Ralf Fröhling

Ralf Fröhling (born February 20, 1944 in Greifswald ; † March 27, 2019 in Zülpich ) was president of the world umbrella association for motor boating, the Union Internationale Motonautique (UIM) , for two decades . He last lived in Zülpich with his family.

Fröhling began his sporting career as a student with forest running and athletics, he became district champion in pentathlon. In 1963 he entered racing with a used boat, won a few races, but took a break two years later. Fröhling started his comeback with a Belgian license in order to be able to take part in as many international championships as possible. At that time, a maximum of five drivers per nation were allowed to start there. Fröhling drove in the racing boat classes OB and OC ( outboards up to 350 cm³ and 500 cm³). At times he was the first German driver to use a Yamato engine, but it was inferior to the usual König engines. His greatest success was a third place at a world championship in the OC class when he finally retired from active sport after 1974.

In the meantime Fröhling had completed his training as a banker and worked as a sales representative. Alex Basting, who was not only president of the Autbord Motoryacht Club in Cologne at the time , but also of the German Motor Yacht Association , and the former racing driver Marco Feltgen, both from neighboring Cologne, took Fröhling to the UIM meetings for the first time because of his good language skills. Because Feltgen did not want to extend his office as sports president of the association, they persuaded Fröhling to run. During his tenure as sports president z. B. the general renaming of the boat classes, of the two-letter code, which needs to be explained for the audience, he left only the first letter for the series and put the upper cylinder capacity of the class behind it in plain text. So from 1986 z. B. from the open racing boat class OB the O-350 .

Fröhling was elected general president in 1987 and later re-elected several times. It was not until 2007 that he resigned from his honorary position for health reasons. In his main job, Fröhling had taken over his father's publishing house a good 20 years earlier and sold toys, mostly made of wood. In the process, he invented many new games. His first success under the name magic 13 was a large running track with a corrugated bottom for commercial balls. An old sports colleague and trained carpenter, Ekkehard Knape, also from Bergisch Gladbach, put Fröhling's first intellectual draft into action.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Commemorative page of Ralf Fröhling | We are sad. Accessed March 30, 2019 (German). 
2. ↑ Booklet racing boat drivers by Reinhard Ludewig (Hanover), 1971
3. ↑ UIM President Ralf Fröhling resigned as news on www.boot.de (accessed on March 1, 2010) ( Memento of the original from December 10, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
4. ^ Report The two lives of Ralf Fröhling in Welt am Sonntag from June 1, 2003 (accessed on March 1, 2010)