Gold foursome

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Since its successes in the 1970s, the team of the Federation of German Cyclists in the 4,000 m team pursuit has been referred to in the media as the gold foursome (also Kilian foursome ) .

The name goes back to the many gold medals that the team achieved in various line-ups at UCI track world championships and the Olympic Games in the 1960s and 1970s. Since Gustav Kilian was responsible as a trainer for a long time in these years and a high proportion of these successes was attributed to him, the term Kilian-Vierer was also common.

Only from 1972 to 1976 the German foursome won five times the World Cup and won both the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich as well as in the games in Montreal the gold medal. In total, German drivers under Gustav Kilian won 16 gold medals in the team pursuit. In 1973, the gold four was voted Team of the Year .

This winning streak ended in 1977 at the World Railroad Championships in St. Cristobal / Venezuela, when the unbeatable gold foursome lost in the final against the GDR team, which then took on the leading role in the team pursuit for many years.

Well-known drivers in this foursome were Udo Hempel , Günter Haritz , Jürgen Kißner , Karl Link , Peter Vonhof , Günther Schumacher , Hans Lutz , Ernst Claußmeyer , Dietrich Thurau , Rainer Podlesch , Gregor Braun and Rolf Gölz .

Scandal in Mexico in 1968

At the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City there was an incident on October 21, 1968 at the final run of the (West) German four-man with Jürgen Kißner , Karl Link, Udo Hempel and Karl-Heinz Henrichs against the Danish four-man, the one in West German Newspapers caused a sensation and was described as a "scandal". The driver Kißner had touched his teammate Henrichs on the last lap of the run, according to his later statements, in order to avoid a collision, which threatened due to coordination problems within the team. The four of coach Kilian, who was far ahead of the Danes, was not only disqualified, but should not even receive the silver medal. When the Italian team was asked to receive the silver medal, they refused.

Kißner originally came from the GDR, had left his team in Cologne four years earlier and had stayed in West Germany. Since one of the referees at the Olympic Games, Jürgen Gallinge, came from the GDR, the German media suspected that he had sanctioned Kißner's behavior “out of revenge for Cologne”. On the other hand, in the "Jury d'Appell", which was the second instance to confirm the judges' decision, Heinz Dietrich was another sports official from the GDR. He had been General Secretary of the German Cycling Association of the GDR and head of the team from which Kissner had left in 1964. Some commentators sharply criticized the representatives of the Association of German Cyclists because they would not have prevented the jury from being composed mainly of representatives from the Eastern Bloc in advance . Because of the lost gold medal, Kißner himself was insulted by West German cycling fans as a “traitor” and “zone pig”.

In fact, at least the disqualification was formally right, even if not the refusal of the silver medal, which the four-man theoretically had already won by reaching the final. The UCI rules prohibit the riders from touching each other when chasing teams, even though there were discussions about how the term pousser - in the competition rules , which were only available in French at the time - should be translated: as touching or pushing ; A further complicating factor was that none of the West German functionaries spoke French on site. In November 1968, the World Cycling Association for Amateurs, Fédération Internationale Amateur de Cyclisme (FIAC), which was responsible for organizing the cycling competitions at the Olympic Games, decided against the votes of the representatives from the Soviet Union and the GDR to award the drivers of the West German four-wheeler the silver medal. The handover took place during the Cyclo-cross World Championships in February 1969 in Magstadt . Kilian called the GDR competition judge Gallinge a "gold thief" until the end of his life.

Web links

References and comments

  1. ↑ For example, when honoring the sports press with the Golden Ribbon , s. Website of the Golden Ribbon ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.vds-berlin.de
  2. ↑ The term gold quad was also used in the episode for successful German railway quad, z. B. for the Olympic champions of 2000, cf. radsport-news.com from September 28, 2000: Gold foursome starts at the Hessen Tour
  3. ↑ radsport-news.com October 20, 2010: «Sechstagkaiser» Gustav Kilian died
  4. ↑ a b c Renate Franz : How the four-man lost gold at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico . In: Association of historical bicycles (ed.): The bone shaker. Magazine for lovers of historical bicycles . tape 56 , no. 2 , 2013, p. 14 .
  5. ↑ Renate Franz: How the four-wheeler lost gold at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico . In: Association of historical bicycles (ed.): The bone shaker. Magazine for lovers of historical bicycles . tape 56 , no. 2 , 2013, p. 12 .