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Swimmer Isabel Gose at the Olympic qualification competition in Berlin
Photo: Soeren Stache / dpa
Lutz Buschkow is ahead of its time.
Seven hours to be exact.
When he called SPIEGEL on Saturday lunchtime, he had just had dinner.
The national coach of water divers is currently preparing his athletes in Dresden for the decisive Olympic qualification competition in Tokyo at the beginning of May.
Simulated time change included.
On Monday the national team will board the plane to Japan.
In the middle of this inverted and stressful world, Buschkow also received the message from the German Swimming Association (DSV) on Friday evening.
In it, the DSV announced after a presidium meeting that lasted several hours that the national coach of the water divers would take over the duties of the competitive sports director on a temporary basis.
The post has been vacant since the controversial separation of the DSV from Thomas Kurschilgen at the end of February.
A solution proposed by the national coaches Bernd Berkhahn and Hannes Vitense with the three-time Olympic champion Michael Groß had failed during the week.
Buschkow held the position of director of competitive sports in the DSV from 2008 to 2016.
The fact that he is now assuming the dual role again in this critical phase so shortly before the Olympic Games in Tokyo in the summer is also due to the fact that he has "never been someone who ducks away when there are problems and I can help," he says of itself.
The 63-year-old can build on old experiences, but his to-do list is long after a two-month vacancy in this central position.
In the morning he had called his head coach counterparts from the swimming, water polo and synchronized swimming divisions. After his arrival in Tokyo, he will zoom in again with them to deal with the most pressing topics.
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Old and current sports director: Lutz Buschkow with water divers Sascha Klein and Patrick Hausding (2012)
Photo: Michael Kappeler / dpa
In his years as a competitive sports director, Buschkow not only made friends in swimming, but it was said at the time that he only kept an eye on his diving enthusiasts.
That is now feared again.
"I've always campaigned for all kinds of sports in the DSV, and that's how it will be this time as well," says Buschkow today.
Some swimmers have not forgotten how he publicly disgraced them at the 2012 Olympics.
When the nerves about the medal-free games in London for the first time in 80 years, Buschkow also attacked the active players in one sweep, attesting that they were not competitive, lack of basic stamina, lack of athletic prerequisites - and in general: “We might see more carp as dolphins. "
Hope and frustration
Nine years and another embarrassment in Rio 2016 later, Buschkow says: "I will do everything I can to ensure that we have the most successful games possible." In diving, as for many years, all eyes are on the two-time Olympic medalist Patrick Hausding.
But even in pool swimming, the chances of winning Olympic gold with double world champion Florian Wellbrock and vice-world champion Sarah Köhler are as good as they have been for a long time for the former swimming nation Germany.
The frustration of the national swimming coaches in particular was correspondingly great at suddenly being without management a few months before the climax in Tokyo, which is so important for the future of the entire association.
One post, all decisions
Kurschilgen had authorized himself to be the sole decision maker in competitive sports by amending the statutes.
So all decisions came together for him: administrative work, the preparation of the potential analysis for the coming Olympic cycle, applications to the sports association (DOSB) or the Federal Ministry of the Interior responsible for sport.
For Buschkow, the most important task now is to design the so-called UWV, the immediate preparation for the competition, in such a way "that the best performances can really be achieved at the games."
In addition, there are the nominations for Tokyo, the preparation of the other season highlights in all categories under pandemic conditions, the European Championships in Budapest in May or the European Youth Championships in Rome in July, urgent staff talks.
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He is ready for Tokyo: Florian Wellbrock after his world championship gold over 1500 meters in 2019
Photo: Wang Jingqiang / imago images / Xinhua
With the decision in favor of Buschkow, the board of directors has avoided the next escalation of the dispute between competitive sport and volunteering.
Because: DSV Vice President Harald Walter was also in discussion as an interim solution, according to reports, such a high-performance sport decision would not only have driven the national swimming coaches to the barricades.
With the acting competitive sports director Buschkow, "the national coaches have their backs free and the athletes can concentrate fully on the Olympic Games and other highlights of the year", DSV President Marco Troll is quoted in the message. The position of the director of competitive sports will also be advertised anew. With him, Buschkow believes, the DSV has now also gained time "to find a qualified person for this central position in such a large association".
The solution Buschkow could actually bring short-term calm back - if all those involved manage to pull themselves together on behalf of the athletes in a long-lost situation. The fact that a few hours before the presidium meeting on Friday evening DSV vice Walter and the anti-doping officer Roland Weiler removed an offensive critic in the presidium also shows that the controversial board is on course for confrontation in the association's internal uprising.