Everything is conspicuously casual. You could imagine that you are in an Olympic Village or at a major sporting event. There are track suits everywhere you look, young people with towels casually thrown over their shoulders. On the left is the athletics stadium, on the right the swimming centre, and the tennis courts are just around the corner. Everyone is good-humoured, amazingly good-looking and in incredibly good condition. The campus, as you soon notice, has little room for coach potatoes. The canteen lies optimistically on Olympiaweg, the road to Olympia, and the window of the bookshop decoratively presents piles of bestsellers with titles like Marathon – You Can Do It! and Mountain Biking the Right Way.
The German Sport University in Cologne is a rather unusual university. Students’ daily campus routine resembles a continuous fitness programme combined with highly ambitious mental gymnastics. Swimming in the morning, followed by circuits around the track, a shower and a fresh change of clothes. Then a lecture on sport medicine, followed by a seminar on the subject of sport economics – and to round it all off a training course covering football, tennis or basketball. Also popular is a short visit to the “Playa in Cologne”, as the beach volleyball field is known.
The German Sport University in Cologne is the only German higher education institution devoted solely to sport. There are no students of law, philosophy or business administration, just sport sciences. “SpoHo”, as the students call the university in German (short for “Sporthochschule”), is much more to many of them than just an educational institution. “SpoHo is not just a university, but an attitude to life,” is how student Jakob Ulrich describes the special appeal of the sport university. Anyone seeking this spirit of sportsmanship will find ideal conditions in west Cologne. The campus of the world’s largest sport university lies idyllically in the middle of the city’s green belt. Furthermore, the university has attained international renown for its wide range of study programmes and its varied research – and also shines as a result of the world champions and successful Olympic athletes who have studied here. The current student body of 5,600 also include a number of major talents: for example, Benjamin Kleibrink, runner-up at the 2007 European Fencing Championships, and sprinter and long jumper Wojtek Czyz, three times German gold medal winner at the 2004 Paralympics.
The university’s good reputation also attracted Jakob Ulrich and Vincent Rödel to Cologne. However, a successful application is preceded by a great deal of sweat and tears – in the shape of the sport entrance exam that everyone has to pass. You need to be able to run 100 metres in less than 13.4 seconds, complete 100 metres breaststroke in 1:50 minutes or perform roll, handstand and circle exercises on the gym floor. Applicants must successfully complete 19 out of 20 disciplines. “You have to be an all-round athlete to manage it,” explains Jakob Ulrich. But performance isn’t the only thing that matters at the university, it also aims to provide the best training for students’ later professional lives. Jakob Ulrich wants to work in sport marketing and is studying for a Bachelor’s degree in sport management and sport communication. Other Bachelor’s and planned Master’s degree programmes focus on specialist areas such as health and prevention, sport tourism and sport technology.
A few minutes ago, Vincent Rödel was wearing a black helmet and a white jersey emblazoned with the number 27 – and playing American football. Now, freshly showered, he enters the canteen, puts down his gym bag, sits down and excitedly explains: “The atmosphere here is incredibly informal and there are countless sporting opportunities, you can even learn track cycling, diving and windsurfing.” The 25-year-old Berliner is studying for a Diplom in sport sciences and aims to head “down under” in the summer for a period of learning at the University of the Sunshine Coast in Australia.
Sport brings people together – this idea also applies in Cologne in an international sense. The German Sport University maintains partnerships with 53 international institutions of higher education, students from over 50 nations are studying at the campus and 8.3% of students came from outside Germany. One of them is Dany Vega Arguedas. In October 2006, the 25-year-old Costa Rican came to Cologne for two semesters as an exchange student from Universidad Nacional. He now belongs to the first generation of students completing the Master’s programme in physical activity and sport for seniors and is thus preparing himself for a part of the labour market offering good career prospects in Costa Rica.
However, the excellent sporting education that attracts students to Cologne is just one of the German Sport University’s strengths. The other is research. “We are the only sport science institution that covers the entire research spectrum,” says the university’s rector, Professor Dr. Walter Tokarski. Nineteen institutes on campus conduct research into sport – not only from the perspectives of education, the humanities and social sciences, but also in relation to questions of medicine and the natural sciences. The German Sport University is also a trailblazer in the field of doping research: the doping laboratory at the Institute for Biochemistry, one of the largest establishments of its kind in Europe, supports the international fight against the illegal use of performance-enhancing drugs in cooperation with the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA).
Experiments by the Institute of Physiology and Anatomy really take sport science to new heights: they have travelled into space on board the Russian Mir space station and the Columbia space shuttle. The German Research Centre for Performance Sport, one of nine interdisciplinary centres, is also a nationally unique institution. Five university institutes work closely together here and cooperate with Olympic training centres, sportsmen and women, coaches and doctors.
Alongside basic research and continuing and advanced training for coaches, the centre also aims to provide intensive support and guidance to top athletes. A comprehensive basic sport medicine checkup gives them a complete picture of their health and performance status – and provides information and prognoses for ways of optimizing training. Blood values, heart rate, body temperature: “We record roughly 3,000 parameters, evaluate them, summarize them and save them in the athlete’s personal file,” says Eva Engelmeyer, executive director of the research centre.
What the basic checkup involves becomes apparent at the Biomechanics Laboratory of the Athletics Centre. High-technology is indispensable in jump analysis: 14 high-speed infrared cameras record the jumps of a young sport canoeist and transmit the images to a computer that analyzes the strain on the knee and ankle joints. In another laboratory a talented rower is just preparing for the endurance test: the breathing mask and pulse sensors have already been fitted. The 24-year-old sportswoman is sure that the examinations here will be useful: “I want to know more precisely where my weaknesses are. Such a comprehensive performance check is unique.”
Giorgi Elizbarashvili lives in student accommodation immediately opposite the research centre – a high-rise building with a sports bar that bears the name “Doping”. High up, on the 25th floor, the 27-year-old from Georgia has a room with a view: he looks down onto the stadium of 1st FC Cologne, the soccer arena for 50,000 spectators is directly adjacent to the university campus. He has built strong ties with the football club and the sport university, which works closely with the Hennes Weisweiler Academy of the German Football Association (DFB) in training football coaches: “During my studies I’ve had very good lecturers and training conditions and have worked at 1st FC Cologne as a youth coach.” In a few months, the sport university student, who has already proved himself as assistant coach with Georgian Football Federation youth teams, will be completing his degree. And what then? “I would like to work as a football coach.”
His training in Cologne and his football experience are good credentials. It would not be at all surprising if Giorgi Elizbarashvili begins a successful coaching career. His chances are excellent.
