Joaquín flower

Joaquín Blume medal table
do gymnastics
Spain
European Gymnastics Championships (apparatus gymnastics)
gold	1957 Paris	Individual all-around
gold	1957 Paris	Pommel horse
gold	1957 Paris	Ring gymnastics
gold	1957 Paris	Ingots
silver	1957 Paris	Horizontal bar

Joaquín Blume (born June 21, 1933 in Barcelona , † April 29, 1959 in the province of Teruel ) was a Spanish gymnast and namesake for the International Flower Festival Gran Canaria .

Life

origin

Joaquin was born in Barcelona in 1933 as the son of a German gymnastics teacher from Bremen and a Catalan pianist . The father was the head of a "Gimnasios" (gymnastics school), an innovation for Spain at the time. He practiced gymnastics according to the classic principles of German gymnastics rules and Scandinavian knowledge, as the optimum of physical exercises, in strict discipline and harmonious body control. From an early age he also trained his son in this sport; the success was overwhelming, Achim soon became champion of his school. After the outbreak of the Spanish civil war, the Blumes first moved to Bavaria , then to Hanover , which is why Joaquin grew up speaking three languages ​​- Spanish, Catalan and German. After 1939 the family managed to return to Spain .

death

On April 29, 1959, on the Barcelona - Madrid flight, Joaquin Blume, together with his wife and other sports comrades , crashed in an Iberia DC-3 in extreme weather conditions in an impassable mountain region in the province of Teruel not far from the village of Valdemeca (170 km from Madrid ) from. There were no survivors. The destination of his flight was Las Palmas, where he was to open the 1st Gran Canaria Festival.

Sporting successes

At the age of 15 he became a Spanish gymnastics champion. In 1952, the Spaniard presented himself for the first time at the Olympic Games in Helsinki . He finished 56th in the all- around competition. Then politics slowed his career: because Soviet troops intervened in Hungary in 1956, Spain canceled participation in the Olympic Games in Melbourne in 1956. A year later, Joaquin Blume was the best all-rounder at the second European Gymnastics Championships in apparatus gymnastics , which took place in Paris from May 20-21, 1957, beating the favored Russian Yuri Titow , who later became the FIG president for many years . He also won gold medals on the pommel horse , rings and bars . On the horizontal bar , he took second place.

Web links

• detailed biography
• UFA-Wochenschau 65/1957, flower at the artistic gymnastics championships in Paris from 0: 08: 40.00