Werner Girke

Werner Girke (born September 4, 1940 in Grabik , today Lower Silesian Voivodeship , Poland ) is a former German long-distance runner .

Girke was a total of ten German champions, eleven runners-up and seven thirds in German championships:

• 1961: Third in cross-country running (middle distance)
• 1962: third in cross country (middle distance)
• 1964: Master over 5000 m (14: 29.0 min), master over 3000 m in the hall (8: 21.4 min) and runner-up in cross-country running (middle distance)
• 1965: Master over 5000 m (14: 13.8 min) and runner-up over 3000 m in the hall
• 1966: Third over 5000 m and champion over 3000 m in the hall (8: 05.8 min)
• 1967: Third over 5000, champion over 3000 m in the hall (8: 03.6 min) and runner-up in cross country
• 1968: third over 5000 m
• 1969: Vice champion over 5000 m and champion over 3000 m in the hall (8: 01.4 min)
• 1970: Runner-up over 3000 m in the hall, third in the cross-country run
• 1971: runner-up over 5000 m
• 1972: runner-up in cross-country running (middle distance) and third over 3000 m in the hall

There are also four championships (1963, 1965, 1967 and 1969) and three runner-up championships (1961, 1962 and 1970) with the forest and cross-country team of VfL Wolfsburg over the middle distance.

Girke also appeared several times on an international level. He was a participant in the European Championships in Budapest in 1966 and in Helsinki in 1971 , the European Indoor Games in Dortmund in 1966 , in Prague in 1967 and in Belgrade in 1969 and the European Athletics Indoor Championships in Vienna in 1970 . Over 5000 meters his best result is tenth place (13: 53.2 min) in Budapest in 1966; five years later in Helsinki he was eliminated in the preliminary stages (in 1969 in Athens the German team refrained from starting individual competitions in protest against Jürgen May's refusal to start). Since he did interval training all year round , he was more successful in the hall, where he won two medals over 3000 meters: Gold in 1967 in Prague (7: 58.6 min) and bronze in Belgrade in 1969 (7: 56.8 min). In 1966 in Budapest and 1970 in Vienna he was fifth each.

Girke had no luck in his only Olympic participation in 1968 in Mexico City . In 15: 20.8 minutes, as eleventh of his prelim, he missed the final, for which the first five runners from each of the three prelims qualified, by more than 40 seconds.

Werner Girke is 1.76 m and weighed 64 kg during his active time. He started for VfL Wolfsburg .

Personal bests

• 1500 m : 3: 44.3 min, September 5, 1968, Ludwigshafen am Rhein
• 3000 m: 7: 55.4 min, September 24, 1969, Berlin
• 5000 m: 13: 37.0 min, June 13, 1968, Paris
• 10,000 m : 28: 42.0 min, June 2, 1972, Eschweiler

Web links

• Werner Girke in the database of Sports-Reference (English; archived from the original )

Footnotes

1. ↑ http://habbo-wolfsburg.de.tl/Geschichte-des-VFL.htm auf. December 31, 2016
2. ↑ Arnd Krüger : Many roads lead to Olympia. The changes in training systems for medium and long distance runners (1850–1997). In: N. Gissel (Hrsg.): Sporting performance in change. Czwalina, Hamburg 1998, pp. 41-56.