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Patrick Hausding (right, here with his long-term partner Sascha Klein) reappears after a jump in 2013: »A huge gap torn«
Photo:
Al Bello/Getty Images
The career farewell could not have been announced more appropriately.
While Patrick Hausding is informing the press about the end of his successful career in the indoor swimming pool in Berlin, there is always rumbling in the background.
It is the sound of the 3-meter boards when a jumper has just gained momentum before taking off.
It is also the sound that has accompanied Patrick Hausding for a quarter of a century.
Now he will hear him less often.
Participated four times in the Summer Olympics, won three medals there, became world champion, won 15 European championship titles - there are few sports that are associated with a name like diving with Patrick Hausding.
She christened him "Mister Diving", a title he doesn't like at all: "But since I didn't give it to myself, I'm not responsible for it either."
»Prepared like a little child«
After 25 years in competitive sport, it's over now, "sport has shaped my life, I don't even know what life is like without competitive sport," says the 33-year-old from Berlin.
Now comes the real challenge: mastering all the tasks that life outside of sport has to offer: "I'm prepared for that like a small child," says Hausding.
Not really.
For more than two decades, his home was the swimming pool, the diving platform, the diving pool.
Tower diving, artistic diving, in singles, in synchronized diving, first with his long-term partner Sascha Klein, then with Lars Rüdiger: Hausding was international top everywhere.
"The water jumpers were a guarantee for medals," says national coach Lutz Buschkow, who has also accompanied Hausding's career for 20 years.
Buschkow now has to realize that "a huge gap has been torn" in this sport.
Not just Hausding, but also Marin Wolfram from Dresden.
The successors, who compete at the German Championships in Berlin at the weekend, "have to go out on the field and show what they can do," says Buschkow.
As small as his immersion circles in the water were, the footprints that Hausding is now leaving behind for German diving are big.
Flag bearer in Tokyo
The decision to call it a day had matured over months, Hausding had won bronze again at the games in Tokyo in the previous summer, 13 years after his first Olympic medal in Beijing in 2008, and he was also allowed to carry the German flag at the opening ceremony.
It all seemed like a twist of fate, like the crowning glory of his career, hard to top.
At the time, he himself doubted whether he would be able to perform like this at the next games in Paris at the age of 36: "It has become increasingly difficult to defeat the slacker, to turn your inner ambition outwards," says Hausding today.
In addition, there is the constant pain, »I will miss that the least«.
The shoulders, the knees, the marks of decades of exposure to 10,000 jumps a year.
"I can still do anything, but don't ask me how I'm doing afterwards."
Until when can you do sports without being injured in life, without suffering from the long-term effects of your own career - that is a topic that is far too rarely discussed in top-class sports.
Most recently, former basketball superstar Dirk Nowitzki reported how broken his body was after more than 20 years in the NBA.
“Would you have had to play the last two years?” Nowitzki asked in a podcast in early February.
"Maybe my foot would be a bit better now, I could kick with the kids, that just doesn't work anymore."
Feeling the pressure like never before
There was another aggravating factor for Hausding: In Tokyo he "felt the pressure like never before, the public expected a medal from me," he says.
Because he has always delivered at major events, it was taken for granted that he would also end up on the podium in Tokyo.
He did it alongside Lars Rüdiger in the dubbing competition, but it was harder than ever for him.
Another reason why he now "first wants to enjoy all private things", a career as a coach, as logical and in the spirit of the German Swimming Association that would be, "I'm not striving for the time being," says Hausding: "Then I would have I'm under similar pressure again, I'd just be on the other side of the pool, I know what's being asked of the coaches."
That doesn't mean he doesn't shed tears after the sport, "it would be stupid to hate the sport you've been doing for so long."
He still raves about the "feeling of free flight," "total body control," and "putting it all into aesthetic form."
He is aware that he has done something special in the past 25 years: "I always say: Anyone can play football, but not diving."
First university
From now on, other things have priority: Hausding is studying English and sports to become a teacher, and he hopes to have completed his studies in two and a half years.
Then you can still see what life and work bring.
First of all, Patrick Hausding is in the cooling pool.
Buschkow has by no means given up hope for a trainer at Hausding, "he smelled so much chlorine that he'll have withdrawal symptoms."
Hausding smiles when he hears that – and he counters: “As an athlete, the national coach was able to put pressure on me, that was okay.
But for now I'm my own boss.«
Hausding is asked whether he will follow the German championships in the coming days: "Well, tomorrow I have university, that's more important now."
