Chemnitz athletes at the Paralympics

Jürgen Müller & Sascha Timaeus

The two coaches Jürgen Müller and Sascha Timaeus will be following the Paralympic Games very closely. Their protégé Oliver Hörauf has qualified for the sporting event in Rio de Janeiro with the German national team. When Hörauf is not travelling with the national team, he is part of the training group led by Müller and Timaeus in the sports hall of the Vision Support Centre in Flemmingstraße. Although the players can't see anything when playing goalball, they skilfully catch the ball in front of the goal while lying down. We spoke to the two coaches of the Chemnitz goalball team.

Goalball is an unfamiliar sport for many people. How does the game work?
Sascha Timaeus: It's three against three. The players defend a goal that is nine metres wide and 1.3 metres high. The ball has to be rolled. There are many additional rules. For example, an attack may only last ten seconds. The ball also contains a small bell so that the players can hear it.
Jürgen Müller: The ball weighs 1.25 kilograms, is the size of a basketball and is made of hard rubber. Oliver, for example, throws it at 80 km/h. So it's definitely a very tough and sometimes painful sport.

All the players wear dark glasses. Is it possible without them?
Sascha Timaeus: No. Everyone has to have the same conditions. That's the only way it's fair. It doesn't matter whether a player is blind or not. They are also patched before a competition, so they get a kind of eye plaster. When I started here in 2010, I tried out dark glasses for the first time myself. That was a special experience that allowed me as a coach to empathise with the players much better. For me, it's a great sport that I also enjoy playing myself as a sighted person, with dark glasses of course.

Are there any similarities between goalball and football for the blind, which perhaps more people are familiar with?
Jürgen Müller: Football for the blind has actually only been practised since 2006. Goalball, on the other hand, has been a Paralympic sport since 1976 and is a very popular ball sport for people with visual impairments. But too few people realise that.
Sascha Timaeus : In contrast to blind football, goalball has no non-disabled equivalent. The sport is completely independent and that's what makes it so fascinating for me. For blind people, it is a very self-explanatory sport that is easy to do. There is very little physical contact and you don't need so many landmarks.

With a spinning motion reminiscent of a discus, a player lets the ball roll across the playing field. It bounces like a bowling ball with full force against the upper body of the opponent, who is lying in front of the goal and has stretched out. The coaches are very quiet. "Was it in?" asks the team anxiously. "No, I got it," replies a player holding the blue ball in his hand and scanning his position for a counter-attack from his own goal. "We coaches and substitutes, but also the spectators, are not allowed to say anything unless the game is interrupted and that happens a lot," explains Timaeus. The players have quickly found their position again and are eagerly awaiting the next noises. "I marked the lines with armoured tape and a bump before the game. This allows the players to feel the markings and find their place on the pitch more easily," explains Timaeus, who works full-time as a primary school teacher and runs the training sessions on a voluntary basis.

The team became German champions this year. What was the recipe for success?
Jürgen Müller: " We simply played Marburg, the German champions at the time, to the wall. I wouldn't have expected that. Sascha did. (laughs) We also beat Rostock, who have three national team players. From my point of view, that was down to the great willpower of the individual players, who performed to the point. It was a great satisfaction for us.

Are such tournaments comparable to the competitions for sighted players or what is the atmosphere like there?
Sascha Timaeus: Unfortunately, there are always very few spectators. When you see the game, you might think it's slow. But it really is a great achievement to be able to concentrate solely on your hearing during this game. We train every Tuesday from 5 to 7 p.m. and are happy to let anyone interested have a look.
Jürgen Müller: The competitions with Bundesliga and cup matches have grown a lot in recent years. There used to be the German championships on one day and that was it. If you had a bad day, there were no more challenges for you that year. In the meantime, there is more participation in the competitions. At times, teams such as Munich, Marburg and Königs-Wusterhausen had the title between them. Now more than five teams can compete for the title. One of these is a team from Chemnitz, which won the German championship title for the first time in 25 years this season.

Now comes the next highlight, the Paralympics. How did Oliver Hörauf qualify for the national team?
Sascha Timaeus: I've known Oliver since 2012. Right at the start of his training period, we travelled to a scouting event for the national youth team, who wanted to see which youngsters had potential. He made a good impression there. We went to the Youth World Championships in America together in 2013 and he became Youth World Champion in 2015. It's clear that the men's national team is interested in such talent. With him in the team, they took a good fifth place at the World Games in Korea and qualified for the Games in Rio de Janeiro. This is the first time in twelve years that Germany has taken part in goalball at the Paralympics.

How did you come to coach the goalball team?
Jürgen Müller: I've been working at the vocational training centre for forty years. I used to organise athletics and rollerball for the trainees. And I've grown into this coaching role here. It's simply a good change from my other work. And the players are really grateful for what we do here.
Sascha Timaeus : I did a work placement in 2010 and observed goalball. I was very interested in the sport and realised that I could get involved here. It's just a lot of fun, a cool sport and a great balance.

Jürgen Müller is responsible for many organisational tasks. When asked why he is also called "the fox", he speculates: "Maybe it's because of my age and practical life experience." The saying was coined by a Bundesliga announcer, reveals Sascha Timaeus. "Jürgen is the good soul who is always there and organises a lot." But the old hand, er fox, also has many words of praise for his young colleague: "While we used to do a lot by feel and stew in our own juice, Sascha deals with training methods very professionally."

Who all comes to you?
Jürgen Müller: It can be beginners who are just 14 years old, right up to over 50-year-olds who want to play ambitiously in a national league, but also want to take part for the fun of the sport. The popular sports group is mainly about exercising and socialising. For this group, there is also the Saxony Cup and the East German Cup (editor's note: this takes place on 8 October from 9 a.m. in the Flemmingstraße sports hall), where we are involved with two teams. Of course, we are proud of the team, which is performing well enough for the Bundesliga.

Do the players also feel like ambassadors for the city, as is often the case with athletes?
Sascha Timaeus: That's rather difficult here, because many of them come from very different places. From Lusatia, the Ore Mountains to Thuringia. Some of them have an international background. But of course the team feels at home here because we have a good team and training is fun. As a team, we belong to BFV Ascota. And we feel very connected to the SFZ-Förderzentrum - Berufbildungswerk because we have good training conditions here in this sports hall and are also supported financially and with vehicle equipment at tournaments.

How natural is the topic of disability, especially blindness, in Chemnitz?
Jürgen Müller: The former rehabilitation centre and the current SFZ support centre have been anchored in the city for a long time. In a smaller city, a blind person would perhaps attract attention. Here it's quite normal. Many visually impaired people want to stay in the city after their training. In our team alone, we have several players from other federal states who have become Chemnitz residents.

Do you have to encourage the people of Chemnitz?
Sascha Timaeus: Chemnitz is still the grey mouse among the big cities. But it's perfect for me here. I like the size of the city. I can get anywhere I want by bike.
Jürgen Müller: The location here is perfect for hiking enthusiasts. But I also love swimming. There are fewer options. Well. Nevertheless, the city centre has developed very positively over the last 20 years. We can be happy about that. The Christmas market in particular is the most beautiful far and wide. And when foreign friends visit us, we drive the Trabi in front of the Karl-Marx-Kopf. Where else can you do that?