When TSV Unterhaching gave its successful Olympic gymnast Lukas Dauser a big reception last Sunday in the Bayerwerk Arena, Ursula and Günter Staudter were among the 150 guests who cheered the silver medalist on the parallel bars.
That goes without saying, as both are members of the large club, and it is well known that Ursula Staudter once discovered the talent of another Unterhachingen gymnast as a trainer: Marcel Nguyen, two-time silver medalist in London in 2012. On the fringes of the event, Günter Staudter and the current sports star Lukas Dauser got together for a photo, one with a silver medal around his neck, the other with silver hair on his head. What nobody in the hall knew: The 79-year-old home nurse of the Unterhaching community had been the boy’s sports teacher at the turn of the millennium.
The photo albums and newspaper clippings that the discoverer of gymnastics star Marcel Nguyen, Ursula Staudter, collected over her long work as a trainer, cover the whole table.
(Photo: Claus Schunk)
No, he didn’t influence the gymnastics ace’s later sports career, but he thinks it’s “funny” that both exceptional athletes took their first athletic steps under the supervision of him or his wife.
That is a “huge coincidence,” he says. Günter Staudter actually taught Lukas’ sister at the elementary school in Antholing in the municipality of Baiern in the Ebersberg district. But because there were still two hours left on his time account every week, he spent them as a physical education teacher at the elementary school in Glonn, which Lukas attended. It was in 2001 or 2002 when he had to put together a soccer team for the primary school district championship in Vaterstetten. The opponents were a head taller, “but by the time they lifted their feet, the Dauser stole the ball from them.” Oh yes, his wife washed the jerseys back then.
Soccer or gymnastics?
Actually, as Günter Staudter remembers, Lukas’ father, who is a sports teacher at Unterhaching High School, wanted his son to become a footballer. But gymnastics, in his opinion, was the right choice given his height. Dauser is now 1.72 meters tall, Marcel Nguyen measures 1.65 meters. With long legs you can’t get very far in gymnastics, his son Dominik noticed that too. “Until he brought his long legs over the horse …”
One of the photos shows Günter Staudter with the Olympian Lukas Dauser, whose sports teacher he was.
(Photo: Claus Schunk)
Well, when it comes to talent scouting, the Staudters obviously can’t keep up. The 76-year-old former sports and works teacher, who actually looks much younger and still has astonishing agility and resilience, is a trained exercise leader and has been on the parquet for TSV Unterhaching for 52 years now, giving functional gymnastics, fitness gymnastics, Dance gymnastics with self-developed choreography, spinal gymnastics – and mother-child gymnastics. Here, at the end of the eighties, the little boy Marcel Nguyen came to live and made a lasting impression. “Manoeuvrable, agile, he was by far the best in coordination and mobility, which is why she urgently advised his mother to get him to perform high-performance gymnastics. That finally did, the rest was done by Unterhaching gymnastics trainer Richard Hörle, who died a year ago, as well the country and base coach Kurt Szilier.
Ursula Staudter can justifiably claim to have been the discoverer of a great gymnast, while her husband Günter was “only” the first sports teacher of the second Olympic silver hero from Unterhaching. And there is another difference: Lukas Dauser can no longer really remember his sports teacher. “I was still too young then,” he says.
Marcel Nguyen on the other hand, mother-child gymnastics with Ursula Staudter is still present today, and he can probably still sing along to the song “We drive with the Bimmelbahn”, which the little ones still sing today when they go to the mother-child Exercise on the mat cart to be pulled out of the gym.