Erhard Keller

Erhard Keller
nation	Germany
birthday	December 24, 1944
place of birth	Gunzburg
size	182 cm
Weight	76 kg
job	dentist
Career
society	DEC Frillensee-Inzell
Trainer	Thormod Moum , Herbert Höfl
Pers. Best times	500 m - 38.0 sec. 1000 m - 1: 18.5 min.
status	resigned
Medal table
Olympic medals 2 × 0 × 0 × S-WM medals 1 × 0 × 0 ×
winter Olympics gold 1968 Grenoble 500 m gold 1972 Sapporo 500 m  Sprint World Championships gold Inzell 1971 sprint

Erhard Keller (born December 24, 1944 in Günzburg ) is a former German speed skater and two-time Olympic champion over the sprint distance of 500 meters.

Keller began his international career in the mid-1960s and set the world record over 500 meters in 1967 when he ran the distance in 39.5 seconds. In the further course of his career he improved the world best time on his special track several times to 38 seconds. At the 1968 Winter Olympics in Grenoble, Keller celebrated the first Olympic speed skating victory for a German man and was able to repeat this success four years later in Sapporo - in the meantime he had also become sprint world champion in 1971 on his home track in Inzell . Afterwards, Keller started as a professional for a few years and also appeared as a television presenter ( Games without Borders ) in the 1970s . The doctor of dentistry shaped the image of German speed skating for decades, also as a TV expert at the Olympic Games, and was inducted into the Hall of Fame of German Sports in 2011.

Athletic career

Promotion to the first Olympic victory (until 1968)

Keller received his first ice skates on his fifth birthday. His interest in ice skating only increased when the family moved from Günzburg in Swabia to Munich in 1954 and settled near the Prinzregentenstadion . A few years later he joined the Munich Ice Skating Club and from then on trained regularly. He quickly celebrated successes at regional championships and became Munich champion in 1962. For the 1964 Olympics, however , the 19-year-old Keller clearly missed the qualification: Over 500 meters, instead of the required 43 seconds, he only ran a time of 44 seconds; on the other routes he was even further away from the international top.

The Inzell ice rink in the mid-1960s

In 1965, Keller - with a time of 42.9 seconds now the best German ice sprinter, but still not close to the international best times - caught the attention of Inzell sports official Ludwig Schwabl , who became the first president of the German speed skating association in the same year . Schwabl enabled Keller to move to Inzell , where the athlete then trained with the DEC Inzell / Frillensee . Inzell developed into the "cradle of a German speed skating generation" in the 1960s, with the Norwegian Thormod Moum as their supervisor . Moum had already had success as a trainer in his home country and followed an ambitious program based on so-called imitation exercises with the group around Keller and the more experienced Günter Traub and Gerhard Zimmermann . The athletes trained intensively in the squatting position that is typical for speed skating. The team profited to a great extent from the newly built 400-meter artificial ice rink in Inzell, which opened in December 1965 . The flat ice of this rink allowed much faster times than the previously existing natural ice rink: Keller improved the German record to 41.3 seconds in the opening race. In the same winter, the 21-year-old competed against the world's best speed skaters for the first time in international competitions, including the 13-year-old Russian Yevgeny Grishin , whom Keller saw as a role model. The German met Grischin in January 1966 as part of the Trofeo Alberto Nicolodi in Madonna di Campiglio , where he took third place in the victory of the Russian over 500 meters and even won the world best time of the year over the middle distance of 1500 meters, which he otherwise ran less often. In his autobiography, Keller recalls that Grischin then approached him with praise and gave him further training tips, which established a long friendship between the two. One of the first career highlights was participation in the all-around World Cup in 1966 . Over his specialist distance of 500 meters, Keller took third place there, while he played no role on the other routes.

