Karin Enke

Karin Enke
nation	German Democratic Republic
birthday	June 20, 1961
place of birth	Dresden, GDR
Career
society	SC unit Dresden
Trainer	Rainer mouth
status	resigned
End of career	November 26, 1988
Medal table
Olympic medals 3 × 4 × 1 × World Cup medals 11 × 4 × 0 ×
winter Olympics gold 1980 Lake Placid 500 m gold 1984 Sarajevo 1000 m gold 1984 Sarajevo 1500 m silver 1984 Sarajevo 500 m silver 1984 Sarajevo 3000 m silver 1988 Calgary 1000 m silver 1988 Calgary 1500 m bronze 1988 Calgary 500 m  All around world championships gold 1982 Inzell All-around gold 1984 Deventer All-around gold 1986 The Hague All-around gold 1987 West Allis All-around gold 1988 Skien All-around silver 1981 Sainte-Foy All-around silver 1983 Karl-Marx-Stadt All-around  Sprint World Championships gold 1980 West Allis All-around gold 1981 Grenoble All-around gold 1983 Helsinki All-around gold 1984 Trondheim All-around gold 1986 Karuizawa All-around gold 1987 Sainte-Foy All-around silver 1982 Alkmaar All-around silver 1988 West Allis All-around

Karin Enke (born June 20, 1961 in Dresden ) is a former German speed skater . With three gold, four silver and one bronze medal, she is the most successful winter Olympic athlete in the GDR and helped shape the top of the world in the 1980s. She achieved her three Olympic victories at the 1980 and 1984 Games over three different distances. In national competitions she started for the SC Einheit Dresden .

Their four marriages and the associated name changes also caused a stir. From May 1981 to April 1982 she was called Karin Busch , from June 1984 to June 1991 Karin Kania , from November 1993 to March 2009 Karin Enke-Richter . Today Karin Enke lives with her husband Peter Mayer-Enke near Dresden. Since successfully completing her education studies at the TU Dresden in July 2009, she has been a qualified pedagogue and works as the managing director of Gesop gGmbH.

Career

Karin Enke started ice skating at the age of 4 1/2 and developed into a master class figure skater at SC Einheit Dresden. At the European Figure Skating Championships in 1977 she reached 9th place. Despite this remarkable international debut, she then decided to change the sport and started in speed skating in the following years.

Her international speed skating career began in 1980 with a modest 17th place at the all-around world championships. Just four weeks later she became world champion in the sprint fourfold, two weeks later Olympic champion over 500 meters in Lake Placid . In the following years she quickly rose to become the dominant runner on the international high-speed scene. In the winners lists, she alternated with the other top runners, Christa Rothenburger , Andrea Schöne (Ehrig) and Gabi Zange (Schönbrunn). But while Rothenburger specialized more in the sprint courses and Schöne on the longer distances and Zange mostly took second or third place behind them, Karin Enke mastered all the courses. Although she was a little better over the shorter and middle distances, she often took top positions over 3000 and later 5000 meters. She has long been considered the best all-rounder in the world, which she confirmed with eleven world championship titles (6 × sprint and 5 × all-around) and ten world records (between 1982 and 1987) on all distances from 500 to 3000 meters and in all-around. 21 World Cup victories complete their track record. In her three European Championship participations from 1981 to 1983, she took second place. Later she left the participation to her teammates and, as the best runner, concentrated on the more important events such as the World Cup and the Olympic Games. She was the first woman to run the 1500 meters in under two minutes. This world record (1:59:30 min), set in 1986 on the Medeo high mountain railway ( Alma-Ata , Kazakhstan ), lasted well into the folding ice skate era and was not improved until 1997 by Catriona LeMay Doan .

Up until the era of Gunda Niemann-Stirnemann , Karin Enke was the most successful German speed skater. In contrast to her successor, experts unanimously certified her aesthetically perfect and technically one of the most sophisticated running styles, which ideally combined strength and speed. After the Olympic silver medal over 1500 meters in Calgary in 1988 and the subsequent world championship title in the all-around a few weeks later, she ended her international career. After the 1987/88 season, she and her teammates Zange and Ehrig announced the official resignation of the "big three" of speed skating.

Karin Enke started for the former SC Einheit Dresden (successor: ESC Dresden , since 2001 ice skating club Dresden ) and was looked after by successful trainer Rainer Mund .

In 1984 she was awarded the Gold Patriotic Order of Merit . At the end of her sports career, she received the Star of Friendship of Nations in gold in 1988 .

More Achievements

European championships - all-around

• 3 × silver (1981; 1982; 1983)

GDR championships - all-around

• 2 × gold (1982; 1983)

GDR championships - sprint all-around

• 2 × gold (1984; 1986)
• 1 × silver (1983)

GDR championships - individual

• 500 m
  • 3 × gold (1983; 1984; 1987)
  • 2 × silver (1986; 1988)
  • 1 × bronze (1980)
• 1000 m
  • 5 × gold (1980; 1983; 1984; 1986; 1988)
• 1500 m
  • 3 × gold (1983; 1984; 1988)
  • 2 × silver (1980; 1986)
• 3000 m
  • 1 × gold (1983)
  • 1 × silver (1986)
• 5000 m
  • 1 × gold (1983)

photos

Karin Enke at previous competitions

Karin Kania (second from right) together with Andrea Ehrig , Gabi Zange and Sabine Brehm at their official farewells from competitive sports on the sidelines of the 1988 World Cup in Berlin

literature

• Short biography for:  Kania, Karin . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 1. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .

Web links

Commons : Karin Enke  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Statistics at speed skating news
• Karin Enke in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Interview Karin Enke: The beginning of a figure skating career
2. ↑ biography at Sports-Reference (English)
3. ↑ World record development, women 1,500 m , speedskatingnews (women 1,500 m call up)