Thomas Munkelt

Thomas Munkelt 1981

Thomas Munkelt (born August 3, 1952 in Zedtlitz ) is a former German athlete . For the GDR he was 1980 Olympic champion in the 110-meter hurdles .

Life

Rumor has it that it was the dominant European runner on this route in the 1970s and early 1980s. He won bronze over the 60 meter hurdles at the European Indoor Championships in 1973 and finished fourth at the European Championships the following year. In 1975 he was GDR champion for the first time and won the European Cup with the 4 x 100 meter relay in the same year . At the 1976 Olympic Games in Montréal , Munkelt only ran to a disappointing fifth place.

In 1977 he became European indoor champion and won both the World Cup and the European Cup. In the following year he was able to defend his indoor European title and at the European championships in Prague Munkelt won his first international title outdoors. In 13.54 s he won ahead of Poland's Jan Pusty and Arto Bryggare from Finland. In 1979 he became European indoor champion for the third time in a row .

Munkelt celebrated his greatest success at the 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow . In the Olympic final, he beat Cuban Alejandro Casañas by a hundredth of a second. He was also a member of the GDR's 4 x 100 meter relay , which came in fifth. In 1982 Munkelt was able to successfully defend his European title in Athens . With the 4 x 100 meter relay of the GDR, he also won a silver medal.

Rumor has it at the GDR indoor championships for athletes in 1983

The following year he became European indoor champion for the fourth time . In the open-air season he won the European Cup again, but Munkelt had to be content with a fifth place at the first world championships . After the announcement of the GDR, the Olympic Games in Los Angeles to boycott ended Munkelt 1984 his active career, during which he 1975, 1976, 1977, 1978, 1979, 1980, 1982 and 1983 respectively the title at the East German championships had won and in 1978 and 1979 became East German indoor champion.

Munkelt started for the SC DHfK Leipzig . He had a competition weight of 78 kg with a height of 1.85 m. In the documents on state doping in the GDR that became public after the reunification , the name of Munkelt was also found among the doped athletes.

Munkelt was awarded the Patriotic Order of Merit in silver for his sporting successes in 1980 and 1984 .

Munkelt studied dentistry at KMU Leipzig and became a dentist in Kitzscher near Leipzig .

literature

• Short biography for:  Munkelt, Thomas . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 2. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .
• Klaus Amrhein: Biographical manual on the history of German athletics 1898–2005 . 2 volumes. Darmstadt 2005 published on German Athletics Promotion and Project Society.

Web links

Commons : Thomas Munkelt  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Thomas Munkelt in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )
• Borna website about his place of birth

Individual evidence

1. ^ Brigitte Berendonk : Doping. From research to fraud . Reinbek 1992, ISBN 3-499-18677-2 , p. 182
2. ↑ Neues Deutschland , August 22, 1980, p. 3
3. ^ New Germany, 1./2. September 1984, p. 4