Klaus Köste

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Klaus Köste medal table
Klaus Köste at his Olympic victory in 1972
Klaus Köste at his Olympic victory in 1972

Apparatus gymnast

Germany Democratic Republic 1949GDR German Democratic Republic
Olympic Summer Games
gold 1972 Horse jump
bronze 1964 Team all-around
bronze 1968 Team all-around
bronze 1972 Team all-around
World championships
bronze 1970 Horizontal bar

Klaus Köste (born  February 27, 1943 in Frankfurt (Oder) ; † December 14, 2012 in Wurzen ) was a German gymnast . He started for the GDR and won a total of eleven medals at the Olympic Games as well as World and European Championships, including the Olympic victory at the 1972 Games in Munich in horse jumping and two European titles on the horizontal bar . In addition, he won 34 national individual titles at GDR championships, making him one of the most successful gymnasts in German sports history.

Sporting successes

Klaus Köste on the horizontal bar at the 1970 World Championships

Klaus Köste began gymnastics in 1949 at the age of six in his hometown Frankfurt (Oder) and later moved to Leipzig. With the all-German team at the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, as well as with the team of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City and at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, he won a total of three bronze medals in team all-round competitions. In addition, he was Olympic champion in horse jumping in Munich . Further individual placements were a fourth place at the 1968 games on the horizontal bar and a fifth place in 1972 in floor exercise . For his Olympic victory in the same year he received the Patriotic Order of Merit in silver . In 1974 he received this award again.

At the World Gymnastics Championships in 1970 , Klaus Köste won a bronze medal on the horizontal bar. In 1971 and 1973 he became European champion on the same machine. In addition, he took second place on parallel bars and third place in horse jumping at the European Championships in 1971 and third place in floor exercise and in individual all-round competitions in 1973.

At GDR championships between 1961 and 1974 he won a total of 34 individual titles. His hometown club was the SC Lokomotive Leipzig until 1963 and then the SC DHfK Leipzig , where he was trained by Jochen Nonnast and Siegfried Fülle .

Life after competitive sport

Klaus Köste at DHfK, 1985

Due to a torn Achilles tendon during training during the 1974 World Gymnastics Championships , Klaus Köste ended his athletic career. He graduated from the German University of Physical Culture (DHfK) in 1975 as a qualified sports teacher and worked from 1974 to 1976 as head coach for women's gymnastics and from 1976 to 1985 as head coach for gymnastics at SC Leipzig . He then worked as a university professor at DHfK until 1987. Later, from 1998 to 2002, he was a consultant to the former world cycling champion Gustav-Adolf Schur , who was a member of the German Bundestag for the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) . From 2001 to 2004 he was responsible for major events in the Sports Development Division of the German Gymnastics Federation .

In 2005, Klaus Köste had to undergo a heart operation, but then reported back to the equipment as a senior gymnast. Most recently, in the summer of 2012, he represented German gymnastics with shows in Hong Kong. Shortly afterwards, Klaus Köste and the oldest gymnast in the world, Johanna Quaas , were guests at the 90th so-called Jahnturnfest in Freyburg . Both had planned to appear at the International German Gymnastics Festival 2013 in the Rhine-Neckar region as the “German Gymnastics Dream Team” in senior gymnastics.

Klaus Köste died of heart failure on December 14, 2012 at the age of 69.

In 2014 Klaus Köste was posthumously inducted into the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame (Oklahoma).

literature

Web links

Commons : Klaus Köste  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ tagesspiegel.de: Heart failure: Olympic gymnastics champion Klaus Köste dies Article from December 15, 2012
  2. ^ High government awards , Neues Deutschland , October 28, 1972, p. 3
  3. ↑ stern.de: Klaus Köste died of heart failure - gymnastics world in mourning ( Memento from December 31, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Article from December 16, 2012
  4. ↑ n-tv.de: Turnwelt mourns Klaus Köste Article from December 16, 2012
  5. ↑ Admission to the Hall of Fame on the Ighof website (accessed February 15, 2020)
personal data
SURNAME Köste, Klaus
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German apparatus gymnast
DATE OF BIRTH February 27, 1943
PLACE OF BIRTH Frankfurt (Oder)
DATE OF DEATH December 14, 2012
Place of death Spice up