Klaus Wolfermann

Klaus Wolfermann
Klaus Wolfermann (2011)
nation	Germany
birthday	31st March 1946 (age 74)
place of birth	Altdorf near Nuremberg ,  Germany
size	176 cm
Weight	89 kg
Career
discipline	Javelin throw
Best performance	94.08 m
society	SV Gendorf
Trainer	Hans Schenk
status	resigned
Medal table
Olympic Summer Games 1 × 0 × 0 × German championships 6 × 2 × 0 ×
Olympic games gold 1972 Munich 90.48 m  German championships gold Düsseldorf 1969 83.60 m gold Berlin 1970 81.76 m gold Stuttgart 1971 84.50 m gold Munich 1972 85.50 m gold Berlin 1973 82.62 m gold Hanover 1974 84.58 m silver Gelsenkirchen 1968 80.20 m silver Gelsenkirchen 1975 78.00 m
last change: August 11, 2018

Klaus Wolfermann (born March 31, 1946 in Altdorf near Nuremberg ) is a former German athlete . His greatest sporting achievements was the victory in the javelin contest the Olympic Games in 1972 in Munich .

Career

Wolfermann's father, a blacksmith by trade, was a gymnast and took his son to the gym. Klaus Wolfermann did gymnastics at TV Altdorf until the age of 14/15, then he also played handball there and discovered his powerful throw. During his apprenticeship as a toolmaker at Siemens in Nuremberg at the works sports club, he came to javelin through pentathlon and decathlon . During his training, he went to school for his sporting ambitions and then in 1965 to the Bavarian Sports Academy in Munich. During this time Hermann Rieder became his spear throwing trainer. After graduating, he got a job as a sports teacher at SV Gendorf and continued his performance training there.

At the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico, he finished only 16th in the qualifying round. According to his statements, he trained meticulously for the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich for the next four years . In 1971 Wolfermann set the German national record three times and reached a distance of over 87 m. Ten days before the Olympics, Wolfermann threw the 90 m for the first time in an evening competition in Munich. The high favorite Jānis Lūsis from the Soviet Union, on the other hand, set a new world record almost simultaneously with 93.80 m and was in the lead in the Olympic competition from the first throw. Wolfermann took a risk in the fifth throw, ran further and faster and was able to achieve 90.48 m with an ideal throw and take the lead in the competition. Lūsis, who achieved gold with the sixth throw in Mexico, did not succeed in this very narrowly with 90.46 m; Gold went to Wolfermann.

Wolfermann continued his success on May 5, 1973 in Leverkusen when he set a new world record in javelin throwing 94.08 m, which lasted for almost four years. Between 1969 and 1974 he won the title of German javelin throwing champion six times in a row.

At the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal, he could not take part because of an arm injury. At the European Athletics Championships Wolfermann failed to place in the top three during his playing days.

Due to his popularity, he was voted Sportsman of the Year in the Federal Republic of Germany in 1972 and 1973 and Sportsman of Europe in 1972. At the turn of the century he was voted German javelin thrower of the century. In 2004 he was one of the torch-bearers who carried the Olympic flame through Munich. In 2011, Klaus Wolfermann was inducted into the Hall of Fame of German Sports .

Wolfermann, who started for SV Gendorf , was 1.76 m tall and weighed 89 kg.

After the career

After the end of his career in 1978, Wolfermann acted as a brakeman and pusher in the bobsleigh and became German runner-up in 1979 in the four-man bobsleigh of pilot Georg Heibl and fourth in the European Cup.

He has been married to his wife Friederike since 1967, has a daughter and has lived in Penzberg in Upper Bavaria since 2001 . He runs a sports marketing agency and is the chairman of FC Olympia , an association of German medal winners who take part in football, volleyball and golf games and other events for social purposes. He is the special ambassador for Special Olympics , the only IOC authorized sports community for mentally handicapped people. Since 2006 he has been organizing golf tournaments and other events for KiO Children's Aid Organ Transplantation , an initiative of the “Athletes for Organ Donation” campaign. He is also a member of the EAGLES Charity Golf Club and was an ambassador for the 2018 Olympic application.

Web links

• Klaus Wolfermann in the database of Sports-Reference (English; archived from the original )
• Portrait, dates and biography of Klaus Wolfermann in the Hall of Fame of German Sports
• Klaus Wolfermann at Eagles Charity Golf Club eV
• Klaus Wolfermann, Olympic champion from Altdorf. In: Nordbayern.de. October 19, 2009. 

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d} Olympic champion Klaus Wolfermann: "I marched through there like a madman." KontakTUM 2/2018
2. ↑ NN of April 16, 2020, p. 18
3. ↑ Harald Koken: Klaus Wolfermann is celebrating his 70th birthday and would like a successor. In: Leichtathletik.de. March 31, 2016, accessed March 14, 2020 .