Updates 22nd December 2014 03:23 clock

The football world champion skier Maria Hoefl-Riesch and discus star Robert Harting are the athletes of the year 2014.

The Football World Cup, alpine skier Maria Hoefl-Riesch and discus star Robert Harting are the athletes of the year 2014 | © Daniel Maurer, dpa

alpine skier Maria Hoefl -Riesch, discus star Robert Harting and the football World Cup Germany coach Joachim Löw is Germany’s Sportsman of the Year 2014. This resulted in the vote among 1,200 sports journalists at the end of a busy sporting year with Winter Olympics in Russia and the World Cup in Brazil. About 700 invited guests donated to the winners at the gala in Baden-Baden wide acclaim.

Harting won for the third time in a row the title, the national team of the German Football Association (DFB) was the tenth time in total at the top. “It was the cohesion, it was the team,” DFB president Wolfgang Niersbach said, looking back at the World Cup, “In those six weeks in Brazil, we did not have an internal stress.”

The 30-year-old courtier-Riesch, who finished her career in March for gold in the super combined of Sochi as the most successful Alpine German Olympic history, stood at the Sports Award for the second time after 2010 at the top. She stepped into the shoes, among other things Magdalena Neuner at the gala. The former biathlon athlete belongs Höfl-Riesch to a small group of athletes who were already retired from competitive skating before the ceremony.

While Höfl-Riesch had applied before the election as one of the favorites and the first place the footballer had been widely expected, the latest award Harting but was somewhat surprising. Finally, the discus Star 2014 was in Zurich after his Olympic victory in 2012 and the third world title in 2013 “only” for the second time become European champions.

In the category teams distanced Loew’s soccer all rivals and continued their marathon ceremony after the World Cup victory in Rio. With 1,846 points, the ski jumpers were in second place despite her Olympic victory, not even half as many points as the DFB-Elf (4660). They came for the last Bundesliga match day of the year, but only with a small delegation to the spa. Third place went to the German volleyball players (1,115), who won the first medal at the world championships in 44 years with the World Cup bronze.