Stephanie Graf

This article deals with the Austrian athlete. For the German tennis player Stefanie Graf see Steffi Graf .

Stephanie Graf
on "Sports Day" on Heldenplatz in Vienna (September 2008)
nation	Austria
birthday	26th April 1973 (age 47)
place of birth	Klagenfurt, Carinthia
size	170 cm
Weight	58 kg
Career
Best performance	1: 56.64 min (800 meter run) 2: 34.47 min (1000 meter run)
status	resigned
Medal table
Olympic games 0 × 1 × 0 × World championships 0 × 1 × 0 × European Indoor Championships 1 × 0 × 0 ×
Olympic games silver Sydney 2000 800 m  World championships silver Edmonton 2001 800 m  European Indoor Championships gold Ghent 2000 800 m
last change: September 11, 2017

Stephanie "Steffi" Graf-Zitny (born April 26, 1973 in Klagenfurt ) is a former Austrian athlete who celebrated her greatest success by winning the silver medal in the 800-meter run at the 2000 Summer Olympics .

Career

Stephanie Graf followed in her mother Rita Graf's footsteps. She was also an 800 meter runner and became Austrian champion in this discipline in 1974 . The sporting life of Stephanie Graf in the prime was mainly characterized by duels with Maria de Lurdes Mutola , in which she was mostly defeated.

At the 1999 World Athletics Championships in the Spanish city of Seville, she was seventh over the 800 m with 1: 57.92 min. The sporting highlights include the silver medal in the 800-meter run at the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney and the gold medal at the 2000 European Indoor Championships in Ghent. At the 2001 World Athletics Championships in Edmonton (Canada), she won the silver medal over the 800 m in 1: 57.20 min as second behind Maria de Lurdes Mutola.

In 2004, shortly before the Summer Olympics in Athens, she announced her retirement from high-performance sport. At 1.70 m tall, she weighed around 58 kg during her career as a runner.

In August 2005 she married the Austrian professional golfer Niki Zitny in Völkermarkt . She changed her family name to Graf-Zitny. In January 2006 the couple had a son and in November 2008 the couple divorced.

She has been in a relationship with Christian Baha since the beginning of 2009 , with whom she has two daughters (* 2010, * 2012). Graf appeared in the third season of the Austrian show Dancing Stars in March 2007 and dropped out with dance partner Andy Kainz in the third round.

Stephanie Graf and Christian Baha (2009)

After retiring as a competitive athlete, she worked as a columnist for Kurier until the summer of 2009 . For ORF she was a co-presenter at the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing .

Doping ban 2010

At a press conference in November 2009, Graf confirmed that he had deposited his own blood at the Vienna blood bank human plasma in autumn 2003 , without having it "returned" later.

From April 2007 Graf was an athlete representative in the Austrian Sports Aid . After the Tiroler Tageszeitung reported that “55 flagships of domestic sport” had demanded that her resign from this position because of her unclear doping past. The marathon runner Andrea Mayr had previously criticized Graf's public role as a sports official and commentator.

In June 2010, the National Anti-Doping Agency Austria (NADA) imposed a two-year ban for “attempting to use a prohibited doping technique”. Graf was trained by the former Leipzig sports medicine specialist Helmut Stechemesser, whose protégés also included Jolanda Čeplak and Susanne Pumper, who were convicted of doping .

Awards

• 2000 and 2001: Austrian Sportswoman of the Year
• 2001: Europe's athlete of the year

Sporting successes

• 1997: Participation in indoor world championships ( eliminated in semi-finals), participation in world championships (eliminated in semi-finals)
• 1998: 3rd place in the European Championships
• 1999: 6th place indoor world championships (2: 04.39 min), 7th place world championships (1: 57.92 min)
• 2000: European indoor champion, 2nd place Olympic Games (1: 56.64 min)
• 2001: Vice indoor world champion (1: 59.78 min), vice world champion (1: 57.20 min)
• 2002: Vice European Indoor Champion (1: 55.85 min)
• 2003: Vice indoor world champion (1: 59.39 min), participation in world championships (eliminated in semifinals)

Personal best

• 200 m : 25.42 s, 15th September 1996, Dublin
• 400 m : 52.69 s, June 12, 1999, Tel Aviv
• 800 m : 1: 56.64 min, September 25, 2000, Sydney
• 800 m (hall): 1: 55.85 min, March 3, 2002, Vienna
• 1000 m : 2: 34.47 min, August 28, 1998, Brussels
• 1500 m : 4: 13.58 min, August 21, 1996, Linz

Performance development

year	200 meter (s)	400 meter (s)	800 meters (min)	1000 meters (min)	1500 meters (min)
1989	-	-	2: 12.72	-	-
1990	-	-	2: 10.72	-	-
1991	-	-	2: 21.80	-	-
1992	-	-	2: 09.20	-	-
1993	-	-	2: 06.22	-	-
1994	-	-	2: 05.36	-	4: 19.50
1995	-	-	2: 05.06	-	-
1996	25.42	-	2: 01.54	-	4: 13.58
1997	-	-	2: 00.27	-	-
1998	-	-	1: 57.97	2: 34.47	-
1999	-	52.69	1: 57.07	-	-
2000	-	53.40	1: 56.64	-	-
2001	-	52.99	1: 57.20	-	-
2002	-	-	-	-	-
2003	-	53.20	1: 57.99	-	-

Awards (excerpt)

• 2000: Austrian Sportswoman of the year
• 2000: Silver Medal for Services to the Republic of Austria
• She was voted “Carinthian Sportswoman of the Year” six times (1996, 1998, 2000–2003) by the Carinthian Sports Press Club, although a women's ranking has only existed since 2000.

Web links

Commons : Stephanie Graf  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Official website of Stephanie Graf
• Stephanie Graf in the database of World Athletics (English)
• Athlete portrait on the ÖLV website

Footnotes

1. ↑ [1]
2. ↑ Kleine Zeitung : Athlete Stephanie Graf Humanplasma customer ( Memento from February 20, 2010 in the Internet Archive ). November 15, 2009
3. ^ Tiroler Tageszeitung : Sporthilfe: Graf resigned as an athlete representative . May 4, 2010
4. ^ Die Presse : Andrea Mayr: "Steffi Graf should give up the post" . April 17, 2010
5. ↑ NADA Austria: Press release on the doping procedure pending at the NADA Austria legal commission Stephanie Rita GRAF (formerly athletics) ( Memento of the original from January 10, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The  archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . June 22, 2010 (PDF; 1.3 MB)
6. ↑ Der Standard : Two years ban on Stephanie Graf . June 22, 2010
7. ^ IAAF: Athletes currently suspended from all competitions in athletics following an anti-doping rule violation . December 2010 (PDF)
8. ↑ Gerd Millmann: The Shadows of the Past ( Memento of the original from October 1, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The  archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . In: Falter . No. 23, June 3, 2009
9. ↑ Christian Fuchs: Jessica Ennis is Europe's Athlete of the Year , www.leichtathletik.de October 4, 2012
10. ↑ «It's crazy - I get goose bumps»; Kärntner Tageszeitung from November 4, 2000, pages 50 and 51
11. ↑ Favorite for Carinthia's athlete of the year is “Mathias Mayer” - Villach. Retrieved January 31, 2016 .