Gabriele Seyfert

Gabriele Seyfert
nation	German Democratic Republic
birthday	November 23, 1948
place of birth	Chemnitz
size	160 cm
Weight	47 kg
Career
discipline	Single run
Trainer	Jutta Müller
status	resigned
End of career	1970
Medal table
Olympic medals 0 × 1 × 0 × World Cup medals 2 × 3 × 0 × EM medals 3 × 2 × 0 ×
winter Olympics silver Grenoble 1968 Ladies  World figure skating championships silver Davos 1966 Ladies silver Vienna 1967 Ladies silver Geneva 1968 Ladies gold Colorado Springs 1969 Ladies gold Ljubljana 1970 Ladies  European figure skating championships silver Bratislava 1966 Ladies gold Ljubljana 1967 Ladies silver Västerås 1968 Ladies gold Garmisch-Partenkirchen 1969 Ladies gold Leningrad 1970 Ladies

Gabriele "Gaby" Seyfert (born November 23, 1948 in Chemnitz ) is a former German figure skater who started in a single run for the GDR . She is the world champion of 1969 and 1970 and the European champion of 1967 , 1969 and 1970 .

Career

Seyfert was figure skating champion in the GDR from 1961 to 1970 and holds the record at GDR championships with these ten titles . She began her career at SC Wismut Karl-Marx-Stadt , started in 1963 for SC Karl-Marx-Stadt and was trained by her mother Jutta Müller .

Gaby Seyfert alongside Emmerich Danzer and Jutta Müller (1966)

From 1965 to 1970 Seyfert was among the best in the world. In 1966 she won her first international medals. She was Vice European Champion in Bratislava behind Regine Heitzer and Vice World Champion in Davos behind the American Peggy Fleming . The following year she became European champion for the first time in Ljubljana and again vice world champion behind Fleming in Vienna . In the 1968 Olympic year she won three silver medals, at the European Championships in Västerås behind Hana Mašková , at the World Championships in Geneva and the Olympic Games in Grenoble behind Peggy Fleming. After the resignation of the American, who she could never defeat, she was the best figure skater in the world. In 1969 she won her second European championship title in Garmisch-Partenkirchen and became world champion for the first time in Colorado Springs . In 1970 she defended both titles and won her third European Championship title in Leningrad and her second World Cup title in Ljubljana .

Although Seyfert was overshadowed by Peggy Fleming for years , she became the GDR's first world-famous sports star. In 1966 she was voted GDR sportswoman of the year . In 1968 she caused a sensation because she was the first woman to achieve the triple Rittberger in an ice skating freestyle .

In 1970, she surprisingly ended her athletic career, although she was traded as a favorite for the 1972 Winter Olympics . In 1972 she married Eberhard Rüger , a former GDR champion in ice dancing. Both were listed as unofficial employees by the Ministry of State Security ; As an IM with the code name “Perle”, Seyfert repeatedly gained advantages in terms of professional advancement and substantial cash donations. In 1974 she became the mother of a daughter named Sheila. The marriage with Eberhard Rüger was divorced in 1975. She later married Jochen Messerschmidt, this marriage also failed.

In contrast to her rival Peggy Fleming, she could not switch to the ice revue Holiday on Ice because the GDR authorities refused to accept offers. Her relationship with figure skating world champion Emmerich Danzer was also prohibited by the GDR authorities. Gaby Seyfert initially worked as a trainer and briefly looked after the future Olympic champion Anett Pötzsch . She then studied languages ​​and worked as an interpreter. From 1985 to 1991 she directed the ice ballet of the Berlin Friedrichstadtpalast , where she also performed herself. After it closed, she became a customer advisor in a service company in Berlin. In March 1996 she started working for the Gegenbauer company in Berlin.

She lives in Berlin-Karow . In April 2011 she married Egbert Körner in Hawaii .

Results

Competition / year	1961	1962	1963	1964	1965	1966	1967	1968	1969	1970
winter Olympics				19th				2.
World championships		21st			5.	2.	2.	2.	1.	1.
European championships	21st	12.	10.		5.	2.	1.	2.	1.	1.
GDR championships	1.	1.	1.	1.	1.	1.	1.	1.	1.	1.

Publications

• Gaby Seyfert: There has to be something else: my life - more than duty and free choice . 1st edition. Das Neue Berlin, Berlin 1998, ISBN 3-360-00869-3 .
• Gaby Seyfert: There is always room on cloud one: single seeks single . Das Neue Berlin, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-360-00935-5 .

literature

• Klaus Gallinat:  Seyfert, Gabriele . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 2. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .

Web links

Commons : Gabriele Seyfert  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Gabriele Seyfert in the catalog of the German National Library
• Gabriele Seyfert in the database of Sports-Reference (English; archived from the original )
• Stasi, there was something else, Gaby! , Focus , March 29, 1999

Individual evidence

1. ↑ - Shadow on the ice. Stasi and doping entanglements in the figure skating center Karl-Marx-Stadt . In: Deutschlandfunk . March 6, 2011 ( deutschlandfunk.de ).
2. ↑ Gaby Seyfert: There has to be something else: my life - more than duty and free choice . Das Neue Berlin, Berlin 1998, ISBN 3-360-00869-3 , p. 323 .
3. ↑ Ex-figure skating star Gaby Seyfert gets married in Hawaii. In: Mitteldeutsche Zeitung . April 19, 2011, accessed February 15, 2018 .