European Athletics Championships 1971/200 m women

10th European Athletics Championships
discipline	Women's 200-meter run
city	Helsinki
Stadion	Olympic Stadium
Participants	19 athletes from 10 countries
Competition phase	August 12th (preliminary / semi-finals) August 13th (final)
Medalists
gold	Renate Stecher ( GDR )
silver	Györgyi Balogh ( HUN )
bronze	Irena Szewińska ( POL )

The Olympic Stadium of Helsinki in 2005

The 200-meter race of women in the 1971 European Athletics Championships was on 12 and 13 August 1971 at the Olympic Stadium of Helsinki held.

Like over 100 meters , GDR sprinter Renate Stecher won . The Hungarian Györgyi Balogh became vice European champion. Bronze went to the 1968 Olympic champion Irena Szewińska from Poland.

Records

Preliminary remark:
In these years there was a dichotomy in terms of best performances and records. Hand-stopped and electronically determined services were performed side by side. The official times were usually given in tenths of a second, which were rounded if electronic measurements were available. Due to the elimination of the reaction time of the timekeeper with electronic timekeeping, the discussion was about introducing a so-called pre-set value in order not to automatically improve the hand-stopped performance. But the correct specification of these times remained, which were later also officially listed with hundredths of a second after the decimal point.

Official records - given in tenths of a second

Existing records

World record	22.5 s	Irena Kirszenstein	Olympic Games Mexico City , Mexico	October 18, 1968
European record
Championship record	23.1 s		EM Budapest , Hungary	2nd September 1966

Record improvement

European champion Renate Stecher improved the existing EM record in the final on August 13th by four tenths of a second to 22.7 seconds  

Electronically measured records

Existing records

World record	22.58 s	Irena Kirszenstein	Olympic Games Mexico City , Mexico	October 18, 1968
European record
Championship record	23.30 s	Petra Vogt	EM Athens , Greece	19th September 1969

Record improvements

European champion Renate Stecher improved the existing EM record at these European championships twice:  

• 23.26s - 2nd semi-final on August 12th
• 22.70 s - final on August 13th

Preliminary round

August 12, 1971, 12:00 p.m.

The preliminary round was held in four runs. The first four athletes per run - highlighted in light blue - qualified for the semi-finals.

The pre-run schedule was very bad. Of the only nineteen participants, three athletes had to be eliminated before the semifinals. Five runners started in two of the four races, one of which did not make it into the next lap. Six sprinters were assigned to the fourth heat, two of them were eliminated. The second preliminary run was occupied by only three athletes who were all automatically qualified for the semifinals when they reached the goal. From this race only three athletes got the right to start the next round, so that instead of a possible sixteen sprinters only fifteen made it to the semifinals and four instead of three runners were eliminated.

This failed organization can perhaps be explained by the fact that some participants only withdrew their reports shortly before the start.

Forward 1

Wind: ± 0.0 m / s

space	Surname	nation	Official time (s) rounded to the nearest tenth	Unofficial time (s) exact value
1	Renate Stecher	GDR	23.8	23.83
2	Wilma van den Berg	Netherlands	24.1	24.13
3	Helga Kapfer	Austria	24.2	24.15
4th	Margaret Critchley	Great Britain	24.2	24.21
5	Barbara Bakulin	Poland	24.6	24.57
DNS	Raisa Nikorova	Soviet Union
	Ivanka Venkova	Bulgaria

Forward 2

Wind: -0.2 m / s

space	Surname	nation	Official time (s) rounded to the nearest tenth	Unofficial time (s) exact value
1	Annegret Kroniger	BR Germany	23.8	23.83
2	Ellen Stropahl	GDR	23.9	23.85
3	Irena Szewińska	Poland	25.8	25.61
DNS	Marina Sidorova	Soviet Union
	Anita Neil	Great Britain

Forward 3

Wind: ± 0.0 m / s

space	Surname	nation	Official time (s) rounded to the nearest tenth	Unofficial time (s) exact value
1	Christina Heinich	GDR	23.8	23.82
2	Trudy Ruth	Netherlands	24.0	23.98
3	Györgyi Balogh	Hungary	24.3	24.32
4th	Annelie Wilden	BR Germany	24.5	24.51
5	Elisabeth Randerz	Sweden	24.8	24.81
DNS	Karoline Beetle	Austria

