Frank Baltrusch

Frank Baltrusch
Frank Baltrusch at the GDR Swimming Championships in Leipzig (1985)
Personal information
Surname:	Frank Baltrusch
Nation:	GDR
Swimming style (s) :	move
Birthday:	March 21, 1964
Place of birth:	Magdeburg
Size:	1.93 m
Weight:	92 kg
Medal table

Frank Baltrusch (born March 21, 1964 in Magdeburg ) is a former German swimmer .

Career

By GDR standards, Baltrusch only started late, in the third grade, with competitive sports at Einheit Pädagogik Magdeburg , after having learned to swim only a year earlier. A year later he was delegated to the Children's and Youth Sports School (KJS) . Since 1981 he was the best GDR athlete on the 200 meter back course. Internationally, however, he never got beyond second place. At the 1981 European Championship in Split , the athlete who started for SC Magdeburg and was trained by Christel Seedorf and Ulf Schramme finished fourth.

Frank Baltrusch at the GDR championships in 1983. He sets his own GDR record and becomes GDR champion

At the 1982 World Championships in Guayaquil and the 1983 European Championships in Rome and 1985 in Sofia, he swam bronze on his parade route. In the years that followed, he earned the reputation of being “forever second”. He won silver at the 1987 European Championships in Strasbourg over 100 meters back, the 1986 World Swimming Championships in Madrid over 200 meters back and at the Summer Olympics in Seoul in 1988 also over 200 meters back, where he was beaten by Soviet athlete Igor Polyansky . After the games, he ended his career.

In 1986 and 1988 Frank Baltrusch was awarded the Patriotic Order of Merit in silver. Baltrusch married the high diver Katrin Zipperling and now works as a sales manager for an insurance company in Magdeburg .

literature

• Volker Kluge : The great lexicon of GDR athletes. The 1000 most successful and popular athletes from the GDR, their successes and biographies. Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-89602-348-9 .

Web links

Commons : Frank Baltrusch  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Frank Baltrusch in the database of Swimrankings.net (English)
• Frank Baltrusch in the database of Sports-Reference (English; archived from the original )

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Neues Deutschland , October 15, 1986, p. 7
2. ↑ Neues Deutschland, 12./13. November 1988, p. 4