The glazed steel door of house number 37 at the Schöne Aussicht swings open. On a normal weekday, the visitor is already in the centre of the lively heart of the North German Regatta Association. With its 2,200 members on the eastern shore of Hamburg's Outer Alster, the NRV is one of the pinnacles of the local sailing club landscape.
The way into the light-flooded club room with its impressive panoramic view of the picture-book sailing area leads past a display board almost as high as the ceiling. The elaborately researched overview shows all the Olympic participants with NRV membership. Whether with or without a medal - there are 65 boxes on which some names, such as those of two-time 49er bronze medallists Erik Heil and Thomas Plößel, appear several times.
Also interesting:
Behind the XL display case, the central club room opens up with a curved wooden counter and fireplace. A business meeting of the Hamburg branch of an automotive group is currently taking place here. Other tables are populated by young sailors. Outside on the Alster, the women from the German team are training for the Puig Women's America's Cup on modern J/70 boats among a few dinghies and kites.
Everything he does is directly or indirectly related to Klaus Lahme. The NRV Club Manager and Sports Director shares his office on the second and top floor of the 700 square metre clubhouse, which was completely renovated and rebuilt after fire damage in 2010, with terraces for dreaming and rooms for working, relaxing and celebrating with the NRV team. The fortunes of Germany's largest sailing club are organised and managed from here. The view from Lahme's workplace could hardly be better.
The coaching job will work out
It was 24 years ago that the then club president Gunter Persiehl brought Klaus Lahme into the club as a coach. The two had got to know and appreciate each other at the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney. Persiehl was in Down Under as a rules consultant for the national sailing team, Lahme as a coach. On the flight back to Hamburg - every NRV regatta sailor knows the story - Gunter Persiehl founded the NRV Olympic Team. Strongly inspired by two silver and one bronze medal won by Jochen Schümann's Soling crew, "Surffloh" Amelie Lux and Roland Gäbler with René Schwall in the Tornado, Persiehl formed a team under the umbrella of the NRV in which talents were to be particularly promoted.
At the time, Lahme knew neither Hamburg nor the NRV. The Sauerland native was born in Menden, North Rhine-Westphalia, and learnt to sail in an Opti on a small reservoir on Lake Sorpe. "There were a few legends before my time, like the 470 Olympic champion Frank Hübner," recalls Klaus Lahme, "but not so many came after that." But he came. "I had only played football, but I was completely talentless." Sailing was a different story: as a 15-year-old, the scion of the small 80-member SCA Sorpesee club made it to the Opti World Championships in 1984, but because he was already too tall and too heavy at 1.80 metres and 60 kilograms, he didn't manage more than a 30th place in Kingston. This did not slow him down. Lahme continued his rise for three years in Europe. He graduated from high school, became a rising star in the Laser squad and was accepted into the Bundeswehr sports company. He studied sport in Münster to become a teacher because he had his sights set on a career as a coach even as a teenager. "That's why I was advised to study something decent, there are hardly any coaching jobs. In fact, only very few clubs worked with professional coaches back then," Lahme remembers.
He completed his studies, in which politics is his second subject, with the first state examination, but without a traineeship. "I thought it would work out with the coaching job. I sailed quite well and had coaching engagements on the side," says Lahme. He was proved right.
However, the now 1.91 metre tall athlete initially focussed on his own competitive sport. He soon became one of Germany's best, was top in North Rhine-Westphalia and was sponsored by the Bayer Uerdingen sailing club, which received a lot of support from Admiral's Cup winner Willy Illbruck. Lahme recounts: "They stuck 'Piccolo Pinta' on my boat in this green lettering. It looked cute. I sailed with a big Bayer logo in the sail. That way I was able to finance my laser campaign a little."
Goal: national coach
In 1995, the fast Laser man with the slow surname was runner-up in the European Championships, but failed to qualify for the Olympics and stopped his career because he had promised this to his partner at the time. He doesn't last long in abstinence - and comes back. From 1997 to 1999, Lahme was number one in the Laser in Germany, and in 1998 he was sixth in the world rankings at a time when the exceptional sailors Ben Ainslie and Robert Scheidt dominated the field. However, Lahme was denied the high point of participation in the Olympics. "We had to finish in the top ten at the World Championships before Sydney 2000. That was difficult. Nobody made it."
