The decision was unanimously taken by the DOSB Presidium in its meeting in Berlin last Friday – informs the German NOC official website.  47-year-old Veronika Rücker will take over from Michael Vesper, who has held the post since 2006 and who retires at the end of the year after reaching the age limit of 65 years in April.

Rücker has been working for the management academy of DOSB for more than ten years. Since July 2015, she has been responsible for the strategic direction and operational management of the organization. Prior to that, she was responsible for the business areas of further education and consulting at the leadership academy and was responsible for communications and public relations. As part of her work at the Management Academy she was in close contact with the member organizations of the DOSB and has supported the associations in numerous projects in the field of organizational development. In addition, she played a key role in the current processes of task and efficiency analysis, and the strategy development process as well as the performance reform. She has also worked at the Deutsche Sporthochschule in Cologne.

In order to fill the position, the DOSB Presidium, together with the Executive Board, carried out an intensive analysis of the future tasks and the resulting requirements profile.

The Bureau, according to the statutes of the DOSB, agreed that the candidate should, as far as possible, be recruited from its own ranks.

Thanks to the extensive experience of many years of work in the sporting system of Germany across all levels, regions and areas of sport, and the numerous accompanying change processes, the Presidium sees Veronika Rücker as the ideal chair of the board who will meet these requirements promptly in the sense of a smooth transition.

“Veronika Rücker has all the professional and human requirements for a successful management of the DOSB. She is able to moderate processes even in difficult situations and to create partnership-based forms of interest compensation. With her decades of experience across all levels of the German sports system, she will quickly become an accepted partner both nationally and internationally,” says DOSB President Alfons Hörmann.

“An exciting task is waiting for me, which I am tackling with great motivation together with the board of management and the colleagues of the DOSB. I am looking forward to pushing forward the implementation of the processes that I have been able to shape intensively in the past two years, and to reposition DOSB both nationally and internationally,” says Veronika Rücker.