Dispute over status as a national team: beach volleyball players win in court against their own association

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Kim Behrens (l) and Cinja Tillmann at the EM in September

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TOMS KALNINS / EPA-EFE / Shutterstock

The German Volleyball Association (DVV) suffered a legal defeat in the legal dispute with the beach volleyball team Kim Behrens / Cinja Tillmann.

The Frankfurt am Main regional court ruled that Behrens / Tillmann was entitled to a compensation payment of 17,000 US dollars (around 14,500 euros).

However, the judgment is not yet final, it can be appealed before the Higher Regional Court in Frankfurt am Main.

The two athletes, who were second in the European Championship in Jurmala in September, had sued the association because they were not leading them as a national team, but as a cadre team, despite their athletic qualifications, and preferred four other beach duos, on the grounds that they had the bigger sporting one Potential.

The DVV guarantees these four national teams the right to start in a total of seven international tournaments, regardless of their world ranking position.

And that is lucrative, Behrens / Tillmann themselves speak of a lack of entry and prize money worth more than 25,000 euros.

In addition, there would be lower sponsorship income.

The DVV did not trust Behrens / Tillmann to have great international success in the future.

The court found that this was not proven by viable reasons.

The duo from Stuttgart and Münster fought their way to the finals at the most recent Beach EM in Latvia, where they barely missed gold.

Nevertheless, Behrens / Tillmann were the best German team as vice European champions.

They only moved up because Karla Borger and Julia Sude canceled their participation.

In addition to Borger / Sude, the national teams are formed by Olympic champions Ludwig and Kozuch, Sandra Ittlinger / Chantal Laboreur and Victoria Bieneck / Isabel Schneider.

The district court found that the defendant association owed the two volleyball players damages because it had treated them differently from the other national teams for no objectively justified reason.

The DVV has a monopoly position, which is why it is obliged to "standardize everyone for competitions who meets the requirements for the granting of benefits".

It is not justified that the DVV "has taken the new formation of its top teams as an opportunity to suspend the principle of selecting the best and to report the national teams it has chosen to international tournaments regardless of the performances they have shown".

New formation of top teams - the district court was referring to personnel rogue, which began after Laura Ludwig and Kira Walkenhorst won Olympic gold in 2016.

Read more about the background here.

The court's statement also stated: "The expectation that the sponsored teams would do better for training-scientific or psychological reasons if their tournament places were secured was not supported by viable reasons."

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mon / dpa / sid