Farce or justice? Hingis is not nominated for the best Swiss athletes

Martina Hingis is not nominated for “the best of 70 years.” That’s why the Sports Awards Academy avoided the tennis legend.

Due to the crown pandemic, the selection of the best Swiss athletes of the year cannot be carried out as usual. Instead, a different approach will be chosen in the main event broadcast by SRF on December 13, with winners from the past taking center stage. The idea: you want the crème de la crème of previous award winners to compete against each other. Since the award was first held in 1950, many candidates inevitably join.

To filter out the six nominees for women and men, a committee called the Sports Awards Academy was created, which includes 120 winners from the past. These then made the preselection.

In the men’s category, Roger Federer, Simon Ammann, Dario Cologna, Werner Günthör, Bernhard Russi and Pirmin Zurbriggen made the exclusive list. Denise Biellmann, Ariella Kaeslin, Simone Niggli-Luder, Lise-Marie Morerod, Erika Reymond-Hess and Vreni Schneider are nominated for women.

The great absentee

Even without much knowledge of sports, you can see that someone is missing among women: Martina Hingis. At the age of 16 years and 9 months he won his first Grand Slam title (Wimbledon), and four more great triumphs came in his successful career. The Eastern Swiss with Slovak roots was the youngest No. 1 in women’s tennis and was at the top for a total of 209 weeks. In addition, he won thirteen Grand Slam titles in doubles and seven in mixed, simply an extraordinary achievement in the world of tennis.

So why was this record not enough for a nomination? A four-person committee made up of representatives from SRG, Swiss Olympic, the Swiss Olympic “Athletes Commission” and the Swiss Association of Sports Journalists (Sportpress) made the (controversial) decision. Hingis is disbanded by an old doping ban. In 2007 he tested positive for cocaine, resulting in a two-year ban. He only returned to the tennis circus in 2013 and showed his great talent there until 2017.

Ralph Stöckli, the Swiss Olympic chief and member of that four-person committee, explains to the “Tages Anzeiger” why the former world athlete did not find a place in the list of the best Swiss: “In 2018 we included an ethical appendix in the regulations electoral for sports awards. For this year’s special elections, we apply it in such a way that athletes who have been banned from doing doping offenses in their careers are not eligible for selection. With great regret for Martina Hingis. Knowing what he has achieved for Swiss sport. “

Despite the great successes in Switzerland, always out

René Stammbach, president of Swiss Tennis, cannot understand this attitude towards the newspaper: “Hingis has been nominated several times in recent years, long after her doping case. And now, all of a sudden, she is ostracized again. That’s completely inconsistent. ”He also speaks against the principles of the Swiss legal system, according to which one should not be punished a second time for a sentence served, says Stammbach.

Martina Hingis, who celebrated her 40th birthday in the summer and has since become the mother of a daughter, was informed of her non-nomination, but apparently does not want to comment on it.

Perhaps because the former child prodigy has had to live for a long time with the fact that the prophet is worthless in his own country. Many Swiss citizens, and also numerous sports fans, always felt a skepticism that could not be explained only by their athletic achievements. Abroad, he received respect not only for his creative style of play, but also because he always exemplified his passion for tennis and it was never a shame to perform his sport around the world.

Public recognition in this country, however, was often incomprehensibly very low: once (2007) he was Swiss Sportsman of the Year. “Our best ever” (Blick) is now certainly used to local lean foods.