Heike Drechsler
Encyclopedia
Gera
Gera, the third-largest city in the German state of Thuringia , lies in east Thuringia on the river Weiße Elster, approximately 60 kilometres to the south of the city of Leipzig and 80 kilometres to the east of Erfurt...
, Thuringia
Thuringia
The Free State of Thuringia is a state of Germany, located in the central part of the country.It has an area of and 2.29 million inhabitants, making it the sixth smallest by area and the fifth smallest by population of Germany's sixteen states....
, then East Germany) is a German track and field
Track and field
Track and field is a sport comprising various competitive athletic contests based around the activities of running, jumping and throwing. The name of the sport derives from the venue for the competitions: a stadium which features an oval running track surrounding a grassy area...
athlete. She is one of the most successful female long jump
Long jump
The long jump is a track and field event in which athletes combine speed, strength, and agility in an attempt to leap as far as possible from a take off point...
ers of all time and also had several successes in sprint
Sprint (race)
Sprints are short running events in athletics and track and field. Races over short distances are among the oldest running competitions. The first 13 editions of the Ancient Olympic Games featured only one event—the stadion race, which was a race from one end of the stadium to the other...
disciplines.
She is the only woman who has won two Olympic
Olympic Games
The Olympic Games is a major international event featuring summer and winter sports, in which thousands of athletes participate in a variety of competitions. The Olympic Games have come to be regarded as the world’s foremost sports competition where more than 200 nations participate...
gold medal
Gold medal
A gold medal is typically the medal awarded for highest achievement in a non-military field. Its name derives from the use of at least a fraction of gold in form of plating or alloying in its manufacture...
s in the long jump (1992 and 2000). She also won two World Championships in the long jump (1983 and 1993), as well as gold medals in the long jump and the 200 m sprint
200 metres
A 200 metres race is a sprint running event. On an outdoor 400 m track, the race begins on the curve and ends on the home straight, so a combination of techniques are needed to successfully run the race. A slightly shorter race, called the stadion and run on a straight track, was the first...
in the World Indoor Championships
IAAF World Indoor Championships in Athletics
The International Association of Athletics Federations World Indoor Championships were inaugurated as the World Indoor Games in 1985 in Paris, France and were subsequently renamed in 1987 as they are known today.-History:...
1987. In addition, she had numerous successes in European and German championships.
Drechsler's greatest rival in the long jump was Jackie Joyner-Kersee
Jackie Joyner-Kersee
Jacqueline "Jackie" Joyner-Kersee is a retired American athlete, ranked among the all-time greatest athletes in the women's heptathlon as well as in the women's long jump. She won three gold, one silver, and two bronze Olympic medals, in those four different events...
, with whom she was also very good friends.
In 1986, Drechsler twice equalled Marita Koch
Marita Koch
Marita Koch , is a former sprint track and field athlete...
's 200 metres sprint world record
World record
A world record is usually the best global performance ever recorded and verified in a specific skill or sport. The book Guinness World Records collates and publishes notable records of all types, from first and best to worst human achievements, to extremes in the natural world and beyond...
and set two long jump world records and equalled one in 1985 and 1986. , she had more than four hundred long jump competitions with results over seven meters, more than any other female athlete.
As teenager she was active in the Free German Youth
Free German Youth
The Free German Youth, also known as the FDJ , was the official socialist youth movement of the German Democratic Republic and the Socialist Unity Party of Germany....
(FDJ) and in 1984 she was elected to the Volkskammer
Volkskammer
The People's Chamber was the unicameral legislature of the German Democratic Republic . From its founding in 1949 until the first free elections on 18 March 1990, all members of the Volkskammer were elected on a slate controlled by the Socialist Unity Party of Germany , called the National Front...
of East Germany.
Several German websites, including her own, claim that Heike Drechsler was voted "Athlete of the Century" in 1999 by the IAAF. This is not quite correct: she was put on the "shortlist" http://www.int.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=6&click_id=174&art_id=qw942423300264B216 but the award was given to Fanny Blankers-Koen
Fanny Blankers-Koen
Francina "Fanny" Elsje Blankers-Koen was a Dutch athlete, best known for winning four gold medals at the 1948 Summer Olympics in London. She accomplished this as a 30 year old mother of two, during a time when many disregarded women's athletics...
http://www.iaaf.org/news/Kind=2/newsId=23914.html.
World records
Long Jump:1983: 7.14 meters Bratislava
Bratislava
Bratislava is the capital of Slovakia and, with a population of about 431,000, also the country's largest city. Bratislava is in southwestern Slovakia on both banks of the Danube River. Bordering Austria and Hungary, it is the only national capital that borders two independent countries.Bratislava...
/ (Juniors)
1985: 7.44 meters Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
1986: 7.45 meters Tallinn
Tallinn
Tallinn is the capital and largest city of Estonia. It occupies an area of with a population of 414,940. It is situated on the northern coast of the country, on the banks of the Gulf of Finland, south of Helsinki, east of Stockholm and west of Saint Petersburg. Tallinn's Old Town is in the list...
1986: 7.45 meters Dresden
Dresden
Dresden is the capital city of the Free State of Saxony in Germany. It is situated in a valley on the River Elbe, near the Czech border. The Dresden conurbation is part of the Saxon Triangle metropolitan area....
In 1992 Heike Drechsler jumped 7.63 m at altitude in Sestriere
Sestriere
Sestriere is an alpine village in Italy, a comune of the Province of Turin. It is from the French border. Its name derives from Latin: ad petram sistrariam, that is at sixty Roman miles from Turin....
Italy with a 2.1 m / sec. wind, over the allowable. That jump is 11 cm longer than the current world record.
Her personal best under legal conditions was 7.48 set in Neubrandenburg
Neubrandenburg
Neubrandenburg is a city in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany. It is located in the southeastern part of the state, on the shore of a lake called the Tollensesee ....
July 9, 1994, which is still the #4 jump of all time.
200-meter run:
1986: 21.71 seconds Jena
Jena
Jena is a university city in central Germany on the river Saale. It has a population of approx. 103,000 and is the second largest city in the federal state of Thuringia, after Erfurt.-History:Jena was first mentioned in an 1182 document...
1986: 21.71 seconds Stuttgart
Stuttgart
Stuttgart is the capital of the state of Baden-Württemberg in southern Germany. The sixth-largest city in Germany, Stuttgart has a population of 600,038 while the metropolitan area has a population of 5.3 million ....
Heptathlon:
1981: 5891 Points (Junior)
Doping allegations
There were many accusations of drug use while she competed for East Germany. She has never failed a drug test during her career http://www.nytimes.com/1990/11/29/sports/drug-use-by-prominent-athletes-reported.html In 2001, the BBC claimed she has admitted to unknowingly taking prohibited substances in the early 1980s under orders from her team doctors.In 1991, after the fall of East Germany, Brigitte Berendonk and Werner Franke wrote several theses and dissertations quoting former GDR doping researchers in the Military Medical Academy Bad Saarow (MMA). The basis of the work reconstructed state-organized doping practices involving many well-known GDR athletes, including Heike Drechsler. Indications were that Heike Drechsler used high doses Oral Turinabol plus more testosterone ester injections before competitions from 1982 to 1984. In 1993, Drechsler challenged Brigitte Berendonk, accusing her of lying in a lawsuit. In the case, the full annual dosage schedules, and charts of the development of sport performance as a function of the dosage amount were released. Drechsler lost the lawsuit, essentially validating the claims of the book
.
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