Ute Mückel

0 Ute Mückel
Personal information
Date of birth	28th July 1967 (age 53)
place of birth	Guben, Germany
size	169 cm
societies
successes
1982	Junior European Champion Swimming
1995	Vice European champion long distance triathlon
1996-2005	3 × Ironman winner
2008	3rd place German championship triathlon long distance
status
Resigned in 2008

Ute Mückel (born July 28, 1967 in Guben ) is a former German triathlete . She is vice-European champion on the long distance (1995), multiple Ironman winner (1996, 1997, 2005) and is included in the best list of triathletes on the Ironman distance .

Career

European Junior Swimming Championships 1982

Before Ute Mückel started triathlon, she did swimming for six years as a high-performance sport.
The native of Lusatia had her greatest success at the Junior European Championships in 1982, when the 15-year-old stood on the podium five times and was awarded the gold medal three times. At the GDR championships in swimming , she won the gold medal in the 4 × 100 m freestyle with the team from SC Dynamo Berlin in 1983.

In 1992 at Ironman Europe in Roth , Central Franconia , she first competed in the long-distance triathlon and immediately stayed below the magical 10-hour mark. In total, Ute Mückel competed fifteen times in Ironman Europe or its successor event Challenge Roth in the course of her career .

Ironman Hawaii 1993

At the next start in Roth in the following year, she redeemed her qualification for the Ironman World Championships in Hawaii . Although she was twelfth in Hawaii, she did not immediately achieve a top ten placement, but she stayed there every year - trained by the first German Hawaiian participant Manuel Debus - until 1996 she was always the best-placed German triathlete.

Professional triathlete since 1995

From 1995 to 2007 Ute Mückel worked as a professional triathlete for twelve years. In 1995 she was runner-up behind Ines Estedt in Jümme, East Frisia, on the ETU long distance. In 1996 she won the Ironman Europe in Roth in 9:21 h, her personal best on the Ironman distance. Three months later at Ironman Hawaii, she achieved fifth place, the best place for a German woman to date. In the following year Ute Mückel was able to record her second Ironman victory at Ironman Switzerland . While the Ironman Hawaii 1997 was the greatest success from a German point of view with the first German Hawaii winner Thomas Hellriegel in front of Jürgen Zäck and Lothar Leder , the race was disappointing for Ute Mückel. Although she had finished the first discipline with a track record in 49:57 minutes as the fastest woman (overall thirteenth), after 5:37 h on the bike she had to abandon an Ironman competition on the running track for the first time. Even in later years, she was unable to build on her previous top ten placements, the 10-hour mark remained insurmountable for her in Hawaii from then on. In her home competition in Roth, she finished fourth in 1998 and third in 1999.

In 1999 Ute Mückel decided not to start in Hawaii and concentrated largely on ITU World Cup races over the Olympic distance with a view to qualifying for the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney , where triathlon was part of the competition program for the first time. In 1996 she had narrowly missed a podium finish in some ITU World Cup races - she finished fourth in Ishigaki and Gamagori and fifth in Drummondville and Szombathely . Their competition program between June and November 1999 included seven ITU World Cups with Kapelle-op-den-Bos , Monte Carlo , Tiszaújváros , Corner Brook , Lausanne , Cancún and Noosa .
Since the competition format, which was unfamiliar due to the drafting approval, only came out between 13th and 28th place, she had to hope for the last two chances in April 2000: the World Cups in Hawaii and in Perth . Although she reached eleventh place at the World Cup in Hawaii, she came in second and sixth, respectively , behind Anja Dittmer and Joelle Franzmann .
So Perth was the last chance: The German Triathlon Union had specified a placement in the top 12 as a criterion for an Olympic nomination. In the race, Ute Mückel came out of the water as twelfth of the 46 participants, but then lost contact with the top on the bike and with the 25th best run time, the desired starting position was gone. At that time, Mückel was ranked 78th in the world, but the National Olympic Committee decided to take only two instead of the three possible German women to Sydney.

