Karl Adam (rowing coach)

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Karl Adam, 1968
Karl Adam (bronze relief)

Karl Adam (born May 2, 1912 in Vorhalle , today Hagen ; † June 18, 1976 in Bad Salzuflen ) was a German rowing coach . He was a co-founder of the Ratzeburg rowing club and the Ratzeburg rowing academy , which he directed from 1964 to 1976, and was also called the “rowing professor” from Lake Ratzeburg . From 1969 to 1976 he was the representative of the coaching body elected by the coaching committee for all sports on the board of the federal committee for competitive sports .

Life

During the Third Reich , the NSDAP member Karl Adam taught at the National Political Education Institute (Napola) in Bensberg . During the Second World War , Adam was badly wounded by shrapnel as a sergeant and gun leader in Normandy . After the war, Adam was senior teacher of mathematics, physics and physical education at the in Ratzeburg based Lauenburg Gelehrtenschule . Through his own theoretical studies and empirical-experimental investigations in the field of rowing, he came to completely new, groundbreaking insights that revolutionized the entire sport of rowing. As a result, Karl Adam was one of the big three among the self-taught coaches in German sport, along with Emil Beck (fencing) and Gustav Kilian (track bike). Adam, who had never rowed himself and was a German university champion in boxing, introduced new training methods that were also successfully used in other sports in a specified form.

This includes fast technique and interval training . Through the mathematical-physical approach he created to problems related to rowing, Adam also achieved improvements in the shape and arrangement of the oars and their blades. Due to the singular work of Karl Adam as theoretician and practitioner of high-performance rowing, Ratzeburg, which until then had been completely insignificant in racing rowing, advanced to the international "Mecca of rowing": coaches from all the major rowing nations "made a pilgrimage" to the Ratzeburg rowing club to get from Karl Adam to experience first hand the principles of the "new rowing", the practical application of which led to the worldwide success of the Ratzeburg rowers.

Germany eighth from 1968

From 1959 to 1967, the boats he trained won seven titles at world and European championships. In addition, “his” Germany eighth won the Olympic gold medal in Rome in 1960 and in Mexico City in 1968 . Karl Adam came up with the concept of the responsible athlete , which he held against the externally controlled athletes during the Cold War . The concept was used again and again in the following years to illustrate the educational value of competitive sport .

Adam went one step further and wrote: “As a trainer, I am of the opinion that the decision whether an athlete wants to improve his physiological performance requirements through anabolic steroids, for example, can only be made by himself. Officials, sports physicians and trainers have the duty to provide information about the effect, but not the right to patronize. ”With mature athletes , the main issue is agency and control, and here Adam was firmly on the side of adult athletes.

Honors

Due to his outstanding sporting importance, Karl Adam was inducted into the newly founded Hall of Fame of German Sports on May 6, 2008 .

literature

  • Dirk Andresen, Timo Reinke: Karl Adam. The father of the Germany eight . Audiotex Germany, Ratzeburg 2012, ISBN 978-3-00-038151-5 .
  • Hans Lenk: Ratzeburger Goldwasser - from Lago Albano to Lambarene. A philosophizing Olympic champion remembers . Projekverlag, Bochum / Freiburg 2013, ISBN 978-3-89733-290-4 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The oar revolutionary from the vestibule. In: WAZ. May 2, 2012.
  2. ^ The great Olympia Lexicon. Sport picture from June 19, 1996, p. 36.
  3. ↑ A German Life. In: FAZ. May 1, 2012.
  4. ↑ The Miracle of Rome. In: FAZ. September 4, 2010.
  5. ^ Karl Adam: Competitive sport as a model of thought: writings from the estate. Edited by Hans Lenk . Fink, Munich 1978, ISBN 3-7705-1599-4
  6. ↑ Hans Lenk (Hrsg.): Action pattern competitive sport: Karl Adam in memory. Hofmann, Schorndorf 1977, ISBN 3-7780-3921-0 .
  7. ^ Karl Adam: competitive sport. Sense and nonsense. Munich 1975, p. 169
  8. ^ Arnd Krüger : Olympic Games as a means of politics. Eike Emrich, Martin-Peter Büch, Werner Pitsch (eds.): Olympic Games - still up to date? Values, goals, reality from a multidisciplinary perspective. Saarbrücken: Universitätsverlag des Saarlandes 2012, pp. 35–54
personal data
SURNAME Adam, Karl
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German rowing coach
DATE OF BIRTH May 2, 1912
PLACE OF BIRTH lobby
DATE OF DEATH June 18, 1976
Place of death Bad Salzuflen