Franziska van Almsick - The Unfulfilled Dream, Part 3

Some of the greatest athletes of the world have tried in vain to win an Olympic gold medal. We portray them in this series.

The name of her homepage says it all: Franzi - to Germans it's as simple as that. Even at age 38, Franziska van Almsick is called by and famous for her teenage nickname. It has become a household brandmark all over the country, in TV spots and the yellow press. But "Franzi" means business: When she criticizes Germany's swimmers as a TV expert or works as a fundraiser for the national athletes help network Deutsche Sporthilfe, there is nothing sweetheart about the woman, who - as a teenage girl - became the country's first post-unfication sports icon.

Still, one dark spot remains in van Almsick's career: She never won an Olympic gold.

When van Almsick (picture: Augsburger Allgemeine), one last product of the GDR's youth sports development program, burst onto the international swimming scene in 1992, she was just 14 years of age. On the early evening of July 27th, she stood on the starting block for the finals of the 200 meters freestyle at the Barcelona Olympics, having qualified in the fastest time. The German media were already nuts about their new darling from Berlin after she had taken bronze in the 100 meters 24 hours before. There was a real chance that the little girl could take it all.

But it was not to be. Van Almsick swam ahead of the pack for almost 180 meters, but on the home stretch, she zigzagged a little through the pool, perhaps due to a lack of experience. In lane five, American Nicole Haislett sneaked by the German wunderkind and beat van Almsick by one tenth of a second.

Nobody would have expected that this was going to be the closest van Almsick would ever get to an Olympic gold. What followed was a career of high drama with a lot of titles, records and profits from commercials, but no Olympic gold.

After becoming world champion and world record holder at Rome in 1994, van Almsick was again considered a heavy favourite for the 1996 Atlanta Games. But again, she could not stand the pressure in her best event, losing the 200 meters to Costa Rica's Claudia Poll, who was of German descent.

Things got even harder for van Almsick four years later at Sydney. Out of shape and with visible overweight, she had no shot at a medal. A German tabloid called her "Franzi van Speck" and a "pig". She rebounded from the disaster with another world record at the 2002 European Championships in her hometown of Berlin, but finished only fifth in the 200 meters freestyle at the 2004 Athens Games. When she retired afterwards, she had collected ten Olympic medals - four silvers, six bronzes, no gold.

When asked about that missing gold in August 2016, the now mother of two had no regrets: "For my personality, it was very good not to have achieved something in life.  I am happy and thankful for the life I live, I have two healthy kids, a wonderful family, I live humble - and I surely do this because I did not fulfil my biggest dream in life." (picture: dpa)

100 Years Ago: The Games That Never Were

While the 1936 Nazi Games have made big waves in German media this summer, another part of the capital's Olympic history has been fortgotten and remaines untold: One century ago, on July 1st, 1916, Emperor Wilhelm II planned to open the Games of the VIth Olympiad. It did not happen, the Games were the first to fall victim to a war.

Officially, Berlin 1916 was never cancelled. This is even more astonishing, considering the efforts Imperial Germany made to put on a grandiose propaganda spectacle. The "German Stadium" (pictures: Bundesarchiv, Library of Congress), opened on June 8th, 1913, by the Emperor himself, had a price tag of 2.25 million Reichsmark. "The structure was opened with almost religious fervour and military pomp", The New York Times recorded. The Games themselves should have cost 1.3 million Reichsmark.

For Germany's sports authorities, the chance to stage the Games was a big chance to get the upper hand over the Gymnastics Association ("Deutsche Turnerschaft"), a powerful, nationalistic and partly anti-semitic opponent in the struggle for supremacy in the country's sports scene. When Berlin was awarded the 1916 Olympics in July 1912, Crown Prince Wilhelm took over patronage for the Organising Comittee. The organisers even planned to stage the first winter sports events in the history of the Games at the Feldberg, deep in Black Forest (picture: Hoffotograf Franz Schilling).

But the Olympic dream evaporated in the summer of 1914, when World War I broke out.

On March 16th, 1916, the German Stadium was the scene for "Patriotic Games", including military marching, running over obstacles, and throwing hand grenades. The Olympic Spirit had gone long before. Ferdinand Goetz, leader of the "Deutsche Turnschaft", in 1914 had already scorned that he could not image "to give a friendly reception to all the enemies, the English, the Belgians, the French and the Russians coming to Berlin".

It was a kind of swan song for the1916 Olympics - and a premonition of discussions to come 20 years later. By then, the "German Stadium" had given way for Hitler's "Reichssportfeld" and the brand new Olympic Stadium.

The Nazi Games - over and over again

This year it's yet another remembering. At least every decade, German TV is looking back on the most controversial Olympics ever, the 1936 Games in Berlin and Garmisch-Partenkirchen. This time, at the 80th anniversary, the fever for a new look on this event has spread even further, with the upcoming documentary "Olympic Pride, American Prejudice" putting a new, American perspective on the screen.

Today, Hitler's Games are seen as the most discussed event in the history of all sports (picture: Bundesarchiv). Hundreds of books have been published about it. Starting in 1986 with the German TV documentary "Der schöne Schein" ("The beautiful illusion"), their story has been retold over and over again in a myriad of TV productions. The ironic thing about it: All these films used nearly the same pictures, most of them taken from Leni Riefenstahl's infamous "Olympia - Fest der Völker" and "Olympia - Fest der Schönheit". This was due to the simple fact that almost no other film material has survived. There is only one notable exception to this copy and paste process: German historian Emanuel Hübner collected amateur footage from the Games and the years before in his great documentary "Olympia 1936 - Die Olympischen Spiele in privaten Filmaufnahmen".

Lacking original footage, many film producers recently have turned to actors and filmed fictional scenes to add drama to their works. Sometimes, this works out quite well, especially in "Der Traum von Olympia", which shows the fate of Wolfgang Fürstner. The Wehrmacht officer was head of the 1936 Olympic village that gained Nazi Germany praise all over the world. Because of a distant Jewish relatives, Fürstner was mobbed out of office. He did his duty until the end of the Berlin Games and then shot himself.

The film was shown on Germany's ARD TV channel shortly before this years Rio Olympics, as well as the ZDF documentary "Der verratene Traum". This piece was concentrating on Vienna swimmer Judith Deutsch. The Jewish girl broke dozens of records before the Games, but did not go to Berlin, protesting the Nazi politics. This couragous act was going to ruin her career.

Most films about the 1936 Olympics live up to the task of putting the event into the correct historical perspective, also portraying the terrible companionship between Hitler and the IOC. Still, there is one big and persisting misunderstanding: Most filmmakers (and many historians) still proclaim that the Games were an overwhelming political success for the Nazi's. This may be true for the foreign guests coming to Germany in 1936. But ist was surely not for most of the newspaper reader's abroad. In fact, many journalists gave highly critical reports on the Games and the boycott discussions before, especially in the United States.

This fact is often ignored, especially in Germany. The Nazi mantra that the Berlin Olympics impressed the whole world still seems to work, even 80 years later.