District Administrator Alex Eder and BLSV district chairman Benjamin Adelwarth awarded 135 athletes with a medal for their achievements in 2023 at the athletes' ceremony in the Mindelheim Forum last Thursday.
Mindelheim/Unterallgäu – 27 teams also received a certificate. After the ceremony in the forum, the guests moved to the city theater. Here, too, Eder and Adelwarth cut a fine figure as moderators and honored Albert Stiegeler from SV Egg an der Günz and Manfred Schuster from SC Eppishausen (ill) on the theater stage for their outstanding voluntary commitment.
Cohesion makes the entire district strong.
Alex Eder, district administrator, emphasized the importance of clubs and sport for society
Extreme athlete talks about his life
The guest of honor Thomas Burger then had undivided attention for his captivating story. The former extreme mountaineer talked about his youth in Kempten and that he left school at 18, shortly before graduating from high school. His friend Holger Wendel and he had the dream of becoming little climbing professionals like Reinhold Messner. As a master's test in 1983, they wanted to climb the infamous north face of the Eiger without rope protection.
At the start, in the best weather, they made two crucial mistakes: They didn't inform themselves about the further weather conditions and didn't tell anyone that they were going to hit the wall. They wanted to be cool, but took two ropes with them as a precaution. At the beginning everything was going great, but then there was a sudden change in the weather that almost cost the lives of the two young men. What happened in the wall was later recreated in a film. Excerpts from this were integrated into Thomas Burger's impressive lecture. He talked about falling rocks and ice in the wall and how everyone was fighting for survival.
When a rope could no longer be pulled off, they stayed on the wall in a snowstorm for a total of nine days and suffered severe frostbite. With the last of his strength, Burger was able to make his presence felt. At this point, his friend no longer showed any signs of life. They were rescued by helicopter. It turned out that Burger had the more serious injuries and frostbite and he couldn't believe his friend was still alive.
He spent a year in the Rechts der Isar Clinic and at that time it was inconceivable that after many transplants he would be able to walk again without walking aids. He was depressed and was only awakened from his lethargy by a lecture from a blind mountaineer when he said: "It's not bad to be blind, it's bad not to be able to bear blindness." He registered at school again, got He graduated from high school and has now made a name for himself as a linguist, rhetoric trainer and therapist.
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