In the pre-Olympic season 1966/67, Keller improved his performance over 500 meters again and ran times of under 41 seconds in numerous competitions on the Inzell home track. In Madonna di Campiglio he also showed a strong race over 1500 meters and only missed the world record held by Ard Schenk by half a second. Meanwhile, the Olympic Winter Games of 1968 moved more into the focus of the athletes: At the trial competitions at the Olympic site of Grenoble , Keller was dissatisfied with the general conditions - sand and dirt on the artificial ice rink - and his own performance. The 1967 World Cup was also "not very fruitful" for the German team, to which Keller had been called up at short notice due to flu-related absences; Over 500 meters, the Munich rider reached the unsatisfactory ninth place. Even though Keller again improved the German record to 40.1 seconds at the end of the season in Inzell, one year before the Olympics he was not one of the immediate favorites for Olympic gold.

In preparation for the Games in Grenoble, Keller and other athletes (such as Herbert Höfl , who was also from Munich ) belonged to the special sprinting team and, under the guidance of Thormod Moum, concentrated on the 500-meter course. Shortly before the turn of the year 1967/68 he set the almost five-year-old world record of Yevgeny Grischin with a time of 39.5 seconds at an international competition in Inzell. One month later, on January 28, 1968, he confirmed his top form when he - again in Inzell - improved the world record by three tenths of a second in a direct duel with the Japanese Keiichi Suzuki , with Suzuki, who also remained below the old world record, only struck a tenth of a second.

Keller at the start of the 1968 Olympic 500 meter race

After the successful competitions in Inzell, Keller was one of the favorites for the Olympic Games, although it was not entirely clear to what extent the results on his home track could be transferred to the track in Grenoble. Grischin, who last competed at the Olympics, his Soviet teammate Muratow , the Japanese Suzuki and the US team around defending champion Richard McDermott were also considered possible contenders for the gold medal in advance. In the competition on February 14th, the German took to the track in the ninth pairing of the day with the Canadian Bob Boucher , which resulted in several false starts and Boucher in the meantime threatened to fall and to pull Keller with him. The time of 40.3 seconds was more than a second above the record previously set by Keller, but was still enough for the gold medal, as the other co-favorites sometimes had significantly greater difficulties on the deteriorating ice. Only McDermott came close to the German's mark in the last run with 40.5 seconds and secured the silver medal. Keller was the first German man to win Olympic gold in speed skating and was also one of only two West German athletes who were victorious in Grenoble: the Nordic combined athlete Franz Keller (not related to him) was honored with his gold medal on the same day as Erhard Keller. Keller's success contributed to the further popularization of speed skating in Germany, which he later looked back on: "Of course, my Olympic victory increased the boom, and more was invested, which led to even more popularity among young athletes."

World champion and another Olympic victory (1968 to 1972)

Keller (center) at the award ceremony over 500 meters at the 1970 European Championships

Six weeks after his Olympic victory in Grenoble, Keller fell while skiing in St. Moritz and suffered a fractured lower leg, a splintered fracture of the right tibia close to the ankle. At first, the doctors and Keller assumed that his speed skating career was over. He had to take a break with a plaster cast for several months and was only able to enter the 1968/69 competition season late. In addition, as a result of the accident, his right leg was slightly shortened and warped outwards, which is why he started with the runners shifted inwards under the special ice skate. He did not improve his 500 meter records either this winter or the following, but he still competed successfully in several international races. In particular, he set the fastest time in the sprint at the European all-around championships in Innsbruck in 1970 and won over the 500-meter distance ahead of the Norwegians Dag Fornæss and Roar Grønvold . In February 1970 sprint world championships took place for the first time , in which the participants contested two 500-meter and two 1000-meter competitions and the addition of the times led to the freestyle of the sprint world champion. Above all, Keller's strengths in the short distances made the German officials into great supporters of such a competition and Keller was considered the top contender for the title. At the first event in West Allis , USA , however, he was behind the world leaders: The Swede Hasse Börjes - three years younger than the German - won both 500-meter races, overall the Russian Valeri Muratow triumphed, while Keller ultimately ranked six documented what observers would later call "his greatest defeat". In terms of time, Keller stagnated with his personal record of 39.2 seconds, which several athletes clearly undercut in 1970. Börjes in particular stood out and ran a new world record of 38.46 seconds at the end of the season in Inzell.

