Heike Drechsler

Heike Drechsler
Heike Drechsler (2015)
Full name	Heike Gabriela Drechsler
nation	DDR , Germany
birthday	16th December 1964 (age 55)
place of birth	Gera
size	181 cm
Weight	68 kg
Career
discipline	Sprint , long jump , heptathlon
Best performance	10.91 s ( 100 m ) 21.71 s ( 200 m ) 7.48 m (long jump)
society	SC Motor Jena , TuS Jena
status	resigned
End of career	2004
Medal table
Olympic games 2 × 1 × 2 × World championships 2 × 2 × 2 × European championships 5 × 1 × 0 × Indoor world championships 2 × 1 × 0 × European Indoor Championships 4 × 1 × 1 × World cup 3 × 0 × 0 × European Cup 1 × 0 × 0 ×
Olympic games silver Seoul 1988 Long jump bronze Seoul 1988 100 m bronze Seoul 1988 200 m gold Barcelona 1992 Long jump gold Sydney 2000 Long jump  World championships gold Helsinki 1983 Long jump silver Rome 1987 100 m bronze Rome 1987 Long jump silver Tokyo 1991 Long jump bronze Tokyo 1991 4 × 100 m gold Stuttgart 1993 Long jump  European championships gold Stuttgart 1986 200 m gold Stuttgart 1986 Long jump gold Split 1990 Long jump silver Split 1990 200 m gold Helsinki 1994 Long jump gold Budapest 1998 Long jump  Indoor world championships gold Indianapolis 1987 Long jump gold Indianapolis 1987 200 m silver Seville 1991 Long jump  European Indoor Championships bronze Athens 1985 Long jump gold Madrid 1986 Long jump gold Liévin 1987 Long jump gold Budapest 1988 Long jump gold Paris 1994 Long jump silver Ghent 2000 Long jump World cup gold Canberra 1985 Long jump gold Havana 1992 Long jump gold Johannesburg 1998 Long jump European Cup gold Bremen 2001 Long jump

Heike Gabriela Drechsler ( née Daute , married Drechsler-Bryggare ; born December 16, 1964 in Gera ) is a former German athlete who became Olympic champion in the long jump in 1992 and 2000 .

Athletic career

In 1974 she started athletics at the BSG Wismut Gera training center and moved to SC Motor Jena in 1977 . In 1983 in Helsinki she was the first world champion in the long jump . The then 18-year-old became the youngest long jump world champion to date and a celebrated athlete in the GDR . From 1986 to 1998 she won the gold medal in the long jump every time at the European Championships .

Heike Daute at a sports festival in Jena, 1984

She also had success in the sprint. She won gold in the 200-meter run at the 1986 European Championships , silver over 100 meters at the 1987 World Championships , bronze over 100 and 200 meters at the 1988 Olympic Games and silver over 200 meters at the 1990 European Championships .

At the Olympic Games in 1992 she was the first long jump Olympic champion, and the following year she won gold again at the World Championships in Stuttgart . She won her second Olympic gold in Sydney in 2000 .

In addition to the long jump and the sprint distances, Heike Drechsler also successfully competed in the heptathlon . In 1994 she achieved her best mark at the Décastar in Talence, France, and at the same time a world annual record of 6741 points (13.34 / -0.3 - 1.84 - 13.58 - 22.84 / -1.1 - 6.95 / 1, 0-40.64-2: 11.53). This was her first official all-around event in 13 years. In 1981 she had set a junior world record with 5891 points in her last heptathlon before that.

In 1986 she was GDR Sportswoman of the Year and 2000 Sportswoman of the Year in Germany. The Polish press agency PAP selected her as Europe's Sportswoman of the Year in 1986, and she received the same title from the Union of European Sports Journalists (UEPS). In 1998 she was awarded the Bambi . Numerous websites claim that Heike Drechsler was voted athlete of the century in 1999 ; However, this is not entirely correct: although she was shortlisted, Fanny Blankers-Koen was chosen . She was named World Athlete of the Century by the readers and experts of the national specialist magazine Leichtathletik and voted Long Jumper of the Century by the renowned Track & Field magazine .

Heike Drechsler's original goal was to end her career by participating in the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, but after problems with her form in qualifying, she withdrew her participation. On September 12, 2004, she competed for the last time at the ISTAF in Berlin and was bid farewell to active sport in front of over 60,000 spectators. The solemn end of her career was celebrated in Gera on May 6, 2005 . She was made an honorary citizen of the city. She is currently a sports expert in athletics for the sports broadcaster Eurosport . During the 2005 World Championships in Helsinki, Heike Drechsler was honored with a fair play prize.

