Heinz Fütterer

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Heinrich Ludwig "Heinz" Fütterer (born October 14, 1931 in Illingen ; † February 10, 2019 there ) was a German athlete and Olympic medalist who was a successful sprinter in the 1950s . Heinz Fütterer started for the Karlsruher SC . In his playing days he was 1.72 m tall and weighed 72 kg. His greatest successes were three European championships in 1954 and 1958, the setting of the 100-meter world record by Jesse Owens in 1954, a new indoor world record over 60 meters (1955) and an Olympic bronze medal in 1956 with the 4-by-100-meter relay . He achieved 536 international victories and was not once defeated from 1953 to 1955 and called "white lightning".

Life

Heinz Fütterer (left) in a 4 x 100 meter relay race in 1956

Heinz Fütterer came from a fishing family and initially played sports as a footballer at FC Illingen. His talent was discovered in 1943 at the age of twelve at the sports festival, when he scored 312 points in a three-way fight (including 72 m throwing the ball) and the person in charge in the circle couldn't believe it. At that time, the levels for honors were 240 and 280 points. He then repeated the three-way battle in Rastatt and scored 314 points.

His career began under coach Lorenz Hettel (1947-1949) at SV Germania Bietigheim , with whom he was the first German youth champion in the long jump in 1949 . He soon gave up the long jump because it was too painful barefoot. He won his first 100 meter sprint shortly after the end of the war as a "barefooter".

From 1950 to 1952 he was trained by Robert Suhr and by Helmut Häfele from 1952 until the end of his career (1958).

In 1952, he was responsible for the Olympic Games qualified in Helsinki, but suffered just before the start of the games a muscle tear. His heyday began in 1953 with three chest-wide races against Art Bragg in Milan, London and Oslo. In Berlin he beat Bragg for the first time (approx. 10.4 and 21.1 s). In the same year, Gaston Meyer , publisher of the French sports newspaper L'Équipe , coined the name "The White Lightning" as a feeder crossed the finish line in front of four Afro-American runners at the indoor sports festival in Paris.

On October 31, 1954, he set Jesse Owens' world record in the 100-meter run in Japan with a hand-stopped 10.2 seconds . Also in 1954 he set the European record over 200 meters in 20.9 s and improved it to 20.8 s in the same year. At the end of the year, sport journalists voted him Sportsman of the Year in Germany, despite the German national soccer team's World Cup victory.

In February 1955 he set an indoor world record over 60 meters with 6.5 seconds.

1956 was the first sports festival in May where he scored far too good times for the training plan. In July he started the elimination competitions for the all-German Olympic team over 100 meters and noticed a slight muscle hardening. That's why he didn't want to start over 200 meters. As he suspected, a loudspeaker announcement was made by the GDR that he wanted to start. So he tried it because he didn't want to disappoint the audience and had to give up on the curve with a muscle tear and be carried off the court with the stretcher. He could not make up the subsequent training deficit because the recovery took much longer then than it does today. At the Olympics, between the end of November and December 1, he only ran the 100 meters and the sprint relay. With the 4 x 100 meter relay , Fütterer won the bronze medal, in the individual race over 100 meters he was eliminated with 10.6 seconds in the intermediate run.

At the German championships in 1958 he was third over 100 meters behind Manfred Germar and Armin Hary . At the ASV sports festival in Cologne on August 29, 1958, it ran in the line-up of Lauer , Steinbach , Fütterer, Germar over 4 times 100 meters world record in 39.5 s. In 1958, Fütterer said goodbye to athletics because he had meanwhile started a family that he rarely saw because of his numerous sporting events.

Heinz Fütterer lived in Elchesheim-Illingen on Olympiaweg. In 2004 he gave his medals and trophies to his home parish. They are in the local history museum, the old Illingen church.

Heinz Fütterer was originally a trained fisherman, then on the advice of Suhr a commercial clerk at Badenwerk (1950-1959), then at Puma until 1988 and finally as a sports advisor to a company that built space-saving and environmentally friendly golf courses .

successes

Honors

literature

  • Alfons Bitterwolf, Gustav Bitterwolf: Heinz Fütterer, the white lightning. Biography. Bitterwolf, Illingen / Rastatt 1955.
  • Michael Dittrich, Daniel Merkel: The "White Lightning" - The Life of Heinz Fütterer. Verlag Die Werkstatt, Göttingen 2006, ISBN 3-89533-547-9 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ “The White Lightning” is dead: Heinz Fütterer died at 87. In: stern.de. February 10, 2019, accessed February 10, 2019 . Silke Bernhart: Heinz Fütterer died at the age of 87. In: Leichtathletik.de . February 10, 2019, accessed February 11, 2019 .
  2. ↑ a b c d “The White Lightning” is 60 years old. In: Pforzheimer Zeitung . October 12, 1991, p. 7.
  3. ↑ a b Alexander Pochert: Heinz Fütterer - "small celebration in the Black Forest." In: Leichtathletik.de. October 14, 2006, accessed on February 11, 2019 (interview).
  4. ↑ Information from the Federal President's Office
personal data
SURNAME Feeder, Heinz
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Fütterer, Heinrich Ludwig (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German athlete and Olympic medalist
DATE OF BIRTH October 14, 1931
PLACE OF BIRTH Illingen
DATE OF DEATH February 10, 2019
Place of death Elchesheim-Illingen