timur Oruz can still date the moment precisely. In Easter It was last year when a process began that he could no longer stop. And I didn't want to either. Which led him to make the decision to skip the Olympic Games, which would have been his third. Oruz ended his career in the national hockey team at the age of 29 after 115 international matches and six months before the possible gold crown in Paris. Which says a lot about this extraordinary athlete. But also about the general conditions that high-performance athletes face in marginal disciplines and under what pressures and influences they plan their future after their active career.
Oruz was there for his club Rot-Weiß Köln in April 2023 final tournament The Euro Hockey League is used, essentially the Champions League of field hockey. As he “walked down a hotel hallway,” tired and exhausted, as he puts it, he wondered why exactly he was there. “I never had that thought. I have played countless Bundesliga games, I have been playing in the senior national team for ten years and before that I have played in all the German national teams – hockey has always been the main part of my life. That day was the first sign for me that something seems to be changing. Let priorities change, let a stage of life end,” says Oruz.