Udo Beyer

Udo Beyer
Udo Beyer at a sports festival in Erfurt in 1984
nation	GDR
birthday	August 9, 1955
place of birth	Stalinstadt ,  GDR
size	195 cm
Weight	135 kg
job	Sports soldier , travel agent
Career
discipline	Shot put
Best performance	22.64 m
society	ASK forward Potsdam
status	resigned
Medal table
Olympic games 1 × 0 × 1 × European championships 2 × 0 × 1 × GDR championships 11 × 2 × 1 × GDR indoor championships 1 × 0 × 1 × European Youth Championships 1 × 0 × 0 ×
Olympic games gold Montreal 1976 21.05 m bronze Moscow 1980 21.06 m  European championships gold Prague 1978 21.08 m gold Athens 1982 21.50 m bronze Stuttgart 1986 20.74 m GDR championships silver Leipzig 1974 20.20 m gold Dresden 1977 21.15 m gold Leipzig 1978 21.89 m gold Karl-Marx-Stadt 1979 21.13 m gold Cottbus 1980 21.54 m gold Jena 1981 21.44 m gold Dresden 1982 21.47 m gold Karl-Marx-Stadt 1983 21.44 m gold Erfurt 1984 21.72 m gold Leipzig 1985 21.50 m gold Jena 1986 22.14 m gold Potsdam 1987 22.31 m silver Rostock 1988 20.92 m bronze Dresden 1990 20.10 m GDR indoor championships bronze Senftenberg 1973 18.33 m gold Senftenberg 1980 20.33 m  Junior European Championships gold Duisburg 1973 19.65 m

Udo Beyer (born August 9, 1955 in Stalinstadt ) is a former German athlete . In 1976 he became Olympic champion in the shot put for the GDR . Beyer was involved in the GDR state doping program .

Life

Udo Beyer is the oldest of six children. He grew up on the Breslack estate and in Eisenhüttenstadt . Like all his siblings, he first played handball at BSG Stahl Eisenhüttenstadt since 1968 and was a successful goal scorer as a member of the Frankfurt district selection. On the advice of his father to choose a sport, he specialized in athletics . After the children's and youth spartakiad in 1969, he switched to the children's and youth sports school in Frankfurt (Oder) , which he attended until he graduated from high school. He won his first title at the Spartakiade in 1972. At the same time he became a member of the ASK Forward Frankfurt . In 1970 he was taken over by coach Fritz Kühl , a successful shot putter and discus thrower from the GDR, who had participated in the 1960 and 1964 Olympic Games in the all-German team . In 1973 he and his trainer moved to ASK Vorwärts Potsdam, where he fully concentrated on the shot put; With Lothar Hillebrand , another coach was added. In Potsdam he studied alongside training at the University of Education and graduated as a certified sports teacher .

Udo Beyer 1981

Beyer became Junior European Champion in 1973 . In the adult segment, he finished eighth at the European Championships the following year . In 1976 he won the gold medal at the Olympic Games in Montreal . A year later the first World Cup was held , where he could also win. In 1978 Beyer completed his collection of titles by winning the European Championships . Beyer was third at the Olympic Games in Moscow , but he was able to defend his European title in Athens in 1982 .

At the first world championships in 1983 Beyer came in sixth. Because the GDR boycotted the Olympic Games in 1984 in the USA , he could not start there. At the European Championships in 1986 he won the bronze medal. The following year he was sixth again at the 1987 World Championships . At the 1988 Olympic Games , he came in fourth. After that, he actually ended his career, but his wife made him try again in 1990 until 1992. At the European Championships in 1990 he reached fifth place, but at the Olympic Games in Barcelona he was no longer in the final elimination.

Beyer had a competition weight of 130 kg with a height of 1.94 m. As a member of the Army Sports Club (ASK), Udo Beyer was also a sports officer ( major ) of the NVA and was taken over as a captain in the German armed forces . Beyer was the captain of the GDR national athletics team for years. As IM "captain" he is said to have spied on fellow athletes on behalf of the Ministry for State Security .

After finishing competitive sports, Udo Beyer learned the profession of travel agent and has been the owner of a travel agency in Potsdam since 1996. He lives in Potsdam, has been married since 1976 and has two daughters, the younger of whom died of a congenital heart defect in 2001 at the age of 11 . He is actively involved as the official ambassador of the Children's Hospice Foundation for Central Germany for terminally ill children and their families. At the 12th Federal Assembly in 2004 he was a representative of the PDS .

