Roland Wetzig

Roland Wetzig (born July 24, 1959 in Oschatz ) is a former German bobsleigh athlete .

Beginnings as a track and field athlete

Roland Wetzig started like his later teammate Bogdan Musiol as a track and field athlete at SC DHfK Leipzig . After he became Spartakia winner in 1977 and GDR junior champion in 1978 , he achieved his personal best in the discus throw with 54.04 m the following year . Despite his body size (1.86 m / 85 kg), GDR sports leaders were not considered strong enough to advance to the top of the world. He then switched to bobsleigh.

Medals among three pilots

In 1980 he was already sitting with helmsman Horst Schönau in the bobsled GDR II, who was part of the XIII. Olympic Winter Games in Lake Placid won the bronze medal. In the same year he was able to confirm this success at the world championships as 3rd. The following year he moved to the four-man event of Bernhard Lehmann , with whom he at the European Championships immediately won bronze and could be 1982 runner-up. In 1983 he again switched to Wolfgang Hoppe . With the most successful bobsleigh pilot of all time, he was Olympic champion in a four-man at the XIV Olympic Games in Sarajevo in 1984 and second in the World Cup again a year later. At the end of his career, he won the European Championship in the Hoppe-Bob in 1987.

For his Olympic victory in 1984 he was awarded the Patriotic Order of Merit in gold.

successes

• Olympic victory in the four-man bobsleigh in 1984
• Olympic bronze medal 1980
• 2 × Vice World Champion (1982, 1985)
• 1 × World Cup third (1980)
• 1 × European Champion (1987)
• 1 × European Championship third (1981)

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 , April 27, 1984, p. 3

Web links

• Roland Wetzig in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )