Johan Harmenberg

Johan Harmenberg, 1980

Johan Georg Harmenberg (born September 8, 1954 in Stockholm ) is a former Swedish fencer who won the Olympic gold medal with the sword in 1980.

Harmenberg fought for the Stockholm club Föreningen for Fäktkonstens Främjande . In 1976 he could not qualify for the Swedish team that won the gold medal at the Olympic Games in Montreal. At the 1977 World Championships in Buenos Aires, he was not only part of the Swedish team, but was their outstanding fencer. He won the individual competition in front of his compatriot Rolf Edling , in the team competition both won the final against Switzerland together with the Olympic champions Leif Högström and Hans Jacobsen .

Harmenberg won team bronze again in 1978 at the World Cup . In 1977, 1979 and 1980 he won an individual World Cup competition, in 1977 and 1980 with the team. At the 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow, Harmenberg won the individual ranking, and to this day (as of 2008) he is the only Swedish individual fencing Olympic champion. The team in the same line-up as in 1977 lost to the Poles in the second round and ended up in fifth place. In 1981 Harmenberg ended his career and concentrated on studying medicine. In 1997 Johan Harmenberg was inducted into the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame .

Harmenberg had already studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for two years during his career . Today Harmenberg is a renowned doctor in Stockholm with various publications in the field of immunology.

literature

• Volker Kluge : Summer Olympic Games. The Chronicle II. London 1948 - Tokyo 1964. Sportverlag Berlin, Berlin 1998, ISBN 3-328-00740-7 .

Web links

• Johan Harmenberg in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )
• Johan Harmenberg on jewsinsports

Footnotes

1. ↑ According to this source , the Swedes won bronze in 1978, some sources (such as jewsinsports) state 1979 instead of 1978.