Gerd Wessig

Gerd Wessig, 1980

Gerd Wessig (born July 16, 1959 in Lübz ) is a German athlete who - starting for the GDR - became 1980 Olympic champion in the high jump .

Life

In 1979 he was runner-up in the GDR. In 1980 he was surprisingly GDR champion shortly before the Olympic Games with a personal best of 2.30 m and was subsequently nominated for the GDR team. At the Olympic Games in Moscow he was one of the extended favorites, but the fact that he not only won the gold medal with 2.36 m, but also set a new world record, was considered a sensation. He was the first high jumper to improve the high jump world record at the Olympic Games . The previous world record holder Jacek Wszoła from Poland became the silver medalist .

At the GDR championships in 1986

After the Olympic Games he tried his hand at decathlon (best: 8015 points, May 23, 1983 in Neubrandenburg; corresponds to 7974 points according to the table valid from 1985), but turned back to the high jump due to frequent injuries. In 1985 he came second in the European Cup , in 1986 he reached seventh place at the European Championships in Stuttgart, in 1984, 1985, 1986, 1988 and 1989 he was GDR champion.

Gerd Wessig was 2.01 m tall and weighed 88 kg during his active time and started for SC Traktor Schwerin (trainer: Bernd Jahn ). In the documents on state doping in the GDR that became public after the reunification , the name of Wessig was also found among the doped athletes.

Wessig attended the John Brinckman School in Goldberg and completed an apprenticeship as a cook and a distance learning course as a home educator. Since the end of his active career, he has been running a company in Lübstorf- Rugensee ( Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania ) that sells sports equipment, sports and leisure facilities as well as parks and gardens. At Schweriner SC he became head of the athletics department. He married the long jumper Christine Schima (best performance: 6.96 m, 1984; seventh place at the European Athletics Championships in 1982 ), their son Daniel Wessig was a German junior national player in handball .

literature

• Olaf W. Reimann:  Wessig, Gerd . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 2. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .
• Klaus Amrhein: Biographical manual on the history of German athletics 1898–2005 . 2 volumes. Darmstadt 2005 published on German Athletics Promotion and Project Society.

Web links

Commons : Gerd Wessig  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Gerd Wessig in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )

• Literature about Gerd Wessig in the state bibliography MV

Individual evidence

1. ^ Brigitte Berendonk : Doping. From research to fraud . Reinbek 1992, ISBN 3-499-18677-2 , p. 184