As the successor to Thormod Moum, Herbert Höfl, former team mate Keller, took over the training of the German speed skaters. Höfl changed Keller's technique: if he had previously based himself on Grischin and his “fluid, elegant style”, the short, quick steps taken by the American McDermott were now considered exemplary, which required special strength training. The results of the best German sprinter gradually improved over the winter. In January 1971 he ran in Inzell for the first time under 39 seconds, a little later he won the second sprint world championship on his home track and also ran a national record over 1000 meters in 1: 20.00 minutes. He improved this time again at the end of the season to 1: 19.10 minutes and also regained the world record over 500 meters in the same competition by increasing to 38.42 seconds, beating Börjes by a few hundredths of a second.

Early on, Keller had declared the 1972 Winter Olympics in Sapporo as a clear goal to which he was working: he wanted to win the gold medal in the 500 meters again, otherwise he would find the four years after his first Olympic victory "wasted". In fact, the 27-year-old presented himself in outstanding form from the start of the Olympic season and beat his European competitors in both Inzell and Davos in a world record time of a good 38 seconds, with the Finn Leo Linkovesi running similar times in individual races. The Japanese ice sprinters, who fully concentrated on the season highlight in their homeland and did not start in Europe, were considered an unknown factor. At the Olympic 500-meter run in Sapporo, Keller set an Olympic record in 39.44 seconds and in some cases clearly beat his competitors: The Japanese athletes in particular clearly disappointed and missed the top ranks, while the Swede Börjes won the silver medal a quarter of a second behind. In retrospect, Keller attributed his success to the trained strength and stamina that were necessary on the hard ice of Sapporos. Since he was the best 1000-meter runner of all sprinters in the season, he felt confident of victory. In addition to Keller - who was the first German winter athlete to defend his Olympic victory - 17-year-old Monika Pflug also won speed skating gold for the Federal Republic of Germany. She had started the sport four years earlier, spurred on by Keller's first success in Grenoble. A few weeks after the Olympics, the double Olympic champion ended the season with two course world records in Inzell: On March 4, 1972, he first ran the 500 meters in 38.00 seconds (at the same time as Hasse Börjes) and shortly afterwards the 1000 meters in 1:18, 50 minutes. Two more good results over these distances on the following day rounded off a world record in the sprint four-way battle.

Professional career and end of career (1972 to 1977)

Keller at the first World Cup of the ISSL professional league in January 1973

After the Olympic Games in Sapporo, Keller ended his amateur career and went on to compete as a professional athlete . The background to this decision was that Keller, like other successful speed skaters - such as the Olympic champion Ard Schenk - had previously received money and material assets for his sporting appearances, which was not in accordance with the strict amateur statute of the International Olympic Committee . Since the German had already signed other advertising contracts for the time after the Olympics, he switched to the professional camp in order to avoid an already pending ban for amateur competitions. From the winter of 1972/73, Keller started in the newly founded International Speed ​​Skating League (ISSL), in which Schenk, Kees Verkerk and Hasse Börjes competed alongside him . In all ten so-called World Cups over 500 meters, Keller beat the competition. He also achieved podium results at the world and European championships specially organized by the ISSL. After two years the professional league had to close because on the one hand it attracted significantly fewer spectators than planned and on the other hand the national amateur associations under the umbrella of the International Ice Skating Union threatened to close all ice rinks on which professional competitions were held.

Keller sought after ISSL bankruptcy in 1974 to Reacquisition of amateur status with the goal at the 1976 Winter Olympic Games to win a third gold medal. The corresponding application was rejected by the international association, but Keller continued to contest test competitions in which he achieved faster times than all Olympic starters in Inzell. At the age of 32 he won his fourth and last German championship title in the sprint four-way battle in January 1977 with a clear lead over the mostly much younger competitors and again ran a time of 38.4 seconds over 500 meters.

Even after the end of his career, Keller kept his competitive weight and form: in 1983 he bet with a professional colleague that he could run his first world record of 39.5 seconds again and won this bet after six weeks of training when he was four tenths of a second in Davos this record, set a decade and a half earlier, remained. Also on his 70th birthday, Keller stated in an interview that he had training intervals on the ice several times a week.

