"A HOME FOR RESPECT" is the motto of the Invictus Games announced by Prince Harry and his wife Meghan in Düsseldorf. The Games for war-disabled people will be held there for the first time in 2023. Around 500 soldier*s - wounded, injured, sick - from 21 nations will take part next September. "At its core, the Invictus Games is about treating our servicemen and women with the respect they deserve," Prince Harry said of the event he created.
He turned the preliminary round of the European Basketball Championships into Wagner festivities: Franz Wagner caused a huge stir among the German team. "The guy is mentally ill," his teammate Johannes Thiemann made a somewhat oblique compliment to Wagner, who is only 21 years old. More gently, however, Germany's greatest basketball legend Dirk Nowitzki praised Wagner. "He throws very well for a big boy. He can read the game. He's faster than he looks." Long may the Wagner festivities continue.
Thank you, Hans-Joachim "Aki" Watzke! In recent years, officials have increasingly alienated soccer from the fans. But the Dortmund boss played a crucial role in bringing about a renaissance in one area. Watzke convinced Uefa boss Aleksander Ceferin to allow standing room in the European Cup again. Fan activists had done the groundwork to lift the ban, which had been in place since 1998. Watzke managed to complete the job, as Union Berlin president Dirk Zingler made public. "He accomplished it in the end."
Inconsistencies are to be prevented and the flow of the game improved: An AI finally enables semi-automatic offside detection. A dozen cameras take a close look at the player and the ball and calculate both the offside line and the time of the ball release. Even though the referee and the video assistant still have to assess the penalty, the technology saves valuable time. We will soon see how well this is received when it is used for the first time in the Champions League.
"No one can relate to that," enthuses 31-year-old mother of twins Almuth Schult. After three years, the goalkeeper of the German women's national team returns to the goal and shows with her comeback that it is possible to fight your way back into competitive sports even in motherhood. And with success! The DFB women win 8:0 against Bulgaria and put a smile on national coach Martina Voss-Tecklenburg's face: "There's not much to complain about today.
He is the son of refugees from Sierra Leone - and now a tennis hero in his native USA. Frances Tiafoe finally won the backing of his countrymen by defeating superstar Rafael Nadal at the US Open. "Guys, I'm blown away, this is an incredible moment. I can't even see straight because of all the tears. My heart is beating a thousand times a minute," said the 24-year-old. Rousing emotions of an up-and-comer - tennis heart, what more do you want?
He is the German board pioneer: Titus Dittmann made skateboards popular in Germany. The fact that he also brought snowboarding from the USA to Germany is rather little known. But now this story about the 73-year-old from Münster is to be immortalized in a film. A Swiss team wants to tell the story, as Dittmann told WDR.
