German national football team coach Joachim Loew (right) receives a test tube filled with sand taken from the beach near the team’s 2014 World Cup base camp Campo Bahia in Brazil from TV host Katrin Mueller-Hohenstein (left) after the team was awarded Germany’s Sports Team Of The Year 2014 in Baden-Baden, Germany, on Sunday. (Reuters)


DPA/Baden-Baden, Germany

Germany’s World Cup winning football team, retired Olympic ski champion Maria Hoefl-Riesch and discus thrower Robert Harting won the nation’s Athlete of the Year awards on Sunday.
Germany’s footballers coached by Joachim Loew won the team award a 10th time overall in the wake of a fourth World Cup title in July.
Hoefl-Riesch, who quit skiing after the past season, topped the women’s list a second time after 2010 in the wake of a third career Olympic gold in Sochi; and the 2014 European champion Harting won the men’s award a third straight year.
The awards, based on a poll among some 1,200 sports journalists in Germany, were announced at the annual gala in the resort of Baden-Baden.
Germany’s footballers were always the favourites to succeed treble winners Bayern Munich in the team award after their World Cup triumph 1-0 on July 13 against Argentina in Rio de Janeiro, which followed a historic 7-1 drubbing of hosts Brazil in the semis.
“It was their team spirit; it was the team,” said German Football Federation president Wolfgang Niersbach, reflecting on the World Cup competition. “In those six weeks in Brazil we had no inner stress.”
The footballers topped the bill with 4,660 points, more than double the 1,846 the Olympic ski-jumping team champions from Sochi received.  The volleyball world championship bronze medallists were third with 1,115.
Hoefl-Riesch, 30, was also the big favourite on the women’s side thanks to her super-combined gold and super-g silver in Sochi, plus the World Cup downhill title in her final ski season.
She received 3,147 points to win from two-time luge gold medallist Natalie Geisenberger (1,830) and Carina Vogt (1,782), who became the inaugural women’s ski-jumping Olympic champion in Russia.
Hoefl-Riesch said she thought about her decision to retire for a long time.
“It was a difficult decision, but I believe to this day that it was the right one,” she said.
Harting, 30, meanwhile was a surprise winner despite his long list of merits including three world titles and Olympic gold, as his 2014 highlight was only a continental championship.
However, personality may have been a factor as well as the outspoken Harting for instance had his name removed from the final list of nominees for World Athlete of the Year because he didn’t want to be on the same list that included doping offender Justin Gatlin of the United States.
Harting earned 2,100 points, which was just good enough to edge Nordic combined skiing Olympic and World Cup champion Eric Frenzel (2,055), and two-time Olympic luge champion Felix Loch, who was third (1,467).