When the sky opened its floodgates and it poured heavily on Munich’s Königsplatz on Saturday afternoon, Clemens Wickler and Nils Ehlers were already dry. But they were not happy there. Their quarter-final match was far too short, they lost 0:2 (15:21, 14:21) against Anders Mol and Christian Sorum. The Norwegians were favourites, yes, they have been the best beach volleyball duo in the world for years. The current Olympic champions and world champions can now continue to hope for their fifth European title in a row. But Ehlers in particular also made far too many mistakes in attack and acceptance to be able to withstand Mol and Sorum. “We didn’t manage to play what we set out to do. Today we got a smack,” said Wickler self-critically.
Munich also showed that the currently best German men’s duo is still too inconsistent for the world’s best. It had only reformed this season because Wickler’s partner Julius Thole, with whom he had finished second in the 2019 World Cup, surprisingly resigned from competitive sports last fall. Thole no longer wanted to be a top athlete, but wanted to devote more time to his law studies.
In Ehlers and the local hero Wickler from Starnberg, the last of a total of nine German duos who competed at this European Championship was eliminated in the quarter-finals, even before the medals were awarded. For women, Karla Borger and Julia Sude as well as Chantal Laboreur and Sarah Schulz missed the semifinals on Friday. Rome’s third place finishers at the World Cup, Svenja Müller and Cinja Tillmann, had already failed in the intermediate round, as had Olympic champion Kira Walkenhorst on her international comeback with former indoor international Louisa Lippmann. And so the EM balance of the German beach volleyball duos is worse than it has been for many years.
A bit at a loss in the sand: Cinja Tillmann, who finished third in the World Cup in Rome with her partner Svenja Müller in June, was eliminated in the intermediate round at the European Championships in Munich.
(Photo: Eibner/Memmler/Imago)
In 2012, ten years ago, Julius Brink and Jonas Reckermann became European champions. It was also the last precious metal for a German men’s duo at an EM. For women, a look at history is far less threatening, also because they have been so used to success over the past decade, and not just because of Walkenhorst and Laura Ludwig’s Olympic victory in Rio in 2016. In the ten-year record at European Championships, they only missed a medal in 2012, 2018 and 2019 – and in 2022.
“Overall, a European Championship without a semi-final is disappointing for Germany, even in retrospect,” said Julius Brink, who became Olympic champion with Jonas Reckermann in London in 2012 and works as an expert for ARD in Munich. In any case, the balance fits the rather desolate picture that the German Volleyball Association (DVV) is currently giving in its most successful division. Beach volleyball sports director Niclas Hildebrand was recently released. Jürgen Wagner, who still works as “Head of Beach Volleyball” for the DVV and under whose leadership Brink/Reckermann and Ludwig/Walkenhorst won Olympic gold, threatens to resign if Hildebrand’s resignation persists.
Shower: The heavy rain cleared the grandstands at Königsplatz for a short time.
(Photo: Tobias Schwarz/AFP)
After the European Championships in Munich, Wagner wants to announce his decision. The sports director at the DVV, Julia Frauendorf, who has only been in office for a few months, says: “We will definitely try to talk again.” But Brink also paints a rather bleak picture of the current situation: “In terms of sporting leadership, it looks like everything is in tatters. The way, ‘how do I lead young talents into competitive sports’, doesn’t get any better if you release the people involved,” says Brink.
The best German beach volleyball duos have always been distinguished by the fact that they functioned as independent mini-companies, with a small team around them, they brought together the best experts in the country for their holistic training. These “small cells”, as Brink calls them, still exist, and Müller/Tillmann or Wickler/Ehlers also work that way. “Back then, however, the association completely stayed out of it,” says Brink.
Wickler, who was also so disappointed in Munich because he couldn’t show his best performance in front of his family, still keeps his eyes on the long-term goal of the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris with Ehlers. But first he wanted to go out to eat with his parents and his sister. After the Flood.