Julian Weber had to briefly let go of what had just happened on the last evening of the World Athletics Championships. After all, the reigning European champion went to Budapest with the clear goal of finally winning his first medal at world level. However, his javelin only flew 85.79 meters in the Hungarian capital. fourth place. Yet again. As in 2021 at the Olympic Games in Tokyo and 2022 at the World Cup in Eugene. After his last throw, Weber initially fell to the ground, before he grabbed his bag and made his way to the microphones.
He walked very slowly through the stadium moat that separated the active players from the spectators. The 28-year-old kept stopping, patiently signing autographs and posing for photos. “If the fans are already here in the stadium and are cheering for you,” Weber explained his walk, “then I want to do them justice too.” A commendable attitude after a competition whose result had made a debacle final: The 19th World Championships in Athletics is the first in which the German team did not win a single medal.
“I’m disappointed,” Weber said of his personal performance, with which he finished fourth behind Neeraj Chopra (India/88.17), Arshad Nadeem (Pakistan/87.82) and Jakub Vadlejch (Czech Republic/86.67). It was the best individual result for the German Athletics Association, which had to announce the worst result in its history in terms of medals.
DLV President Jürgen Kessing spoke of the “worst case”, while sports director Jörg Bügner, who was only hired in March, stated that the Germans “have lost touch with the world leaders”. That had become evident in the 49 finals in Budapest.
France can do what Germany cannot
Javelin thrower Weber went into his final battle as the DLV’s last hope for a medal “and maybe that played a bit subconsciously,” as he said afterwards. “But actually I was just motivated, I was up for it and I was in a good mood.” Nevertheless, he remained about three meters below his best performance for the year. Not enough to redeem the German team after difficult days and ever louder discussions about the growing distance to the world’s best.
Weber was able to see what this salvation would have looked like on the last few meters of his walk: when he just reached the finish area, from which a staircase leads in front of the TV cameras, loud French cheers broke out there and in the stands. The men’s 4×400 meter relay sensationally won silver behind the overwhelming USA – and thus saved the hosts of the 2024 Olympic Games from sharing the fate of a medalless situation with the Germans.
“I’ll deal with my performance first and analyze what I did there,” said Weber, who missed the right “feeling” in his six attempts and struggled with the position of the throwing line. It wasn’t recorded directly at the edge of the lawn, as is usually the case, but a few meters in front of it. “It feels like throwing off the tartan in the middle. It’s just horrifying to me.” He tried to hide this distraction, “but it didn’t quite work.” The former handball player “would have liked to have won the medal”, especially since he “knew that I could do better. But it’s no use saying that anymore.”
Even top performances are not enough for German athletes
And so, for the first time, Germany does not appear in the World Championships in Athletics medal table on. 46 nations have the final stand of Budapest as winners of gold, silver or bronze, including the British Virgin Islands (for the first time ever), Barbados and Grenada. Three countries with a total of around 435,000 inhabitants, that’s slightly more than in Berlin-Pankow, the largest district of the federal capital.
In view of this miserable record, it is surprising at first glance: the vast majority of the German team at this World Cup can hardly be blamed. The majority of the starters presented themselves at least respectably compared to the previous performances, showed good competitions on an individual level. Only what is German top is hardly enough for the top on a global scale.
The men’s 4×400-meter relay, for example, ran in 3:00.67 minutes, faster than any German long-sprint quartet since 1995 – and was still eliminated in the heats. Decathlete Leo Neugebauer not only collected a lot of sympathy, but also an outstanding 8645 points. He even set an unofficial “world record”: Never before had such a result only been enough for fifth place, and the 23-year-old would have ended up on the podium at 16 of 18 previous world championships. U23 European champion Olivia Gürth ran in the final over 3000 meters obstacle as 14th in 9:20.08 minutes in fourth place in the all-time German best list – but even Gesa Krause’s DLV record would not have been enough for the top three.
The “as is” is not good enough for the best in the world
Walker Christopher Linke even set two new German records over 20 and 35 kilometers and was “only” fifth twice. The German team captain therefore did not see “that we are currently too bad. Maybe the international competition is just strong.” Team captain Gina Lückenkemper also spoke of the overall impression of “very, very good performances, which are worthy of all honor.” However, that’s not enough to keep up with the international “extreme performance development” (Lückenkemper).
An expression of these increases across almost all discipline groups are six new world championship records, i.e. performances that have never been achieved at a world championship before: for men in the shot put and discus throw, for women over 100, 200 and 4×100 meters and in the 35 km -Go. The only world record was in Budapest in the mixed relay over 4×400 meters, a very young competition that was held for the first time in global title fights at the 2019 World Cup.
“We have to see how we can overcome the distance to the top of the world in the future,” said sports director Bügner in his analysis during the DLV press conference a few hours before the final World Cup decisions. He was “not satisfied” with the general performance, the “actual state” of German athletics. He ruled out moving away from the goal of being in the top five in the world again by the 2028 Olympic Games. However, after almost half a year in office, he was still in the process of having to get “an even deeper insight” into the “complex association” and its structures.
Germany is just ahead of Norway and just behind Japan
However, Idriss Gonschinska, the DLV general director, did not make any public statements about the competitions in Budapest. The 54-year-old has been employed full-time by the association since 2008, has risen to become the most powerful decision-maker over the years and is therefore largely responsible for the structures, which currently seem to promise little success on a global scale.
But at least the World Cup ended for the DLV with a very small upward trend. Because Julian Weber, despite all the disappointment about the missed medal, at least made it 13th in the top eight in Budapest, a year ago in Eugene it was only seven. In the “placement table”, which shows not only the medal ranks but also all other top eight results, the German team is still in twelfth place. Just ahead of Norway and just behind Japan, with a clear gap to the Netherlands, which was placed ahead.
Their superstar Femke Bol stormed in the last final of this World Cup, the women’s 4×400 meters, with an unbelievable home stretch to her second gold and left the stadium enthusiastically when she passed the supposedly hasty relay of Jamaica in the final sprint.
Julian Weber had already patiently answered numerous questions before he was asked about having achieved the best DLV placement of this World Cup as fourth in the javelin throw. Which only elicited a little euphoric “After all” from him before he said goodbye in a friendly manner and set off into the Hungarian night.