Florence Ekpo-Umoh

Florence Ekpo-Umoh (born December 27, 1977 in Lagos ) is a German sprinter of Nigerian origin.

Life

The 400-meter runner competed for her home country in the 1994 Junior World Championships. In the spring of 1995 she stayed with the Nigerian national athletics team in Stuttgart and left the team there to stay in Germany. She married her trainer Otmar Velte on March 25, 1998 (born September 22, 1964). She has had German citizenship since July 25, 2000 .

Three times in a row, in 1997, 1998 and 1999, she was German Junior Champion, which she was the only female athlete to succeed (as of the end of the 2004 season). She took part in the 4 x 400 meter relay in the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney, but without reaching the finals.

At the World Indoor Championships 2001 in Lisbon, she won bronze with the German relay team ( Claudia Marx , Birgit Rockmeier , Florence Ekpo-Umoh, Shanta Ghosh ) in 3: 31.00 min. Outdoors she reached the semifinals at the World Championships in Edmonton that year and won the relay silver medal (3: 21.97 min, together with Grit Breuer , Shanta Ghosh and Claudia Marx). A year later she won gold with the German relay team (Florence Ekpo-Umoh, Birgit Rockmeier, Claudia Marx, Grit Breuer) at the 2002 European Championships in Munich in 3: 25.10 minutes.

In January 2003 she was diagnosed with the prohibited doping substance stanozolol after a competition in Germinston ( South Africa ) . She was then banned from participating in competitions until March 10, 2005. As a result, her husband separated from her again, and USC Mainz and its supplier no longer extended their contracts. Even outside of sport, she could no longer gain a foothold professionally and lived on unemployment benefits. She became engaged and had two children. She lived in Kassel, her fiancé worked in England, so she was a single parent.

In the spring of 2007 she was able to convince the trainer of the German 400-meter hurdlers, Eberhard König from the Erfurt LAC , to prepare her for the qualification for participation in the 2008 Olympic Games . She has now been supported by the supplier of the German Athletics Association (DLV). At the European Cup in Annecy she was able to celebrate her international comeback in the German 4 x 400 meter relay. At the German Championships in Nuremberg in July 2008, she achieved the silver medal and thus the Olympic qualification. At the games in Beijing, she came eighth with the season. In Berlin at the 2009 World Championships she was a substitute runner for the relay.

Ekpo-Umoh initially belonged to the LG Baunatal / ACT Kassel , from 1998 to the USC Mainz and from 2007 to the Erfurt LAC. She is 1.78 m tall and weighs 68 kg. Her 400-meter best time from 2001 is 51.13 s.

literature

Klaus Amrhein: Biographical manual on the history of German athletics 1898–2005 . 2 volumes. Darmstadt 2005 published on German Athletics Promotion and Project Society.