Development of the season's best times

The following tables show the development of Erhard Keller's best times of the season on the 500-meter and 1000-meter distances over his amateur career from 1964 to 1972. The German world records ran on both routes, each on his home track in Inzell. Some races in which Keller ran even faster are not noted because the corresponding competitions were not registered with the International Skating Union and therefore were not officially noted in the statistics. The remark = WR stands for the setting of the world record valid at this point in time, WR for the improvement.

Season best times over 500 meters
→ List of speed skating world records over 500 meters men

season	time	date	place
1963/64	44.7 0sec.	January 25, 1964	Inzell
1964/65	42.9 0sec.	January 23, 1965	Inzell
1965/66	41.1 0sec.	January 1, 1966	Inzell
1966/67	40.1 0sec.	March 4th 1967	Inzell
1967/68	39.2 0sec.	January 27, 1968	Inzell	= WR
1968/69	39.5 0sec.	March 1, 1969	Inzell
1969/70	39.3 0sec.	March 5th 1970	Inzell
1970/71	38.42 sec.	March 13, 1971	Inzell	0WR
1971/72	38.0 0sec.	March 5th 1972	Inzell	= WR

Season best times over 1000 meters
→ List of speed skating world records over 1000 meters men

season	time	date	place
1965/66	1: 22.4 0min.	January 22, 1966	Inzell
1966/67	1: 23.4 0min.	February 28, 1967	Inzell
1967/68	1: 21.3 0min.	5th February 1968	Davos
1968/69	1: 21.4 0sec.	March 1, 1969	Inzell
1969/70	1: 20.3 0sec.	3rd January 1970	Inzell
1970/71	1: 19.10 sec.	March 13, 1971	Inzell
1971/72	1: 18.5 0sec.	March 5th 1972	Inzell	WR

TV career as a presenter

Keller gained his first experience as a sports commentator on television during his active career: after his own appearance at the 1968 Olympic Games, he supported Fritz Klein in moderating the 500-meter race, which enabled him to experience his own Olympic victory “actually as a television commentator”. In the current sports studio he was also a frequent guest and took over the discussion of individual scenes. At the request of co-founder Harry Valérien , Keller represented him four times as a guest presenter during the winter sports season in the 1970s. He later accompanied ARD and ZDF coverage of the Olympic speed skating competitions at five winter games between 1976 and 1994 as a co-commentator .

Aside from the sporting events, Keller was also present on television. In autumn 1973 the WDR asked him to be the successor to Camillo Felgen for the game show Spiel ohne Grenzen , which he presented in around a hundred issues from 1974 on and described in retrospect as "great fun". He also moderated the youth broadcast technology for children . According to Keller, he never had any major ambitions to present himself, he always viewed television as a “hobby, but never as a main job”.

Personal

education and profession

From 1959 to 1965 Keller attended the Max Planck Gymnasium in Munich- Pasing . Due to the training-related relocation to Inzell, he switched to the Karlsgymnasium in Bad Reichenhall , where he met with great understanding for sports-related absenteeism and took his Abitur in 1966 . During his active time as a speed skater, he studied dentistry at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich , where he skipped entire semesters in preparation for the 1972 Winter Olympics to concentrate on sports and lost one and a half academic years. At the same time, he always stated that he would benefit both from sport for his studies - in terms of "self-confidence, self-confidence and assertiveness" - and, vice versa, to use the findings of the studies for speed skating: Keller set up his exercise plans based on the results of his doctoral thesis, in which he dealt with a biochemical question from sports medicine.

Keller used the prize money from the World Cup races he won in his professional time to set up a dental practice in Munich-Grünwald, which opened in 1975 and now had up to eleven employees. After 27 years, at the age of 58, he sold the practice to his assistant doctors and withdrew into private life.

family

Erhard Keller's father, a former middleweight boxer, was a detective, whose transfer to the State Criminal Police Office in Munich at the beginning of the 1950s was the reason for the move of the family of four - Keller has a younger sister - to the state capital. After the Second World War, his mother briefly ran the Günzburger dairy. Both parents supported their son's athletic career.