Heike Drechsler started for the SC Motor Jena until 1990 , from 1991 to 1994 for the TuS Jena , 1995 and 1996 for the LAC Chemnitz, 1997 and 1998 for the Erfurt LAC, 1999 and 2000 for ABC Ludwigshafen and from 2001 for the Karlsruher SC . Her trainers were Peter Hein , Erich Drechsler (1934-2015) and Alain Blondel . In her playing days, she weighed 68 kg and was 1.81 m tall.

In 2014 she was the first German athlete to be accepted into the IAAF Hall of Fame alongside Marita Koch .

Private

Heike Drechsler was born as Heike Gabriela Daute and grew up with three siblings. Her father had a fatal accident in 1974. After graduating from high school, she completed an apprenticeship as a precision mechanic (optics) and studied education .

In 1986, like other top athletes, she became an FDJ member of the People's Chamber . She belonged to the GDR parliament until 1990 .

For several decades after the intervention of the Stasi records authority, Heike Drechsler was alleged to have worked as an unofficial employee ( IM Jump ) for the Ministry for State Security (MfS) for several decades . This claim was refuted in October 2018 in a report by political scientist Helmut Müller-Enbergs commissioned by her . In fact, according to the MfS's report, it was recorded as a VIM (preliminary IM), i.e. as a potential IM.

In 1984 she married Andreas Drechsler, who was then a sports student and substitute football goalkeeper for FC Carl Zeiss Jena . After the divorce, Heike Drechsler was granted custody of her son, born in 1989, in 1997. From 1995 to 2007 she was in a relationship with the former French decathlete Alain Blondel (* 1962).

The name "Spix", which she herself gives as her birth name, comes from a couple from Aachen with whom she has been known since the end of the GDR . Heike Drechsler was adopted by them in 1999.

In February 2016 Drechsler took part in the show Ewige Helden on the TV channel VOX with other former world-class athletes . At the end of February 2016, she had an episode role on In allerfreund - The young doctors .

Heike Drechsler lives in Berlin. She works at the Barmer Ersatzkasse in company health management and gives lectures on prevention, motivation and life-work balance. Heike Drechsler has been the ambassador of the German Rheumatism League since November 2016.

From April 2017 Drechsler completed a referee course. At the European Athletics Championships in Berlin in 2018 , she was used as a referee.

In January 2019, Drechsler married the former Finnish hurdler Arto Bryggare , with whom she got together in 2016, and took the name Drechsler-Bryggare .

• 

  at a sports festival in Dresden, 1984

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  at the European Championships in 2002

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  at the 2007 World Championships

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  Press conference 2008

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  Heike Drechsler and adoptive mother Inge Spix, 2016

Records

Long jump:

• 1983: 7.14 m ( Bratislava / Juniors)
• 1985: 7.44 m ( Berlin )
• 1986: 7.45 m ( Tallinn )
• 1988: 7.48 m ( Neubrandenburg ) German record (for comparison: the current world record (status: Sept. 2019) is 7.52 m, set on June 11, 1988 by Galina Tschistjakowa )
• 1992 succeeded Heike Drechsler in Italian Sestriere with 7.63 m width a fable, which, however, by a little too much tail wind (2.1 m / s - allowed 2.0 m / s) was favored.

200 meter run

• 1986: 21.71 s ( Jena )
• 1986: 21.71 s ( Stuttgart )

Heptathlon

• 1981: 5891 points (juniors)
• 1994: 6741 points ( Talence )

Doping in the GDR

In 1991, anti-doping opponents Brigitte Berendonk and Werner Franke were able to secure several dissertations and post-doctoral theses by former GDR doping researchers at the Bad Saarow Military Medical Academy (MMA). Based on the work, the state-organized doping practice of many well-known GDR competitive athletes, including Heike Drechsler, was reconstructed. According to the information, Heike Drechsler received high doses of Oral-Turinabol plus several testosterone ester injections from 1982 to 1984 as part of bridging doping before competitions. Drechsler lost a lawsuit against Brigitte Berendonk, who accused her of lying, in 1993. In the Drechsler case, there are still complete annual dosage plans and diagrams for the development of competition performance depending on the dosage level.

