Rita Kirst

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Rita Schmidt in April 1968 in Leipzig

Rita Kirst (née Schmidt ; born October 21, 1950 in Großgrimma ) is a former athlete from the German Democratic Republic (GDR). In 1968 and 1972 she was fifth in the Olympics.

Career

International championships

Her first start at international championships was in 1968 at the European Indoor Games in Madrid. Rita Schmidt won the title with 1.84 m and eight centimeters ahead of the next four jumpers. In the fall of 1968 she took part in the Olympic Games in Mexico City. For a medal you had to jump over 1.80 m, Rita Schmidt was fifth with 1.78 m. In 1969 she won with 1.82 m at the European Indoor Games in Belgrade; With the same height as the Bulgarian Jordanka Blagoewa , Schmidt won because she had skipped the victory height in the second attempt, the Bulgarian only in the third attempt. At the European Championships in Athens in 1969 , four athletes jumped the height of 1.83 m: Milena Rezková and Mária Mračnová from Czechoslovakia, Antonina Lasarewa from the Soviet Union and Rita Schmidt. Rezková and Lasarewa had mastered 1.83 m in the second attempt, in the jump-off Rezková won gold. Mračnová and Schmidt had mastered 1.83 m in the third attempt, the Czechoslovak woman received bronze because Schmidt had already failed at 1.77 m.

In 1970 the European Indoor Games were replaced by the official European Indoor Championships. The first European Indoor Championships took place on March 14th and 15th, 1970 in Vienna, the women's high jump competition was held on the second day. To the delight of the audience, the Austrian Ilona Gusenbauer won the title with 1.88 m, followed by three jumpers who had overcome each 1.82 m: the Romanian Cornelia Popescu received silver, Schmidt bronze, and Blagoewa took fourth place. A year later at the European Indoor Championships in Sofia in 1971 , Schmidt finished tenth with 1.76 m, her worst result at international championships in terms of height. At the European Championships in Helsinki in 1971 Gusenbauer won with 1.87 m ahead of Popescu and the Briton Barbara Inkpen with 1.85 m each, Rita Schmidt took fourth place with 1.83 m ahead of Miloslava Hübnerová, as the European champion from 1969 was called after marriage . At the European Indoor Championships in Grenoble in 1972 , Rita Schmidt jumped the indoor world record height of 1.90 m and was six centimeters ahead of Rita Gildemeister and Blagoewa. The 1972 Olympic Games in Munich were viewed in both parts of Germany as a competition between systems, meaning the political and economic differences. In the high jump, however, two other systems also collided: the straddle , as the older female jumpers had learned and which was trained up until the 1980s, especially in the GDR, and the backward jump flop invented by Dick Fosbury and presented in 1968. The three GDR jumpers all jumped in a straddle. Rita Schmidt as the best took fifth place with 1.85 m. Of the three jumpers from Germany, the two younger ones jumped the flop, the youngest, Ulrike Meyfarth , won the gold medal with 1.92 m.

Rita Kirst in September 1974 in Erfurt

In November 1972 Rita married Schmidt and from then on appeared as Rita Kirst. At the European Indoor Championships in 1974 won Rosemarie Witschas with 1.90 meters before Milada Karbanová from Czechoslovakia and Rita Kirst who had both skipped 1.88 meters. At the European Championships in Rome in 1974 Rosemarie Witschas won with 1.95 m before Milada Karbanová with 1.91 m. Third was the Italian flop jumper Sara Simeoni with a national record of 1.89 m, who had fewer failed attempts than Kirst with the same height to Rita Kirst. Kirst's attempts were accompanied by whistles and scornful laughter from the audience, while Simeoni's concentrated silence prevailed, as noted by the West German specialist journal Leichtathletik .

In 1976 Rita Kirst took part in her last international championships. At the European Indoor Championships in Munich she finished eighth with 1.83 m, at the 1976 Olympic Games 1.78 m was not enough to qualify for the finals.