Forward 4

Wind: ± 0.0 m / s

space	Surname	nation	Official time (s) rounded to the nearest tenth	Unofficial time (s) exact value
1	Rita Wilden	BR Germany	23.6	23.64
2	Nadezhda Besfamilnaja	Soviet Union	23.7	23.74
3	Urszula Jóźwik	Poland	24.1	24.14
4th	Gabrielle Meyer	France	24.3	24.25
5	Karin Lundgren	Sweden	24.6	24.61
6th	Della Pascoe	Great Britain	24.7	24.66

Semifinals

August 12, 1971

As sixth of her semi-final race, Wilma van den Berg, later Wilma van Gool, was unable to make it to the final

Trudy Ruth was sixth in the second semifinals and was eliminated

In each of the two semi-finals, the first four athletes - highlighted in light blue - qualified for the final.

Run 1

Wind: ± 0.0 m / s

space	Surname	nation	Official time (s) rounded to the nearest tenth	Unofficial time (s) exact value
1	Annegret Kroniger	BR Germany	23.4	23.37
2	Györgyi Balogh	Hungary	23.4	23.42
3	Rita Wilden	BR Germany	23.5	23.50
4th	Christina Heinich	GDR	23.6	23.62
5	Urszula Jóźwik	Poland	24.0	24.01
6th	Wilma van den Berg	Netherlands	24.0	24.02
7th	Gabrielle Meyer	France	24.3	24.31

Run 2

Wind: ± 0.0 m / s

space	Surname	nation	Official time (s) rounded to the nearest tenth	Unofficial time (s) exact value
1	Renate Stecher	GDR	23.3	23.26 CRel
2	Irena Szewińska	Poland	23.5	23.54
3	Nadezhda Besfamilnaja	Soviet Union	23.6	23.60
4th	Ellen Stropahl	GDR	23.7	23.68
5	Margaret Critchley	Great Britain	23.9	23.91
6th	Trudy Ruth	Netherlands	23.9	23.92
7th	Helga Kapfer	Austria	24.1	24.11
8th	Annelie Wilden	BR Germany	24.5	24.46

final

August 13, 1971, 5:30 p.m.

Wind: ± 0.0 m / s

space	Surname	nation	Official time (s) rounded to the nearest tenth	Unofficial time (s) exact value
1	Renate Stecher	GDR	22.7 CR	22.70 CRel
2	Györgyi Balogh	Hungary	23.3	23.26
3	Irena Szewińska	Poland	23.3	23.32
4th	Nadezhda Besfamilnaja	Soviet Union	23.4	23.42
5	Annegret Kroniger	BR Germany	23.6	23.62
6th	Rita Wilden	BR Germany	23.6	23.62
7th	Ellen Stropahl	GDR	23.6	23.63
8th	Christina Heinich	GDR	23.7	23.73

• 

  Double European sprint champion Renate Stecher (here in 2017) - 1972 also double Olympic sprint champion

• 

  Also at these European Championships, the 1968 Olympic champion Irena Szewińska - in the photo in 2012 - won a bronze medal again, her last Olympic victory in 1976 over 400 meters

Web links

• European Championship 1971 Helsinki, Women 200m on todor66.com, accessed July 2, 2019
• Track and Field Statistics, EM 1971 on trackfield.brinkster.net, accessed July 2, 2019
• European Athletics Championships Zurich 2014 - Statistics Handbook , Women 200m European Championship 1971 Helsinki, p. 417, Spanish / English (PDF, 13,363 kB) at european-athletics.org, accessed on July 2, 2019
• Results of all European Athletics Championships - 1971, 200 m women on sportschau.de, accessed on July 2, 2019
• 10th European Athletics Championships 1971 in Helsinki, Finland from ifosta.de, accessed on July 2, 2019

References and comments

1. ↑ ^{a b} IAAF world records. 200m women , accessed July 19, 2019