Editorial
star editor-in-chief
“For sports stars, the biggest fight sometimes lies beyond the arena” – Gregor Peter Schmitz about the new star
In the current star, the focus is on the two athletes Jan Ullrichs and Alexander Zverev
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In the new star Two sports stars come into focus: Jan Ullrich talks about drug excesses and his total crash, Alexander Zverev is confronted with allegations of domestic violence. Editor-in-chief Gregor Peter Schmitz classifies both cases.
One of my favorite books is “The Sports Reporter” by Richard Ford. It’s primarily about a rather annoying reporter and his eternal search for himself. It’s also about his admiration for athletes who manage to ignore everything that has nothing to do with him with their sport, and who naturally see it as the most important thing in the world. I had to think of Ford’s novel while reading this star-Edition, which deals twice with extraordinary athletes who live or have lived an absolute passion for sport, but who find it difficult to cope with life outside of sport. This scene can be found in the research of my colleagues David Holzapfel and Johannes Röhrig about allegations of violence against tennis star Alexander Zverev, the most successful German player since Boris Becker:
Zverev was already on tennis courts as a small child. And anyone who watched him quickly noticed: This boy has extraordinary talent – and an even more extraordinary ambition. Former tennis professional Dominik Meffert remembers training for the Australian Open many years ago. He was just practicing serves with his coach when he was ten years old at the time Alexander Zverev came onto the pitch. He asked if he could play the serves back. Meffert, a seasoned professional nearly six feet tall, agreed. Of course, Zverev couldn’t return a ball. “After the tenth attempt, he threw himself on the ground crying and pounding the ground with his fists.” He couldn’t accept that a 26-year-old played better than a ten-year-old. Meffert says: “It was different back then. But the good players are all different.”
Jan Ullrich reports for the first time about his crash
And in the title conversation that Christian Ewers and Joachim Rienhardt had with Jan Ullrich, the only German winner of the Tour de France, there is this memory from the former cycling champion: “If you are in a five at 40 degrees in the Pyrenees or the Alps -Man leading group and you are the only one who still has a helmet on – then this little detail alone drives you crazy. You say to yourself: You are carrying the 300 grams of the helmet with you and the others are not. You throw it away Helmet away automatically.”
Ullrich literally crashed after his tour ended, drinking two bottles of whiskey a day, cocaine, up to 800 cigarettes, perhaps to endure his continued silence on the omnipresent doping allegations. The silence is now over, Ullrich says for the first time that he had doped: “At the time it all felt completely normal. The general attitude was: If you don’t do that – how are you going to survive in a race? Then you ride in the peloton and you know that you’re probably one of those who have nothing in it and that’s why you have zero chances.”
Ullrich wants to start a new life after experiencing heaven and hell. It is not yet clear whether Zverev will survive the allegations in his private life, the presumption of innocence applies. And yet we learn: For sports stars, sometimes the biggest fight lies beyond the arena.
New stern hour soon again on stern.de and on ntv
Our new series of events star-Lesson continues. This time we welcome security expert Claudia Major and ex-Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg. We want to discuss with them about our world in transition and how the war in the Middle East and the war in Ukraine are challenging the values and norms of our society. What options do we have for action, what needs to change urgently, how can a new start be achieved – for the world, but also for us personally? Are you curious? We transfer that starhour on November 27th from 6:30 p.m. live star.de and at ntv.