Appearances in film and television

• 1998: Alfredissimo , episode of January 16, 1998
• 2011: Willis VIPs, episode of September 25, 2011 ("How was the jump from east to west?")
• 2016: The big ProSieben Völkerball Championship 2016
• 2016: In all friendship - The young doctors (TV series, episode Wunder )
• 2018: NDR talk show episode from February 2, 2018

Awards (selection)

• 1984 and 1988: Patriotic Order of Merit in Gold
• 1986: Star of Friendship between Nations in gold
• 1986: World Sportswoman of the Year ( La Gazzetta dello Sport )
• 1992: Silver bay leaf
• 2005: Honorary citizenship of the city of Gera
• 2014: Induction into the IAAF Hall of Fame

plant

• Heike Drechsler and Monika Zilliken: Fit with kids - exercise fun for the whole family , Südwest Verlag, Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3-517-08590-6

literature

• Heike Drechsler, Esther Zschieschow: Jump. Autobiography. Sportverlag, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-328-00933-7 .
• Short biography for:  Drechsler, Heike . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 1. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .

Web links

Commons : Heike Drechsler  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Heike Drechsler in the catalog of the German National Library
• Official website
• Heike Drechsler in the database of World Athletics (English)
• Heike Drechsler in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )
• World Cup history. What does ... Heike Drechsler actually do? Andreas Schlebach, NDR Online at ard.ndr.de Sportschau, as of June 24, 2009, accessed on November 6, 2013

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Awards. International Athletic Foundation, archived from the original on July 16, 2004 ; accessed on November 24, 2014 . 
2. ↑ Christian Witt: Long jumper: The deep breaks in the life of Heike Drechsler . December 14, 2014 ( welt.de [accessed October 7, 2019]).
3. ↑ Drechsler: No jumping for "IM Jump". In: Focus . September 27, 1993, archived from the original on November 24, 2014 ; accessed on November 24, 2014 (issue 39/1993). 
4. ↑ See Uwe Müller / Grit Hartmann: Forward and forget! Cadres, informers and accomplices - The dangerous legacy of the SED dictatorship , Berlin 2009, p. 215.
5. ↑ Heike Otto: "IM Jump" - report refutes accusation . Published on October 24, 2018 on tagesschau.de . Accessed October 24, 2018.
6. ↑ Andreas Rabel / Ulrike John: "Get out of my curriculum vitae." To this day, Olympic champion Heike Drechsler was repeatedly exposed to Stasi allegations. An expert opinion relieves them. In: Thüringer Allgemeine of October 25, 2018, p. 23.
7. ↑ the ARD radio feature: perpetrators who weren't? From Heike Otto. https://www1.wdr.de/radio/wdr5/sendung/dok5/stasi-olympia-100.html .
8. ↑ ^{a b} Note in: Interview in Welt am Sonntag of December 14, 2014, p. 32
9. ↑ About Heike Drechsler. In: nachrichten.at. Archived from the original on November 24, 2014 ; Retrieved November 24, 2014 . 
10. ↑ VOX: Eternal Heroes: Candidates , accessed on March 4, 2016
11. ↑ rheuma-liga.de of November 9, 2016: The Olympic winner Heike Drechsler is the ambassador of the German Rheumatism League , accessed on March 4, 2017
12. ↑ Heike Drechsler as referee at the pit , accessed on August 8, 2018
13. ↑ Ex-long jump star with a new name - Heike Drechsler got married for the second time. In: mz-web.de. May 24, 2019, accessed May 27, 2019 . 
14. ↑ Brigitte Berendonk: Doping documents - From research to fraud. Springer-Verlag, Berlin 1991, ISBN 3-540-53742-2 , p. 125, table 7
15. ↑ See Uwe Müller / Grit Hartman: Forward and forget! Cadres, informers and accomplices - The dangerous legacy of the SED dictatorship , Berlin 2009, p. 215.
16. ↑ Brigitte Berendonk: Doping documents - From research to fraud. Springer-Verlag, Berlin 1991, ISBN 3-540-53742-2 , p. 122, fig. 6
17. ↑ Brigitte Berendonk: Doping documents - From research to fraud. Springer-Verlag, Berlin 1991, ISBN 3-540-53742-2 , p. 133, fig. 11
18. ↑ KiKA children's channel from ARD and ZDF: KiKA - How was the jump from east to west? June 7, 2016, accessed November 15, 2019 . 
19. ↑ edition of 12.11.1988. New Germany Archive, p. 4 , accessed on May 25, 2020 .