Dirk Thiele

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Dirk Thiele (born January 12, 1943 in Aken (Elbe) ) is a German sports reporter .

Life

After completing an apprenticeship as a toolmaker , Dirk Thiele studied sport and history at the Potsdam University of Education from 1965 and decided to pursue a career as a journalist despite having a teaching degree .

Commentary career

From 1970 he worked as a commentator for GDR television. He became known, among other things, through the program “ Sport aktuell ” and broadcasts from the Four Hills Tournament . Thiele, who was one of the top ranks of the sports editorial team on GDR television, also reported on the athletics competitions at the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul .

After the fall of the Wall, Dirk Thiele was initially a freelance journalist , briefly manager of the East German Oberliga team Brandenburg, and from February 1992 a commentator at Eurosport with the main areas of Nordic skiing , football and athletics . He comments on Nordic skiing together with expert and co-commentator Gerd Siegmund , athletics (since the 1993 World Championships in Stuttgart) together with Sigi Heinrich . He can no longer be heard in football as often as in previous years: In 2000, Thiele accompanied the European Football Championship in Belgium and the Netherlands - among others with the Austrian ex-professional Toni Polster as co-commentator. He was also at the microphone at the European Championships in 1996 and the World Championships in 1994 and 1998 . Mainly during the first years of Eurosport, Thiele also commented on many live broadcasts from the studio. Sports broadcasts with Dirk Thiele are known for their liveliness and realism. Thiele is both critical and popular in the sports scene.

With his way of commenting, he poked fun at the German-Austrian, especially Prussian-Austrian rivalry. Between 1996 and 1998 he formed a legendary team with the former Austrian ski jumper Ernst Vettori . The time together at the microphone ended when Vettori took over marketing tasks at the Austrian Ski Association (ÖSV) and the ÖSV forbade him to comment on Eurosport out of consideration for the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation (ORF). Successor (until the end of 2003) was the former German Nordic combiner Hans-Peter Pohl , who then went to ARD in exchange for Siegmund.

For his athletics live commentary, he was nominated twice for awards together with Sigi Heinrich, for example in 2001 for the German Television Prize in the category “Best Sports Broadcast” and in 2005 for the Adolf Grimme Prize in the “Special” competition. In 2003 he was honored with the FIS Award by the International Ski Federation ( FIS ). The trophy was presented to him at the Forum Nordicum in Hochfilzen in recognition of his journalistic achievements in Nordic skiing. Thiele commented on ski jumping from 1993 to 2016, since then he has accompanied the Four Hills Tournament at every turn of the year. After ski jumping commentator Wolfgang Ley only concentrated on football at Eurosport from the end of 1992, Peter Woydt and shortly afterwards Uli Jansch took care of this sport for Eurosport. It is all the more remarkable that Thiele remained the Eurosport man for ski jumping even during Ley's second Eurosport engagement (1994 to 1996). At the same time, Thiele (together with Siegmund) usually comments on Nordic combined . On the other hand, he had withdrawn from cross-country skiing in recent years in favor of ex-athlete Stéphane Franke . Unlike (sporadically) in the years after the turn of the millennium, Thiele was recently no longer heard at major curling events .

In 2007 Thiele wrote a book about ski jumping together with ski jumper Michael Uhrmann .

For the 2016/2017 ski jumping season he was replaced as ski jumping commentator at Eurosport by Matthias Bielek. Since then he has moderated the AVIA ski jumping talk with Gerd Siegmund on the Internet channels Facebook and Youtube.

Awards

In 2008, Thiele and Sigi Heinrich won the German Television Prize for Eurosport in the “Sport” category for reporting on the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b "Do you already know ...", Sport-Bild from March 17, 1993, p. 70
  2. ↑ Klaus-Eckhard Jost, Georg Gulde: The TV commentators are more famous than the jumpers. In: Badische Zeitung . November 24, 2016, accessed January 6, 2019 .
  3. ↑ Cult commentators Dirk Thiele and Gerd Siegmund at AVIA TV . German AVIA Mineralöl-GmbH. December 1, 2016. Accessed March 14, 2019.
personal data
SURNAME Thiele, Dirk
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German journalist and sports reporter
DATE OF BIRTH January 12, 1943
PLACE OF BIRTH Aken (Elbe)