Olympic sailing: World champion Philipp Buhl: confident on the home straight

He loves to laugh and is in a good mood: Philipp Buhl has been in Hamburg with his girlfriend Sophia for a few days now and is enjoying his guest appearance in the north. There are many good reasons for this. After being named Sailor of the Year 2020, the 31-year-old Laser dynamo from the Allgäu region is now also one of the candidates at the Hanseatic city's sports gala. The City of Hamburg and the Hamburger Abendblatt newspaper, together with partners from business, media and sport, have been honouring the most successful athletes in the Elbe metropolis and Hamburg clubs for 16 years. Buhl is one of three strong nominees alongside rowing ace Torben Johannesen and boxer Peter Kadiru. The live stream of the gala can be found here on 13 April from 7 to 8 pm (please click!).

Laser helmsman Buhl, who values his home sailing club Alpsee-Immenstadt on the Großer Alpsee in Bavaria just as much as his club home in Hamburg, the Norddeutscher Regatta Verein, which he joined in 2017, can also throw impressive weight behind his historic World Championship title in the Hamburg vote for Sportsman of the Year. By winning World Championship gold at the start of 2020 shortly before the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, Buhl not only fulfilled one of his two great lifelong dreams, but also redeemed the local sailing sport from the trauma of the German Olympians' lack of World Championship titles after more than two decades. He is now reaping the rewards as a welcome motivational boost on the home straight towards Enoshima. Philipp Buhl wants to fight for an Olympic medal in Japan this summer.

Despite the great previous performances, the path to the Olympic podium will not be a walk in the park for Buhl in the 4.19 metre Laser. The international top group in the single-handed dinghy is tightly packed and highly competitive. Buhl counts nine companions and rivals among the medal candidates this summer - including himself. This was not foreseeable in his childhood. His father Friedl Buhl took his son on his Flying Dutchman on the idyllic Großer Alpsee at an early age. "I liked being on boats, I was never pressurised into anything. We had no mobile phones and no worries. We built tree houses and dams and, above all, had fun on the water and in the mountains," recalls the Bavarian sailing star who grew up with two sisters. The once chubby-cheeked boy was also a talented ski racer with strong thighs, which still serve him well when sailing today. Eventually, however, he had to make a decision. Buhl chose wind and waves: "I was a better sailor than skier. And being better is more fun."

The video clip is from 2017, but more topical than ever. The production was a project close to Philipp Buhl's heart, both visually and musically

To this day, Philipp Buhl likes to recharge his batteries during visits home in the mountains. Friedl Buhl, who describes his son Philipp as a "very good autodidact", introduced him to the national top level before state and national coaches came along. Above all, he learnt from his father to "question everything, but really everything". Today, the 1.87 metre tall athlete trains under the direction of Alex Schlonski from Rostock. As a top athlete and driving force in the German Sailing Association's (DSV) Olympic squad, Buhl is a member of the NRV Olympic Team out of conviction: "I think the development of the sponsor network, the targeted support of the athletes in the NRV Olympic Team and the networking of the sailors with top people such as Olympic champion Mathew Belcher in the 470 are very successful. In the German Armed Forces, I experienced how useful interdisciplinary exchange between top athletes can be." As a number of major regattas have already had to be cancelled this year due to the coronavirus, Buhl is once again training more at the German Sailing Association's (DSV) national sailing base in Kiel after intensive training camps with his international training team in southern Europe. Following the cancellation of another regatta in the Olympic area, Buhl currently also considers it possible to prepare for the Olympic summit assault with young German sparring partner Nik Aron Willim and joint DSV coach Alex Schlonski in the Kieler Woche home area instead of attending international last-minute training camps, which are more difficult to plan.

The pandemic, which has demanded so much from so many, has not deterred him from his course. "Being able to pursue competitive sport with passion and encouragement," says Buhl, is something he continues to find "fulfilling and a privilege, perhaps even more so than usual at the moment." The Laser is the perfect Olympic sports equipment for his champion: "I love the relentless competition at eye level. The Laser is an extremely honest discipline in which it's not about technical advantages, but pure sailing ability." At the Olympics, the Laser sailors are provided with identical dinghies, which are drawn by lot. Philipp Buhl is not superstitious about this or anything else. "I'm pretty rational - on a scale of one to ten, I'm about nine and a half," he says with sparkling brown-green eyes that his friends love and his opponents fear. Rivals know how to interpret his charming smile: they can always count on Buhl's fairness, but not on his sporting mercy. This summer's Olympics for the laser sailors will begin on 25 July in Enoshima, Japan. The final medal race will take place on 1 August. This time, the reigning world champion wants to play a brilliant role. He is not afraid of a second "Waterloo" like at the 2016 Olympic premiere. Above all, he is protected from this by the World Championship gold he won, which nobody can take away from him.