Bernhard Glass

Bernhard Glass
nation	German Democratic Republic
birthday	November 6, 1957
place of birth	Stapelburg
size	188 cm
Weight	104 kg
job	Luge trainer
Career
society	ASK forward Oberhof
status	resigned
End of career	1984
Medal table
Olympic medals 1 × 0 × 0 × EM medals 0 × 0 × 1 ×
winter Olympics gold Lake Placid 1980 Single seater  European Luge Championships bronze Oberhof 1979 Single seater

Bernhard Glass (born November 6, 1957 in Stapelburg ) is a former German luge who competed for the GDR .

At the age of 20, Glass competed for the first time in the Luge World Championships , in which he finished fifth in 1977. He won his first international medal when he finished third at the 1979 European Championships and thus secured bronze. Two years later, the athlete starting for the ASK Vorwärts Oberhof achieved his greatest success when he won the gold medal at the 1980 Olympic Games in Lake Placid . At first his start there was even unsafe because he had squeezed his fingers after a training crash. Just one day before the first of the four races, he prevailed against his teammate Michael Walter and was allowed to take part in the competition. Although he was not the favorite there and did not show the best runs, he was the most consistent, the other world-class drivers at the time, such as his compatriots Hans Rinn and Dettlef Günther, lost their chances of winning the title with a bad run out of four. In the last run he started in front of most of his competitors, all of whom did not achieve a better time than him, so that the Stapelburger won the Olympic champion title.

After the Olympics, Glass did not repeat his success; at the World Championships in 1981 he placed himself again only in fifth place. Once again, two years later, he fell in the victory of the Canadian Miroslav Zajonc even to seventh place back. Because of the high level of performance in the GDR team, it was unclear whether he would even be nominated for the 1984 Olympic Games in Sarajevo to defend his title. For this goal he should have won a medal at the 1984 European Championships ; he classified himself fourth, so he was not allowed to travel to his second Olympic Games. Instead, the German ended his career that same year after having had shoulder problems for several years. In addition, the 104 kilogram luge driver believed he had no chance against the more aerodynamic athletes who would be able to cope better on the new tracks.

For his Olympic victory in 1980 he was awarded the Patriotic Order of Merit in silver.

After his active career, Glass became a trainer at the Oberhof base in 1995 and looked after, among others, the Olympic luge champion Silke Kraushaar . Since the 2010/2011 season he has been part of the Canadian tobogganing team . He lives with his wife in Oberhof, and he has two grown children.

literature

• Olaf W. Reimann:  Glass, Bernhard . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 1. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Neues Deutschland , April 22, 1980, p. 2

Web links

Commons : Bernhard Glass  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Claudia Fehse: Bernhard Glass: Everyone gets their chance at frei-wort.de. Released December 22, 2007. Accessed February 1, 2009.
• Bernhard Glass in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )