Alles was zählt

Alles was zählt follows Diana Sommer, a young ice skater with ambitions to reach the top. She earns a spot at the prestigious Steinkamp Sport and Wellness Centre when Julian Herzog takes her under his wing, and a romance grows as her training intensifies. The Steinkamp family runs the centre with hard-edged ambition, and personal rivalries often spill into the athletic world. Tragedy upends Diana's life when Julian collapses and dies at their wedding, an event that reshapes several characters' paths. Diana stays in Essen for a while before moving on to another skating centre in Halle, and the series then widens its focus to the Centre itself and the tangled personal and professional lives around it.

Alles was zählt premiered on RTL on September 4, 2006. The German soap has been produced for television with a rotating ensemble cast, including Silvan-Pierre Leirich, Tatjana Clasing, André Dietz, Sam Eisenstein and Igor Dolgatschew.

The series hasn't been a major awards contender on the international stage, and there are no widely reported Emmy or major festival wins tied to it. Any national or daytime television recognitions are less prominently documented outside Germany.

Over the years the show cemented a place in RTL's daytime lineup, and its mix of sports plots and domestic melodrama made ice skating a recurring talking point among viewers. The 2007 wedding collapse remained a memorable storyline, and the programme helped raise the profiles of several cast members who went on to other German TV work.

Critical reaction has been mixed, with the soap format getting typical praise and criticism depending on story arcs and pacing. On one user rating site it holds a 5.0/10 from a small number of votes, reflecting a divided audience. The show leans on themes of ambition, loyalty, family power struggles and the costs of pursuing elite sport, keeping interpersonal drama at the forefront while exploring the business side of running a sports centre.