From then on, Ute Mückel concentrated again on the long distance. At Ironman Europe 2000, as in the previous year, she reached the podium with third place, but unfortunately she was delayed to assign the Hawaii starting places the following day, so that her slot was given to another athlete. Here in Roth, she set a new record on the swimming distance with 47:45 minutes, which Simone Brändli was only to beat again in 2014 .
With an additional start six weeks later at Ironman Canada , she secured one of the three professional starting positions awarded there at the World Championships, but the shortened regeneration time prevented a placement comparable to earlier starts. In the following years her u. a. various third places in Roth (2004 and 2005) as well as once each at Ironman Switzerland , Ironman Arizona and Ironman Florida . In 2002 she even finished second at the Ironman Florida, and in 2005 she was able to achieve her third win at an Ironman in Wisconsin .

Resignation announced in 2007

Ute Mückel announced her retirement from competitive sports in 2007 and her final race should be the Challenge Roth. Five weeks before the competition, however, she had to be hospitalized as a victim of a traffic accident. July 13, 2008, with her last participation in a long-distance triathlon, was a highly emotional experience, to which Ute Mückel was last called on the podium at a German championship in order to receive the bronze medal.

German Triathlon Union since 2008

On November 8, 2008, the then 41-year-old Ute Mückel was elected Vice-President of Competitive Sports of the German Triathlon Union (DTU) in her absence . However, only ten days after her election, she resigned for personal reasons. Although she had announced that the election would be accepted in advance, a new version of the statutes adopted at the same time would have increased her personal liability.

Ute Mückel trains numerous triathletes such as B. Mareen's hooves . In 2008 she founded the Ute Mückel Triathlon eV association as a national team of ambitious recreational athletes that competes under the name of Ute Mückel sebamed Triathlon Team both in individual competitions and temporarily as a team in the NRWTV league. At the Challenge Roth 2015 the club was represented by 14 starters.

Private

Before starting her triathlon career, Ute Mückel studied to be a teacher for sport and geography in Potsdam .
She was married to Thomas Astheimer , an equally ambitious amateur triathlete between 1986 and 1996 with multiple top 10 placements in the middle distance. She lives in Nußdorf am Inn in the Upper Bavarian district of Rosenheim .

Sporting successes

Publications

• Swimming training - For all triathlon distances: efficient swimming style, maximum economy, swimming in open water , Meyer & Meyer Sport; Edition: 1st, edition (May 27, 2010) ISBN 978-3898995542

Web links

• Literature by and about Ute Mückel in the catalog of the German National Library
• Ute Mückel in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely accessible)
• Website by Ute Mückel
• Website of the Ute Mückel team
• Profile for Ute Mückel at the Institute for Applied Training Science , accessed on October 11, 2014
• Profile and results of Ute Mückel in the ITU database at Triathlon.org , accessed on October 15, 2018 (English).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Thomas Scharrer: For crazy Americans . In: Nürnberger Nachrichten . October 18, 2003.
2. ^ Dino Reisner: For the last time Ironman in Roth . In: The world . July 3, 2001.
3. ^ Results from Ute Mückel at ITU races
4. ^ SID : Chaos with the re-election of the triathlon president . In: Rheinische Post . April 28, 2000.
5. ^ Ute Mückel turns to Ironman Canada . In: Slowtwitch.com . August 14, 2000. Archived from the original on September 24, 2015. Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved August 6, 2015. 
6. ^ Sina Horsthemke: End of career in June . In: DTU . May 2007.
7. ↑ Ute Mückel: Start canceled after an accident . In: tri2b.com . June 19, 2007.
8. ↑ Harald Gehring: Presidium: Ute Mückel resigns . In: DTU . November 17, 2008.
9. ↑ Announcement triathlon technology seminar with Ute Mückel
10. ↑ http://www.utemueckel.de/ueber-mich