When Alexander Zverev and girlfriend Sophia Thomalla struggled through the flash of flashlights before his coronation, long jumper Malaika Mihambo was already looking forward to her hat trick in the fashionable Bénazetsaal. The women of the four-wheeled track bike busily shot souvenir photos from the gala in the Kurhaus Baden-Baden, where the best athletes were honored for their achievements in the Olympic year 2021 on Sunday evening.
After an outstanding season, Olympic champion Zverev was the first tennis player in 30 years to be named Sportsman of the Year, and after her gold coup in Tokyo, Mihambo received the award for the best female athlete for the third time in a row. The track bike quartet around Lisa Brennauer was honored as Team of the Year in the 75th election.
Team of the year: Lisa Brennauer, Franziska Brauße, Mieke Kröger and Lisa Klein (from left to right) celebrate their world record and the Olympic gold medals.
(Photo: Thibault Camus / dpa)
Once again, the 200 guests looked back on a special sporting year. One that was once again determined by the corona pandemic, but which was also shaped above all by the Olympic Games in Tokyo. And so, before the eyes of several German medalists and the new DOSB President Thomas Weikert, the most emotional images of the summer flickered across the screen.
In the opinion of the almost 1,000 sports journalists who voted, there was no way around Zverev. “The Olympic gold medal will always be paramount. A Grand Slam can’t keep up with that,” said the 24-year-old, who had won over the exceptional player Novak Djokovic in Tokyo in particular with his semi-final victory. And yet he should reach for the longed-for first success at the most important tournaments in the coming year.
For now, Zverev, the first ever German Olympic tennis champion in men’s singles, followed in Baden-Baden in the footsteps of ice hockey professional Leon Draisaitl, last year’s winner – and that of Michael Stich, who won the award for German men’s tennis in 1991 had. Swimming Olympic champion Florian Wellbrock and ski flying world champion Karl Geiger remained clearly behind Zverev, against whom one more Investigation of the men’s tour ATP due to domestic violence is pending.
Sportsman of the year: Alexander Zverev wins Olympic gold in Tokyo – as the first German tennis professional ever.
(Photo: Jan Woitas / dpa)
After her gold medals at the European Championships (2018) and World Cup (2019), Mihambo had also crowned herself Olympic champion in the long jump in Tokyo. And how: with strong nerves, with her last attempt at 7.00 meters. “I think it was the most exciting long jump competition in history for women,” said Mihambo, who was the winner on the big stage for the third time in a row – Steffi Graf was last able to do this at the end of the 1980s. Mihambo won by a clear margin over the Tokyo gold winners Aline Rotter-Focken (wrestling) and Ricarda Funk (canoe slalom).
The four-man track bike had impressed those who voted with several world record runs that the quartet around Brennauer, Franziska Brauße, Mieke Kröger and Lisa Klein had performed in the team pursuit in Tokyo. The selection was the first German women’s team to win gold in the supreme discipline and has now succeeded record champions Bayern Munich as the best team in the athlete election. The dressage team and the table tennis men ended up in second and third place. After the games, the four-man raced to the World Cup and European Championship title: “That we made the triple,” said Brennauer, “was indescribable.”