After his first Olympic victory in 1968, the municipality of Inzell under Mayor Ludwig Schwabl provided the gold medalist with a rent-free apartment for five years. Keller lived there with his first wife Christine, whom he married in 1970: a fellow student and later an anesthetist whom he had met while ice skating in Munich and who had become Bavarian runner-up in speed skating in her youth. In 1975, Keller had a daughter. Five years later, the couple divorced by mutual agreement. In the early 1980s, Keller had a relationship with former figure skater and sports journalist Corinna Halke . The photo model Regina Baar shot herself in Keller's apartment in April 1982 - presumably out of lovesickness - after her affair with the former athlete was about to end. In 1988, Keller married again and has lived in Munich with his second wife, a lawyer.

Public image and appreciation

During his active time, Keller was one of the most prominent athletes in the Federal Republic with a level of awareness of around 73 percent after his second Olympic victory in 1972. The press followed his sporting successes and his private life intensively, he was considered "fun-loving" and a "sunny boy", whose quick wittedness and rhetorical skills made him particularly popular with journalists. Sports studio presenter Harry Valérien, for example, who also promoted his career as a presenter, praised Keller's demeanor: “He had a lynx-like, a smart manner. He was a very unusual man who shaped his own style. I like guys like that. ”Keller himself enjoyed the opportunities that his sporting victories offered him and judged in 1969:“ Competitive sport brings advantages to the successful that could previously only be achieved through birth and ancestry. ”His dealings were accordingly open with the press, a homestory about him and his wife appeared in 1971 as the cover story of the sports magazines . In turn, the tabloids were equally open about the athlete's personal life and relationships after the 1980 divorce.

In the sporting field, Keller's successes stand out in particular because he remained the only male German Olympic champion in speed skating until Uwe-Jens Meys won the Olympic Games in 1988, which led the FAZ to write on the occasion of his 50th birthday: “The speed skating of men was in the old Federal Republic has a single name: Erhard Keller ”. After his first Olympic victory in 1968, the Association of German Sports Journalists awarded him the Golden Ribbon of the Sports Press , making him the first speed skater to receive this award. Also as the first representative of his discipline, Keller was inducted into the Hall of Fame of German Sports in 2011, whereby his “addiction to titles and triumphs, to recognition and career” is emphasized in his biography. Keller's starting technique - described as "whirling staccato up to the first gliding step" - influenced other athletes to adapt to his style.

In 1968, Keller published his autobiography 74 Steps to the Goal in Copress Verlag . Inzell gave me the chance. , in which he described the first years of his career and in particular the season of his first Olympic victory. He later wrote a book about the 1976 Winter Olympics and, in the early 1980s, a guide to avoiding sports injuries.

Book publications

• 74 steps to the goal. Inzell gave me the chance. Copress-Verlag, Munich 1968.
• Olympic Winter Games Innsbruck 1976. With the collaboration of Hans Blickensdörfer . Kerler, Winnenden 1976.
• Broken by sport? As a recreational athlete, you can avoid injuries and damage. With the collaboration of Dieter Bochow. Moewig, Munich 1981. ISBN 3-8118-3140-2 . (Nachauflage udT How to avoid sports injuries. Do sports and still stay healthy. Moewig, Rastatt 1986.)

Web links

Commons : Erhard Keller  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Erhard Keller in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely accessible)
• Portrait, dates and biography of Erhard Keller in the Hall of Fame of German Sports
• Erhard Keller in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )
• Statistics at speed skating news

