René Rensch

René Rensch (born March 18, 1969 in Kyritz ) is a former rower who competed internationally for the GDR and won the Olympic silver medal in a two-man team in 1988 .

Rensch competed for SG Dynamo Potsdam . In 1984 and 1985 he was the helmsman of the foursome that won the Junior World Championships twice in a row . In 1987 two rowers from this four, Detlef Kirchhoff and Mario Streit , together with Rensch, formed a new two with a helmsman . This boat took fourth place at the 1987 rowing world championships behind the Italian brothers Carmine and Giuseppe Abbagnale with their helmsman Giuseppe Di Capua , the British boat with Andrew Holmes , Steven Redgrave and helmsman Patrick Sweeney and the Romanians Dimitrie Popescu and Vasile Tomoiagă .

In 1988 at the Olympic Games in Seoul Kirchhoff, Streit and Rensch won their preliminary run, in the semifinals the Abbagnale brothers won ahead of the GDR twos and the Romanians. The other semi-final was won by a Bulgarian two-man ahead of the British. In the final, the first four boats reached the finish line with less than four seconds gap, the Italian defending champions won ahead of the boat from the GDR and the British, who had already won gold in two without a helmsman the day before without Sweeney; the Romanians finished fourth in the Olympic final.

For winning the silver medal in Seoul, Rensch was awarded the Patriotic Order of Merit in silver.

literature

• Volker Kluge : The great lexicon of GDR athletes. The 1000 most successful and popular athletes from the GDR, their successes and biographies. Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-89602-348-9 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Neues Deutschland , 12./13. November 1988, p. 4

Web links

• René Rensch in the database of Sports-Reference (English; archived from the original )