Kate Allen (triathlete)

0 Kate Allen
Kate Allen at the “Sports Gala Night”, 2008
Personal information
Date of birth	25th April 1970 (age 50)
place of birth	Geelong, Australia
societies
Until 2009	HSV Triathlon Carinthia
successes
2003	Austrian champion triathlon short distance
2003, 2005	2 × Austrian champion triathlon long distance
2004	Olympic champion triathlon
2004, 2007	2 × European vice-champion triathlon short distance
status
Resigned in 2009

Katherine Jessie Jean Allen (born April 25, 1970 in Geelong , Australia ) is a former triathlete and two-time Olympian (2004, 2008) who started for Austria . She became Olympic champion at the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens . She is included in the best list of Austrian triathletes on the Ironman distance .

Career

Kate Allen grew up as an originally Australian citizen with her parents and three brothers on a 1000 hectare sheep farm in Teesdale, a small town 100 km west of Melbourne . Her parents motivated her to run at an early age, for example, according to her own account, she regularly ran the 3 km to primary school. As a child, she regularly took part in running competitions. She won several junior championship titles and was considered one of Australia's most promising talents. At the age of ten, Allen's interests shifted and she also began gymnastics .

Allen graduated from the University of Ballarat with a degree in health and nursing at the age of twenty and traveled extensively in the following years. a. to Europe. On one of these trips in 1995 with four friends, Allen also stopped in Kitzbühel , where she earned her travel money in a bar. In the Kitzbühel swimming pool, she met Marcel Diechtler, then 18-year-old young Austrian triathlete, and became friends with him. In the summer of 1996, Diechtler persuaded her to do her first triathlon in Kirchbichl , where she finished fourth. A few weeks later, Allen began targeted triathlon training partly in Australia and partly in Austria. In 1999 Diechtler and Allen got married. In the summer of 2000 Allen achieved the breakthrough with ten race wins. She finished the European Cup in sixth and fourth the following year. In 2002 she received Austrian citizenship.

Ironman distance since 2002

In July 2002 Kate Allen achieved second place at Ironman Austria with the fastest ever Ironman debut time, a few weeks later she made her debut in Lausanne in the World Cup with a thirteenth place. Another seven weeks later she reached seventh place at the Ironman Hawaii . In 2003 she won the Ironman Austria with the fastest Ironman time of the year for women.
As part of the Vienna City Triathlon , she became Austrian triathlon state champion over the short distance on the Danube Island in 2003.

Olympic Champion 2004

Allen started the 2004 Olympic year with silver in the EC in Valencia. In 2004 at the Olympic Summer Games in Athens, she became Olympic champion after a unique race to catch up on the running distance - after she was still in 28th place after cycling. After her Olympic victory, Kate Allen was voted Austria's Sportswoman of the Year 2004 and received the Golden Decoration of Honor for Services to the Republic of Austria .

In 2005 and 2006 she was fifth at the Ironman Hawaii .

2008 Summer Olympics

In the qualifying phase for the 2008 Olympic Games, Allen had a serious fall at the World Cup in New Plymouth, New Zealand, together with Mary Beth Ellis . She knocked out three teeth, the collateral ligament in her thumb was torn, and the facial injuries were sewn with 20 stitches. Allen attributed the fall to a collision with Lisa Hütthaler - her direct competitor for a place in the Austrian Olympic squad. She then demanded, according to an interview in the sports week of the ÖTRV , never to be called together with Hütthaler again. The investigation by the ÖTRV showed that Hütthaler, who did not fall herself but was disqualified, could not prove any deliberate misconduct. Ultimately, the ÖRTV nominated Kate Allen together with Tania Haiböck and Eva Dollinger for the Olympic Games and Allen achieved 14th place as the fastest Austrian in Beijing.

Kate Allen had announced the end of her sporting career at the end of the 2009 season and the start of the Grand Final of the 2009 World Championship racing series on September 13th in Gold Coast (Australia) should be her last after 13 active years in top-class sport.

Doping allegation 2009

In 2009, the Austrian magazine Profil reported that Kate Allen had illegally taken an asthma drug when she won the Olympic Games in 2004. A post-race doping test did not reveal any banned substances, but Kate Allen claimed to have taken an asthma drug in accordance with anti-doping guidelines. The ÖRTV as well as the ITU and the ÖADC had the necessary exemption for the use of asthma medication, but this was not passed on to the ÖOC or the IOK by the associations . The IOC did not accept the subsequently filed certificate because it did not recognize the method used by Kate Allen's pulmonologist to diagnose asthma. After the intervention of the supervisors of the Austrian Olympic team, Kate Allen was given the opportunity to take the provocation test the day after her victory.
This test ultimately confirmed the asthma condition and authorized the athlete to take asthma medication. Kate Allen sued Profil magazine in the summer of 2009 for copyright infringement while reporting the events in Athens. After submitting a declaration of discontinuance and against payment of a sum of money by the magazine, the parties to the dispute finally reached an out-of-court settlement.

Kate Allen lives with her husband Marcel Diechtler in Innsbruck and their son was born in March 2011.

Sporting successes

(DNF - Did Not Finish )

Awards

• Decoration of Honor in Gold for Services to the Republic of Austria , 2004
• Austria's Sportswoman of the Year , 2004

literature

• Kate Allen, Florian Madl: 2:04:43 A world traveler on Olympus . Styria , Vienna 2005, ISBN 3-222-13184-8 .

Web links

• Homepage of Kate Allen ( Memento from August 11, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
• Kate Allen in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely accessible)
• Profile for Kate Allen (triathlete) at the Institute of Applied Exercise Science , accessed August 18, 2015
• Profile and results of Kate Allen (triathlete) in the ITU database at Triathlon.org , accessed on April 25, 2020 (English).
• Kate Allen in the Sports-Reference database (archived from the original ), accessed August 18, 2015

Individual evidence

1. ↑ A unique career. In: The Standard . September 13, 2009, accessed April 9, 2006 . 
2. ↑ Kate Allen had a serious fall
3. ↑ Kate Allen back home after a 60 km / h fall
4. ↑ Manfred Behr: Kate's accounting . In: Sports Week . May 6, 2008. Archived from the original on May 7, 2008.
5. ↑ Kate Allen attacks Lisa Hütthaler
6. ↑ ÖTRV completes investigation into Kate Allen's accident
7. ↑ Kate Allen's emotional farewell in Kitzbühel! ( Memento from September 13, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ) (June 3, 2009)
8. ↑ Historic Olympic gold for Austria: Kate Allen turns 50 (April 25, 2020)
9. ↑ Out of breath: Olympic champion Kate Allen also took prohibited drugs (profile; June 13, 2009)
10. ↑ Kate Allen: "Had Exemption" (Der Standard; June 13, 2009)
11. ↑ Olympic champion Kate Allen became a mother for the first time ( Memento from October 14, 2014 in the Internet Archive ), Kleine Zeitung (March 10, 2011)
12. ↑ Ironman Baja 70.3: Kate Allen is fourth
13. ↑ Triathlon European Championships: Kate Allen by choice, wins silver in Valencia (April 18, 2004)
14. ↑ ETU Triathlon Cup - Gerardmer, France ( Memento from September 14, 2012 in the web archive archive.today )