Detlef Kühnel

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Detlef Kühnel (* 1944 in Roth ) is a former German triathlete , triathlon organizer and official .

Life

With Manuel Debus, Kühnel is the first German person to contest an Ironman triathlon and is therefore considered one of the founding fathers of the German triathlon movement. When he started at Ironman Hawaii in 1982 and 1983 , he needed 14:48:16 h (623th place) and 12:33:09 h (327th place). In 1984 he was one of the 51 finishers among 74 registered participants of the second edition of the "Canadian International Ultra Triathlon" in Penticton , which in 1986 became Ironman Canada . He used to play tennis and founded a riding club, and in January 1985 he took part in the Paris-Dakar rally on a motorcycle, a KTM 600 .

On September 24, 1984 Kühnel organized the first triathlon with the " Franconian Triathlon " in Roth with the support of Hubert Schwarz as head of the swimming competition and other members of the triathlon department of TSV 1859 Roth, which he also founded in 1984. With top international starters and just 130 starters at water temperatures well below 17 degrees. After that it went steadily uphill. A year later he hosted the Bavarian Championships, the German Championships in 1986 and the European Championships in 1987. The newspapers reported abundantly with 50,000 viewers. Among the spectators was Valerie Silk , the organizer of the Ironman Hawaii and then owner of the “Ironman” brand. She spent four days in Roth looking for a European partner for a qualifying race for Hawaii.

At the same time, Detlev Kühnel took care of the organization of the new sport: When the Bavarian Triathlon Association was founded on May 1, 1985 as the first German state association, Detlev Kühnel acted as the first sports supervisor. Kühnel played a major role in the fact that in February 1986 the "German Triathlon Association" founded by Manuel Debus merged with the "German Triathlon Association" (DTrB) founded by Günther Kissler to form the German Triathlon Union and was its vice-president. In this function, Detlev Kühnel also took part in the founding meeting of the International Triathlon Union (ITU) on April 1, 1989 in Avignon .

For the first European Ironman race, Ironman Europe 1988, 706 participants, including 20 women, registered. While the previous events were still under the official care of TSV Roth, Detlev Kühnel founded the company Freizeit und Sport Promotion Detlev Kühnel GmbH due to the increased risk involved . ARD and ZDF reported a total of 42 minutes, the police counted 80,000 viewers, and two years later Detlev Kühnel confessed to the Süddeutsche Zeitung that he was then on the verge of returning the “sinfully expensive European rights” as quickly as possible, because the whole thing was a bunch I was in debt. In 1990 3sat reported in an almost ten-hour live broadcast and ZDF broadcast a summary of the event, for which 1,349 participants registered. In 1993, Detlev Kühnel counted 2,325 registrations for the Ironman and had to send rejections for the first time - he did not dare to allow more than 1,700 starters. From 1993 to 2000 Kühnel also organized the Powerman in Spalt , where Detlev Kühnel had moved including his office in 1996. Organizing the events had long since become a full-time job; Detlev Kühnel had previously worked as a construction technician at Nürnberger Versicherung for twenty years . In 1998 the number of 4,000 registrations was exceeded, but only 2,700 participants could be admitted. In 1999, the number of registrations for the Ironman that Kühnel pulled from his mailbox suddenly fell to 2,186. On the one hand, there were now other Hawaii qualifiers in Europe with the Ironman Lanzarote , Zurich and Klagenfurt , and on the other hand, the scene was annoyed that Detlev Kühnel's Powerman Spalt, which became the world's largest duathlon in 1998 with 1,245 starters, became a qualifier for Roth had made. Kühnel showed himself to be able to learn - in 2000, with 3,386 registrations, there were again 686 more participants than starting places.

But in the meantime Dr. James P. Gills, owner of an eye clinic in Florida and a triathlete from the very beginning, the World Triathlon Corporation (WTC), which has been the licensor of Detlev Kühnel since it bought its Ironman brand from Valerie Silk in December 1989, is interested in a bigger piece of the pie get off. Further races should be established in Europe, which would have meant fewer qualification places in Roth, the WTC wanted more money and Kühnel should also reduce the number of starting places and abolish the start in several starting groups established in Roth in favor of a single starting group. Even if the WTC has openly promoted competitors for a number of years - the competition in Zurich received a few more qualifications every year, Roth a few less - Kühnel built on the good reputation of his event and did not want to support the change in the contract that expired in 2001. At the end of 2000, Detlev Kühnel received from Kurt Denk as the owner of a travel agency a. a. for participants in Ironman Hawaii regularly represented with a stand at the triathlon fairs in Roth, the information that Denk had been approached by the WTC at Ironman Hawaii to set up an alternative event to Ironman Europe.

In 2001 the last event was held under the name Ironman Europe - and under the responsibility of Detlev Kühnel. Detlev Kühnel entrusted Herbert Walchshöfer with the direction of the event, now organized under the name Challenge Roth , who had also been there from the start as press officer and moderator of Ironman Europe. In the first few years, Detlev Kühnel was at least partially involved - for example, in 2003 he initiated the Worlds Best Triathlon Series with the Challenge Hilpoltstein and the Challenge Erding . When Herbert Walchshöfer fell seriously ill in 2006 and finally died in October 2007, Detlev Kühnel was there and helped the Walchshöfer family to ensure that the event - again the largest long-distance triathlon in the world since 2004 - could be organized smoothly.

In 2014, Detlev Kühnel was honored with the Live Time Award by Triathlon magazine .

literature

  • Fascination triathlon: from d. psych. u. phys. preparation up to the competition / Gerhard Wachter. With contributions from Hans Eberspächer u. Detlef Kühnel . Bielefelder Verlagsanstalt, 1987, ISBN 3-87073-026-9

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Review of 10 years of Challenge Roth
  2. ^ Result lists Ironman Hawaii
  3. ↑ History of Ironman Canada Triathlon ( Memento from December 6, 1998 in the Internet Archive )
  4. ↑ Detlef KUHNEL - KTM 600 n ° 57 - Paris Dakar 1985. In: www.dakardantan.com. Retrieved October 17, 2015 .
  5. ↑ Preparing the way for Olympic gold In: Nürnberger Nachrichten
  6. ↑ http://www.challenge-roth.com/historie.html
  7. ^ History of the Franconian Triathlon ( Memento from January 3, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
  8. ↑ The heroes sold
  9. ^ A piece of sports history In: Donau Kurier . July 18, 2014
  10. ^ Mourning for Herbert Walchshöfer In: tri-mag.de. October 27, 2007
  11. ↑ Lifetime Award goes to Detlef Kühnel In: tri-mag.de . November 29, 2014
personal data
SURNAME Kühnel, Detlef
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German triathlete and triathlon organizer
DATE OF BIRTH 1944
PLACE OF BIRTH Roth