Gerald Mortag

Gerald Mortag

Gerald Mortag (2014)
To person
Date of birth	November 8, 1958
nation	German Democratic Republic
discipline	Railway (endurance) / road
height	1.75 meters
Racing weight	70 kilograms
End of career	1985
Most important successes
Olympic games 1980 - team pursuit
Team (s) as sporting director
1994-2009	Team Köstritzer
Team (s) as coach
since 1987	SG Wismut Gera / SSV Gera / Thuringian Cycling Association
Last updated: December 11, 2017

Gerald Mortag (front) at a race in Berlin in 1977

Gerald Mortag (born November 8, 1958 in Gera ) is a German cycling trainer and former German cyclist who started for the GDR .

Athletic career

As a child, Gerald Mortag mainly played soccer . After he had successfully participated in the elimination for the Little Peace Tour, cycling trainers noticed him and he started cycling training at the BSG Empor St. Gangloff. A short time later he was brought to the training center SG Wismut Gera . He won his first GDR championship title in 1975 in the single pursuit of the Youth A class, and he was also able to win the title at the Children's and Youth Partakiad in the same year.

As a track cyclist , Mortag was three times world champion in the 4000 meter team pursuit for the GDR (1977, 1978, 1979). At the 1980 Summer Olympics , he won the silver medal in the same discipline with Uwe Unterwalder , Volker Winkler and Matthias Wiegand , for which he was awarded the Patriotic Order of Merit. He also won four GDR championship titles on the winter track with SG Wismut Gera : 1977 and 1980 in two-man team driving, 1982 in team pursuit and 1983 in single pursuit. On the Werner-Seelenbinder-Halle track in Berlin, he won the "International Two-Team Championship" in 1982 with Lutz Haueisen as a partner. In 1984 he achieved another victory, this time with Jörg Köhler as a partner.

Activity as a trainer

In 1987 he received his trainer diploma at the DHfK Leipzig . Until 2009 he was the sporting director of the Thuringian Energy Team together with Jens Lang . He is the chairman of the Radsport Gera eV sponsorship group as well as a trainer and base manager at SSV Gera 1990 .

Among his protégés were cyclists such as Marcel Barth , Eric Baumann , Sascha Damrow , John Degenkolb , André Greipel , Robert Retschke , Andreas Schillinger , Sebastian Siedler and Robert Wagner .

successes

1976

• Junior World Champion - Team Pursuit (with Detlef Macha , Jürgen Lippold and Olaf Hill )
• Junior World Championship - Single Pursuit

1977

• Amateur World Champion - Team Pursuit (with Norbert Dürpisch , Volker Winkler and Matthias Wiegand )

1978

• Amateur World Champion - Team Pursuit (with Uwe Unterwalder , Volker Winkler and Matthias Wiegand )

1979

• Amateur World Champion - Team Pursuit (with Lutz Haueisen , Volker Winkler and Axel Grosser )

1980

• Olympic silver Olympic Games - team pursuit (with Volker Winkler , Matthias Wiegand and Uwe Unterwalder )

1983

• GDR champions - two-man team driving (with Jörg Köhler )

1984

• Friendship competitions - team pursuit (with Bernd Dittert , Mario Hernig , Volker Winkler and Carsten Wolf )

Web links

Commons : Gerald Mortag  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Gerald Mortag in the Radsportseiten.net database
• Gerald Mortag in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )

Individual evidence

1. ^ German Cycling Association of the GDR (ed.): The cyclist . No. 32/1975 . Berlin 1975, p. 2 .
2. ↑ ^{a b} Cycling coach Gerald Mortag celebrates his 50th birthday today. In: ssv-gera.de. November 8, 2008, accessed December 11, 2017 . 
3. ^ German Cycling Association of the GDR (ed.): The cyclist . No. 30/1979 . Berlin 1979, p. 3 .
4. ↑ Neues Deutschland , August 22, 1980, p. 4.
5. ↑ GDR cycling championships - winter track
6. ↑ The chair remains with Gerald Mortag , Förderkreis Radsport eV, February 23, 2008