At the 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow , Udo Beyer competed with his sister Gisela and brother Hans-Georg . All three were in the final: Hans-Georg - Olympic champion in handball, Udo - Olympic knight in the shot put and Gisela - fourth place in the discus throw. His sister Gudrun was with him at the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona - as a physiotherapist for the German fencers.

Doping in the GDR

In 1991, anti-doping opponents Brigitte Berendonk and Werner Franke were able to secure several dissertations and post-doctoral theses by former GDR doping researchers at the Bad Saarow Military Medical Academy . Based on the work, the state-organized doping practice of many well-known GDR competitive athletes, including Udo Beyer, was reconstructed. According to the information, he received high doses of Oral-Turinabol (up to 3955 mg) from 1983 to 1984 .

In 2012 he was in front of the camera for the documentary " Lone Fighter ". In the film, which premiered at the 2013 Berlinale , he confessed to taking banned substances and spoke about the state's compulsory doping program in the GDR.

Sporting successes

Udo Beyer (left) and Ulf Timmermann in Jena in 1986

Together with his long-time GDR competitor Ulf Timmermann , he dominated the competition in his discipline for over ten years.

Olympic games

• 1976 - Olympic champion 21.05 m
• 1980 - bronze medal 21.06 m
• 1984 - no participation possible due to boycott by the GDR
• 1988 - 4th place 21.40 m
• 1992 - eliminated in the preliminary competition

Records world records:

1. August 6, 1978: 22.15 m
2. July 25, 1983: 22.22 m
3. August 20, 1986: 22.64 m (7th place on the world's best list, as of January 29, 2013)

Junior European records: 6.25 kg ball (junior ball)

1. July 13, 1973: 21.03 m

7.25 kg ball (men's ball)

1. 7th July 1973: 19.63 m
2. July 6, 1974: 20.20 m
3. June 21, 1975: 20.97 m (current record, as of August 7, 2005)

European championships

• 1973 - European Junior Champion
• 1974 - 8th place
• 1978 - European Champion
• 1982 - European champion
• 1986 - bronze medal
• 1990 - 5th place

IAAF World Cup , shot put

• 1977, 1979 and 1981 - winners

European Cup , shot put

• 1977, 1979 and 1981 - winners
• 1985 - 3rd place

GDR championships

• 1974 - 2nd place
• 1977–1987 - GDR champion (11 times in a row)
• 1988 - 2nd place
• 1990 - 3rd place
• 1980 - GDR hall champion

Children's and youth spartakiad

• 1972 - Spartakia winner

Awards

• 1978 - GDR athlete of the year
• 2-time Patriotic Order of Merit in silver, 1976
• 7 times Honored Master of Sport

literature

• Short biography for:  Beyer, Udo . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 1. 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.

Movies

• Lone Fighter (2013): Documentary film about four top athletes from the former GDR, including Udo Beyer. Film premiere at the Berlinale 2013

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Udo Beyer, Potsdam's shot put Olympic champion in 1976 and three-time world record holder, is 50 years old today , Potsdam's Latest News , August 9, 2005.
2. ↑ Brigitte Berendonk: Doping documents - From research to fraud. Springer-Verlag, Berlin 1991, ISBN 3-540-53742-2 , p. 128, table 8.
3. ↑ Swiss Secret Society , Der Spiegel, July 21, 1992.
4. ↑ lone fighter. (PDF; 388 kB) Press kit. February 2013, archived from the original on September 22, 2013 ; accessed on January 5, 2019 . 
5. ↑ Shot put: Montreal Olympic champion Beyer admits doping , Spiegel Online , February 14, 2013.
6. ^ Doped GDR shot put legend: Beyer: "I knew about everything". In: Der Tagesspiegel , February 15, 2013.
7. ↑ About the honor for the Olympic team of the GDR. Awarded high government awards. Patriotic Order of Merit in silver. In: New Germany . ZEFYS newspaper portal of the Berlin State Library , September 10, 1976, p. 4 , accessed on April 10, 2018 (free registration required). 

Web links

Commons : Udo Beyer  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Official website
• Udo Beyer in the database of World Athletics (English)
• Udo Beyer in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )