Erki Nool

Erki Nool medal table
Erki Nool (2011)
Decathlon
Estonia
Olympic games
gold	2000 Sydney	Decathlon
World championships
silver	2001 Edmonton	Decathlon
Indoor world championships
silver	1997 Paris Bercy	Heptathlon
silver	1999 Maebashi	Heptathlon
European championships
gold	1998 Budapest	Decathlon
silver	2002 Munich	Decathlon
European Indoor Championships
gold	1996 Stockholm	Heptathlon
bronze	2000 Ghent	Heptathlon
bronze	2002 Vienna	Heptathlon

Erki Nool (born June 25, 1970 in Võru , Estonian SSR , Soviet Union ) is a former Estonian athlete , Olympic champion and current politician and functionary . He has been the UNICEF ambassador since June 1, 1999 .

Career

Nool graduated from Saku High School in 1989 and initially worked as a night porter in the local hospital . In 1992 he took part in the Olympic Games in Barcelona , but gave up the decathlon competition after three failed attempts in the javelin throw . He was significantly more successful three years later when he finished fourth at the 1995 World Championships with 8,268 points. At the Olympic Games in Atlanta , however, 8,543 points were only enough for a sixth place. At the 1997 World Championships , Nool also came in sixth.

His greatest success came when he won the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney with 8641 points. Nool thus became a folk hero in Estonia. During the two days of the decathlon, the Estonian students were off school to watch the Sydney competitions on television. When he returned from Sydney, 80,000 people celebrated him at Tallinn Airport .

At the 2001 World Championships in Edmonton, he became vice world champion with his personal best of 8815 points, which is also the Estonian record. He finished his fourth and last Olympic participation in 2004 in Athens in eighth place with 8235 points.

At the European Championships in Budapest in 1998 he won gold with 8,667 points and in 2002 in Munich silver with 8,438 points.

Erki Nool was also able to convince in the indoor heptathlon. At world championships he won silver in Paris in 1997 and in Maebashi in 1999 and was fifth in Lisbon in 2001 . At European Championships he won gold once ( 1996 ) and bronze twice ( 2000 and 2002 ). His best performance is 6374 points.

Nool's strength within the all-around competition was the pole vault , his best performance in a decathlon was a jump of 5.60 m. Furthermore, he is the Estonian record holder in the long jump with a width of 8.10 m, which he was able to achieve in 1995 at the all- around meeting Götzis he won.

Since 2007 he has been a member of the Riigikogu , the Estonian parliament, for the conservative Isamaa ja Res Publica Liit (Pro Patria and Res Publica Union) . In April 2011 he was elected to the Council of the European Athletics Federation .

Awards

• Estonia's Sportsman of the Year 1996, 1997, 1998, 2000
• Order of the Estonian Red Cross 1st category (2001)

literature

• Hans van Kuijen: 2004 Annual Combined Events. Helmond 2005
• zurgams (editor): Time leaps . 35 years of the Mösle all-around meeting in Götzis. Bucher Verlag, Hohenems 2009, ISBN 978-3-902679-23-9

Web links

Commons : Erki Nool  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Erki Nool in the database of World Athletics (English)
• Erki Nool in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )
• Sports achievements and photo (Estonian)
• Erki Nool on the Riigikogu website (Estonian)

Individual evidence

1. ^ President Wirz re-elected; Sydney Olympic champions Nool and Szabo enter EA Council . www.iaaf.org. April 16, 2011. Archived from the original on April 21, 2011. Retrieved on April 16, 2011.
2. ↑ Bearers of decorations - Erki Nool . www.president.ee. Retrieved December 28, 2009.