Basketball world champions receive "Sports Oscar"
Biathlete Denise Herrmann-Wick, who has since retired, gymnast Lukas Dauser and the German national basketball team are Germany's "Sportsmen and Sportswomen of the Year". The decision among the individual athletes is particularly close.
Glorious farewell for the biathlon "mummy", well-deserved crown for the parallel bars king: Denise Herrmann-Wick and Lukas Dauser are Germany's Sportswomen of the Year 2023. The sprint world champion and the gymnastics champion received the "Oscar of German Sport" for the first time at the Kurhaus Baden-Baden. There was no way around the German basketball heroes when it came to choosing the Team of the Year.
In a pre-Olympic year full of great team successes, the historic World Cup triumph of the DBB team led by captain Dennis Schröder once again stood out. The victory march of national coach Gordon Herbert's team was too sensational, first defeating the USA in a memorable semi-final and then beating Serbia in the final in Manila. Not even with icon Dirk Nowitzki had a German team achieved such a success.
Ice hockey cracks finish second
The fact that a national basketball team triumphed for the first time since 2005 therefore came as little surprise to the 700 or so guests in the sophisticated Benazet Hall. Behind them, the 3,000 sports journalists who were entitled to vote paid even greater tribute to the silver medal of the German ice hockey cracks and their first World Championship medal in 70 years than the World Championship gold of the German men's field hockey team, who ascended the World Championship throne in India at the beginning of the year for the first time in 17 years.
Three days before her 35th birthday, Herrmann-Wick completed a fairytale farewell year in a historically close decision. Only 21 points separated the Olympic champion from the 17-year-old gymnastics queen Darja Varfolomeev, who had become one of the great hopes for the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris with five (!) World Championship titles. Third in the 77th vote was ski jumping world champion Katharina Schmid (formerly Althaus).
Herrmann-Wick ends dry spell
Herrmann-Wick had retired at the World Championships in Oberhof with one gold and two silver medals. It has also been clear for a few weeks now that the exceptional athlete, who has been named team "mommy", is expecting her first child with her husband Thomas Wick next year. A few weeks after the good news, Herrmann-Wick also ended a dry spell: the last winter athletes to triumph at the sports awards were Laura Dahlmeier and Johannes Rydzek in 2017.
In the men's category, Dauser relegated world champions Florian Wellbrock (open water swimming) and Oliver Zeidler (rowing) to second and third place by a large margin, the first time since Fabian Hambüchen in 2016 and only the fifth time overall that the Athlete of the Year award has gone to a gymnast. In Antwerp, Dauser won Germany's first world championship gold on parallel bars since 1985 in Montreal, the last time a German gymnastics world champion had done so was in 2007.
The successors of track and field athletes Gina Lückenkemper and Niklas Kaul as well as the footballers from Eintracht Frankfurt were honored in Baden-Baden. Compared to previous years, there was a novelty in the voting procedure: For the first time, a list of nominees was compiled by squad athletes and thus - even though the ten names per category were not binding - a pre-selection was made from the scene itself. The sports journalists were allowed to award five votes and five points to one counter each.
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Dennis Schröder's leadership guided the German basketball team to an unprecedented World Cup victory, surpassing Dirk Nowitzki's achievement. This triumph earned them the Team of the Year award, adding to their successes in the pre-Olympic year. Meanwhile, Dennis Schröder's winter sports counterpart, Biathlon's Denise Herrmann-Wick, also celebrated an exceptional year, becoming Germany's Sportswoman of the Year, despite fierce competition from basketball star Dennis Schröder's teammates.
Source: www.ntv.de