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Basement: 74 steps to the goal . P. 13.
2. ↑ Basement: 74 steps to the goal . P. 16.
3. ↑ Basement: 74 steps to the goal . P. 18f.
4. ↑ Basement: 74 steps to the goal . P. 29f.
5. ↑ Basement: 74 steps to the goal . P.56.
6. ↑ Basement: 74 steps to the goal . P. 104.
7. ^ KA Scherer: Eight races - twenty favorites . In: Sport-Illustrierte No. 3, January 29, 1968, pp. 36-38.
8. ↑ Basement: 74 steps to the goal . P. 180.
9. ↑ Speed ​​skater Erhard Keller celebrates his 75th birthday on dosb.de. Retrieved March 19, 2020.
10. ↑ ^{a b} Eberhard HW Garbe: Erhard Keller, one year after Grenoble: "... fun that costs nothing" . In: Sport-Illustrierte No. 5, March 3, 1969, p. 32.
11. ↑ ^{a b} Ulrich Kaiser: When the Achilles tendon holds . In: Die Zeit (February 26, 1971)
12. ^ ^{A b c} Eberhard HW Garbe: Christine and Erhard Keller between stadium and studies: luck on the ice . In: Sport-Illustrierte No. 4, February 16, 1971, pp. 24-29.
13. ↑ ^{a b} quoted from: Erhard Keller in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely available)
14. ↑ Reinhold Dörrzapf: This is how Keller works on the world record . In: Sport-Illustrierte No. 25, December 9, 1971, pp. 42-44.
15. ↑ Reinhold Dorrzapf: The duel of the swindlers . In: Sport-Illustrierte No. 2, January 20, 1972, pp. 22-25.
16. ^ Muscles and Medals . In: Der Spiegel . No. 8 , 1972, p. 79 ( online ). Quote: “Four years ago Keller's gold medal awakened her [Monika Pflugs] ambition. ... "
17. ^ Above : How Herbert Höfl makes a gold medal . In: Sport-Illustrierte No. 4, February 17, 1972, pp. 40-41.
18. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g} BR-alpha: “Alpha Forum”: Christian Materna in conversation with Erhard Keller . Broadcast on July 26, 2002. Available online as a PDF download at https://www.br.de/fernsehen/ard-alpha/sendung/alpha-forum/erhard-keller-gespraech100.html .
19. ^ ^{A b} Jan Kubica: The double Olympic champion from Nornheimer Weiher . In: Mittelschwäbische Nachrichten (December 24, 2019), p. 45.
20. ↑ ^{a b c d} Gunnar Meinhardt : "I should moderate in Bundeswehr uniform" . In: Die Welt (December 24, 2014).
21. ↑ ^{a b} Erhard Keller in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely accessible)
22. ↑ ^{a b c d} Thomas Hahn: Against the Sensengeist . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung (December 20, 2001), Münchner Sport, p. 40.URL: http://www.munzinger.de/document/260A13576353
23. ↑ Reinhold Dörrzapf: Gerd Müller is the most popular athlete in Germany: The people of Hamburg don't like him that much… . In: Sport-Illustrierte No. 25, December 7, 1972, pp. 10-14.
24. ↑ Quick step . In: Der Spiegel . No. 10 , 1971, p. 140 ( online ).
25. ↑ Portrait, data and biography of Erhard Keller in the Hall of Fame of German Sports

Remarks

1. ↑ Keller states in his autobiography (p. 10f.) That the family moved to the west of the city in December 1958 and that a few months later - on the occasion of the opening ceremony of the ice rink there - he found the motivation to join the club. According to Munzinger's biography, Keller won his first competition in January 1961 "after only four months of training". Keller's entry into the association can therefore be dated to 1959 or 1960.
2. ↑ Up to and including 1969, the speed skating world championships were held exclusively as all-round competitions . This means that all athletes had to run distances of 500 to 5000 meters (the best qualified for the final 10,000 meter run). Since Keller did not belong to the top national team, especially on the long distances, he was not naturally nominated for the title fights and never achieved a better result than the 24th place in 1967. Individual distance world champions have only been determined since 1996.
3. ↑ These success statistics are based on Keller's own statement, cf. What is actually ... Erhard Keller? on ospbayern.de. He stated that for every success he had received a prize of 25,000 DM. The ISSL results lists - with the exception of the World Cup and European Championship results - are not available.
4. ↑ In an interview on his 65th birthday (Frank Thomas ( dpa ): "Now you can say pensioners" ) on Christmas Eve 2009, Keller stated that he would be him with "[the] family with children [s] and the three-month-old Grandchildren. The Munzinger biography, on the other hand, mentions only one child.