Lahme ended his Olympic career for good and instead coached the 49ers Marcus Baur and Philip Barth in Sydney, who finished fifth. Lahme, who is highly regarded by the athletes, was at the 2000 Olympics as a coach on an honorary basis, while some national coaches stayed at home. There were only four coach accreditations. "For me, that was a sign that I now had a chance of becoming a national coach," says Lahme 24 years later, "that was always my goal: if I stopped sailing, I would become a national coach. It would have been a perfect fit at the time." But it didn't suit everyone.
Lahme did not hear anything about his application for the post for a long time. He had previously - like all members of the Sydney team - submitted the requested Olympic report to the then sports director Hans Sendes. He in turn had also forwarded it to the Sydney team manager Axel Güpner. In his report, Lahme had pointed out - as usual objectively - that the team manager had been questioned by all the athletes and coaches.
Months later, Lahme received a call from Jochen Schümann. He was a member of the DSV's Olympic Sailing Committee as the spokesperson for the athletes. The OSA had just set the course for the new Olympics at its winter meeting. Schümann told Lahme that he could probably bury his hopes of becoming national coach because the team boss had announced in the OSA that Lahme had been disloyal to the association.
A year after Lahme joined the NRV, he received a call from the DSV
Klaus Lahme signed with NRV in January 2001. "It was an interesting turn in my life, at first it felt like a B-plan. I wanted to become a national coach and became a club coach." He had no idea what would become of it.
Klaus Lahme initially worked as a trainer in the Opti and Laser divisions for ten years. He remembers vividly: "The NRV was still a different club back then. The Opti regatta group consisted of seven children, one of whom had sailed in a few B regattas. Then this boat material ... The Optis were covered in thick blue paint. There were also laser sailors, but they hardly had anything to do with regattas. Of course there were well-known people like Achim Griese and Alex Hagen in the Star boat, but no youth work at a good level."
One year after Lahme joined the NRV, he received a call from the DSV. The association wanted him as a Laser coach after all. Klaus Lahme split his time: He worked 50 per cent for the NRV and 50 per cent for the DSV. He also returned to the 2004 Games as an accredited coach. Back then, he worked alongside team boss Jochen Schümann, who had taken on the job at the last minute. Neither of them were able to prevent the zero medals in Athens, but they worked well together.
After that, the current Ilca 7 national coach Alex Schlonski also trained in the Laser with Lahme. Schlonski says: "As a youngster, I still sailed against Klaus. He was already my role model then. As a sailor, he was very professional, very logical, very rational. When I worked with him in the squad, he was doing his international referee training. We learnt a lot from him."
NRV Olympic Team moults into an institution with charisma
After the Greece Games, Klaus Lahme had to make a decision, because the DSV now wanted him 100 per cent. "I made a conscious decision against it. Not against the DSV, but in favour of the NRV, which had developed strongly in the meantime. Looking back, it was exactly the right decision," says Lahme today. At the time, he was "only" a coach at the Hamburg Alster and still a long way from his management job as NRV sports director, for which he even completed a distance learning programme. But with the NRV Olympic Team, which Persiehl launched, an idea blossomed into an institution with charisma.
"I owe a lot to Gunter Persiehl. For me, he is both a mentor and an advisor. He not only founded the NRV Olympic Team and did an incredible amount for the club. People have also affectionately called 'Piese' - quite rightly - 'people catcher'. The man can inspire people." Persiehl and Lahme still talk to each other today, even though the now 86-year-old trailblazer retired from his active duties twelve years ago. "That's the exciting thing about 'Piese'," says Lahme, "he invited everyone to his home after the 2012 games and said: 'That's it! I'm handing it over to younger hands'. Not many people can do that ..."
For the past twelve years, the NRV Olympic Team has been led by a committee comprising Klaus Lahme, Olympic participant Johannes Polgar and European Star Boat Champion Michael Koch. Germany's best-known club racing team, which is not supported by club funds but by additional funds raised by members, has once again produced starters in four of the ten sailing disciplines for the 2024 Olympics in Marseille.
Talented athletes from all over Germany regularly apply to join the NRV Olympic Team, whose patron is Hamburg's Senator of the Interior, Andy Grote, on Klaus Lahme's initiative. They want to be part of this successful model. However, it is not a sure-fire success for either the athletes or the organisers. "We get a lot of applications. Most of them don't get in, the hurdles are high," emphasises Klaus Lahme. Last year, he and his colleagues raised more than half a million euros for the NRV Olympic Team with a great deal of personal commitment.
The threads in your hand without getting tangled up
"The recipe for success is also the structure to some extent. We don't have large committees, don't have to discuss everything with the Executive Board and can make direct decisions," says Lahme. As a result, he can implement good ideas quickly. For example, the NRV fitness room and the financing of a physio trainer for NRV iQFoil windsurfing giant Sebastian Kördel, who trained here at the club several times a week on the Marseille course.
Whether it's Mathias Theurich and his company Salzbrenner Würstchen, who have been passionately inspiring athletes in the NRV Olympic Team for 15 years, or successful sailors themselves such as three-time TP52 world champion Harm Müller-Spreer and, more recently, "Hatari" owner and helmsman Marcus Brennecke with a long-term commitment - the NRV has powerful members who invest in the sporting future of young top performers. "It's not just the money you get here to realise your project," Alex Schlonski knows from his Olympic star boat time, "they also take care of team building and future issues in the NRV Olympic Team. There are series of management and leadership seminars and media workshops. You learn a lot for your future career."
Lahme holds the strings in his hand without getting tangled up. He has grown with the sporting dynamics of the club - and the club with him. Klaus Lahme is a major asset to the NRV because the mastermind, who lives with his family in Hamburg-Farmsen, has such a broad range of skills with a pleasant down-to-earth attitude that he even acts confidently and entertainingly on stage as a moderator and presenter of the active members. In day-to-day club life, Klaus Lahme communicates just as effectively with the club's sound engineers as he does with the Opti kids. "You simply have to admire Klaus: He remains calm even in the strongest surf, focusses on the essentials and can bring dicey issues down to factual ones," says Helga Cup founder, inclusive driver and photographer Sven Jürgensen about the sports conductor.
The face of the NRV
Klaus Lahme continues to spend around 40 per cent of his time working as a coach and also takes youth groups to regattas. As a trained international referee and experienced race officer, who fascinated the German sailing community during the coronavirus era with his video series "Klaus' Regelecke" and taught them many things, he also takes care of tenders and race operations. He coordinates the NRV's involvement in major events such as Kieler Woche and has a firm grip on sailing at the club, from the youngest optics kids to dinghy and sea sailors to the Olympians and Bundesliga teams. In the first two years after the Bundesliga was founded, Lahme was still working as a tactician himself. The NRV is now the record seven-time champion. Lahme says with a smile that he "dictates" the league squad. That doesn't sound negative coming from him, but rather reason-driven.
He is also responsible for financing the Bundesliga team. Together with the dedicated "supporter team" of around 25 league enthusiasts, Lahme organises a fun sailing event once a year, where the supporters and the league sailors sail on J/70 yachts. "The supporters steer, the league sailors are on the forecastle. Afterwards, the supporters get a film of the event. We've had great support for ten years," says Lahme, talking about this branch of his varied tasks.
Successful league helmsman Tobias Schadewaldt knows Lahme as an athlete, coach and manager. He says: "Klaus knows exactly what is important in Olympic sailing. I am very grateful to him for what he has given me as an athlete during my career. He is a very important pillar for the NRV."
Since 2010, Klaus Lahme has been shaping the sport at the NRV as a club manager with a broad horizon. "For me, Klaus is one of the faces of the NRV," says 470 World Champion Luise Wanser from the NRV Olympic Team. She explains: "I've known Klaus since I started in the Opti at the NRV. He has always supported me. The most interesting thing about him is that he always thinks: 'How could it work? I come to him with a problem, but he never says: 'No, we're not going to do that'. Instead: 'Okay, how could we do that? Sometimes I wonder how many hours Klaus' working days have. In my opinion, he can't keep up with 24, as much as he does for the club and for the NRV Olympic Team." Luise Wanser is certain: "Without Klaus, the club wouldn't be where it is. And the Olympic Team wouldn't be where it is either."