International results at a glance

  • 1968
    • European indoor games gold with 1.84 m
    • Olympic Games fifth with 1.78 m
  • 1969
    • European indoor games gold with 1.82 m
    • European Championships fourth with 1.83 m
  • 1970
    • European Indoor Championships bronze with 1.82 m
  • 1971
    • European Indoor Championships tenth with 1.76 m
    • European Championships fourth with 1.83 m
  • 1972
    • European Indoor Championships gold with 1.90 m
    • Olympic Games fifth with 1.85 m
  • 1974
    • European Indoor Championships bronze with 1.88 m
    • European Championships fourth with 1.89 m
  • 1976
    • European Indoor Championships eighth with 1.83 m

Championships of the GDR

Rita Schmidt won six GDR championship titles in a row from 1967 to 1972. In 1975 she won another title as Rita Kirst, in 1973, 1974 and 1976 she was second behind Rosemarie Witschas and, after her marriage, behind Rosemarie Ackermann.

In the hall, Rita Schmidt won in 1968, 1969, 1970 and 1972; In 1971 she took second place behind Karin Schulze . In 1974 she won another indoor championship title as Rita Kirst, and in 1975 and 1976 she was second behind Rosemarie Ackermann.

Best performances and records

Rita Kirst's best performances were 1.92 m indoors and 1.90 m outdoors.

In July 1967 Rita Schmidt set Karin Rüger's GDR record with 1.76 m. On May 11, 1968, Rita Schmidt and Karins Schulze (-Rüger) competed against each other in Leipzig, both jumping 1.78 m and Rita Schmidt also succeeded in jumping over 1.80 m. On June 1, 1968 both started in Sofia and set Rita Schmidt's record of 1.80 m; in the further course of the competition both mastered 1.83 m, Schmidt also jumped 1.85 m and 1.87 m. Karin Schulze had exceeded the previous GDR record by three centimeters and at the end of the competition was four centimeters behind the GDR record with her best performance.

In May 1972 Rita Schmidt jumped 1.90 m in Leipzig and a year later she set this record as Rita Kirst. In 1974 Rosemarie Witschas first improved to 1.91 m, in the course of the season she rose to the world record of 1.95 m.

Rita Schmidt's records from 1.76 m in 1967 to 1.90 m were also all-German records, Ulrike Meyfarth replaced them on September 4, 1972 with the world record of 1.92 m as all-German record holder, Meyfarth was the first all-German to come from the Federal Republic Record holder in high jump since Ingrid Becker's 1.71 m in 1961.

In Rita Schmidt's record series in 1968 in Sofia, every GDR record also represented an improvement on the junior world record. In the hall she set three world records with 1.88 m, 1.90 m and 1974 with 1.92 m.

Private

In November 1972, Rita Schmidt married the decathlete Joachim Kirst , European decathlon champion in 1969 and 1971. His brother, the high jumper Edgar Kirst, married the high jumper Jutta Krautwurst in 1976, who won the Olympic bronze medal as Jutta Kirst in 1980.

Rita Schmidt started for the SC DHfK Leipzig until 1972 , after the marriage Rita Kirst started for the ASK Vorwärts Potsdam . With a height of 1.75 m, her competition weight was 62 kg. In the documents on doping in the GDR that became public after the reunification , the name of Kirst was also found among the doped athletes.

literature

  • Klaus Amrhein: Biographical manual on the history of German athletics 1898–2005 . 2 volumes. Darmstadt 2005 published on German Athletics Promotion and Project Society
  • Fritz Steinmetz and Manfred Grieser : German records. Development from 1898 to 1991. Kassel 1992

Web links

Commons : Rita Kirst  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Klaus Amrhein / Axel Schäfer: 60 years of the European Athletics Championships . Groß-Zimmer / Bochum 1998, page 226
  2. ^ Klaus Amrhein / Axel Schäfer: 60 years of the European Athletics Championships . Groß-Zimmer / Bochum 1998, page 326
  3. ^ Brigitte Berendonk : Doping. From research to fraud . Reinbek 1992, ISBN 3-499-18677-2 , p. 182