August Gödrich

Start of the cycling race at the Athens Olympic Games in 1896

August Gödrich (born September 25, 1859 in Gerlsdorf , † March 16, 1942 in Fulnek ) was a German athlete. He is also occupied with the name August Edler von Goedrich or Anton (von) Gödrich .

August Gödrich initially served as an officer in the Austro-Hungarian Army and later worked in a bicycle factory. In 1887 he moved to Athens , from where he visited the Middle East by bike . Later he made a trip across Europe on a 45 kilogram high bike and then reported on adventurous experiences. He is said to have mastered twelve languages. In 1891 he took part in the congress of the German Cyclists' Union in Berlin, for which he traveled from Athens and covered the distance from Brindisi to Berlin by bike. In the same year he set two records on the penny farthing: 12 hours for 301.1 kilometers and 24 hours for 523.5 kilometers.

Gödrich, who was a landowner based in Athens and therefore started for Greece, took second place in the road race at the Olympic Games of 1896 and thus won the bronze medal . Despite a serious fall in the road race over 87 kilometers from Athens to Marathon and back, he finished second in 3:42:18 hours behind the Greek Aristidis Konstantinidis .

In 1936 Gödrich was invited to the Olympic Games in Berlin as a guest of honor . The 76-year-old covered the distance from his home in Troppau to Berlin by bike.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ According to other information, G. was born in Troppau , today Opava / Czech Republic , in 1806 . Volker Kluge, Summer Olympic Games . Die Chronik I, Berlin 1997, p. 39
2. ↑ The German cyclist v. November 15, 1891
3. ↑ Rüdiger Rabenstein, Radsport und Gesellschaft , Hildesheim 1996, p. 17
4. ↑ Silver medals for the runner-up only existed since 1904.
5. ↑ Rad-Welt v. April 17, 1896. The information in the sources is sometimes 84, sometimes 87 kilometers.
6. ↑ Kluge, p. 39

Web links

• August Gödrich in the database of Sports-Reference (English; archived from the original )
• ullstein bild: Photo of August Gödrich at the Olympic Games in 1936. In: getty images. August 10, 1936, accessed August 12, 2015 .