Track and field athlete Marita Koch: biography, family, achievements and interesting facts

German athlete Marita Koch was, according to coach Miroslav Kwach, "the most remarkable female sprinter of our time." The level at which she dominated in short-distance races in her peak years in the late 1970s and early 1980s, in athletics or in any other sport is very rare. Some called her the greatest athlete of all time.

Marita Koch, biography: the beginning

She was born on 18.02.57 in the town of Wismar (East Germany). Her athletic talent manifested itself early: at a young age she competed with the older boys in the race and won. Koch lived in her hometown before completing her studies in high school, and then entered the University of Rostock, where she planned to study medicine. But the naval engineer and part-time sports coach Wolfgang Meyer had other plans for her. He noticed her talent when she was a student in Wismar, and followed her to Rostock with the goal of directing her training program.

The first results did not have to wait long. The best time Koch at 400 m decreased from 60.3 s when she was 15, to 51.60 s at 18 and 50.19 s after a year. Her name first sounded in 1975 in Athens, at the European Junior Championships, where she won gold in the relay race and silver in the 400m race. The muscle rupture left Koch on the sidelines of the 1976 Olympics in Montreal, and at the 1977 World Championships She became a silver medalist, losing to Irene Ševińska from Poland. This was the last time she lost at a distance of 400 m until 1981.

Rising star

1978 was the year of the beginning of the rise of Koch to the top of the world ranking in track and field athletics. Her first world record, she set in Poland on May 22, 1978, breaking 200 m in 20.06 s, and in July in Leipzig, she improved the world record by 0.1 s, running 400 m in 49.19 seconds. Marita competed on the 200-, 100- and 50-meter tracks with the East German athlete Marliesa Gör and Evelyn Ashford of the United States, who won her 200 meters at the World Championships in 1979. Koch considered her specialization a 400-meter distance; Powerful performances on shorter tracks, she considered as a test of her progress at different stages of the race at 400 meters. The explosive launch was one of its strengths, which it developed partly due to intensive training in shorter sections. In 1979, she twice improved her world record twice in an ode a week, running 400 m for 48.89 and 48.60 seconds.

World Glory

The world outside athletics found out about Marita when she won two gold medals (400 m and 4x400 m relay) at the Olympics in Montreal in 1980. The race opened a powerful but graceful runner to the audience. Mexican sprinter Maritsa Lagardia told the metropolitan newspaper El Norte that Koch had "an amazing physical constitution - a height of 1 m 78 cm - and solid muscles". But the audience did not manage to get to know her better: the access of the press and the public to it and to other East German athletes was strictly limited to East German officials, who feared the escape of athletes. The situation was aggravated by Koch's natural shyness: Marita even after a reunification of Germany gave only a few interviews.

Three gold medals in one competition

In 1981, Marita Koch lost in the 400m race to competitor Yarmila Kratokhvilova from Czechoslovakia, but soon she resumed her victorious march. She beat her own world record on a 400 meter track at 48.15 seconds at the 1982 European Championships, where she also took the gold in the relay race. Koch won 3 gold medals at the 1983 World Championships in Athletics in Helsinki at a distance of 200 m and in relay races 4 × 100 m and 4 × 400 m. Her record in the 400 m race was beaten by Kratokhvilova, who broke the 48-second barrier . But Marita seemed a star on the eve of the Summer Olympic Games in 1984 in Los Angeles. Even American coach Pat Connolly said that Koch is the best runner that ever was, and admired the gracefulness of her movements.

Soviet invasion

But Koch's stellar status was not to be confirmed - the United States declared a boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympic Games, protesting against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan a year earlier, and the Soviet Union retaliated by boycotting the Games in Los Angeles along with most communist countries. Marita Koch and other members of the East German Olympic team, raised from childhood by communist ideology, were disappointed by the boycott and had no choice but to accept this situation. Koch was at the peak of her career.

The last record

Next year, Koch decided to catch up. At the World Championships in Canberra, she took the gold at 200 m and in the relay 4 × 400 m, but in the headlines around the world her record time hit 47.60 s at a distance of 400 meters. In her interview with the London newspaper The Times, she said that she had never felt so relaxed at the 300-meter mark as before. She could not see the clock at the end of the treadmill, but on the noise of the crowd realized that she had beaten a world record. Having improved by as much as four tenths of a second, the result of Kratokhvilova is an impressive break in the sprint, which takes into account the difference of a few hundredths of a second, - Koch, according to the Times, again confirmed her right to be called the best sportswoman of the last decade, if not in the history of sports.

Care of Athletics

This single race seemed to have exhausted Koch's energy. Marita then said that all she can think of is returning home and rest. She made her name on the list of preliminary applicants for the 1988 Olympics in Seoul. But the problem with the Achilles tendon reduced its ability to fight. Koch officially retired from sport in 1987. It became more difficult for her to motivate herself. According to her, if she comes out on the road with 14- and 15- and 16-year-old participants of the competition, she will think: "What am I doing here?" Her last performance took place in 1986 at the Grand Prix in Rome, where she won the 400m run.

Marita Koch: biography and family

At that time, Koch was engaged to her trainer Wolfgang Meyer, and soon they were married. In 1989 they had a daughter Ulrike. Originally, Koch planned to resume the study of pediatrics, but the collapse of socialism and the opening of the border with the West on November 9, 1989 turned Marita's life upside down. "It was another business and personal life," she later confessed. "No one told you what to do." If earlier there was one insurance company, now there are hundreds of them. It was very difficult not to know where to go and what to do. " The double burden of a female student also proved burdensome.

Koch and Meyer decided to open a sporting goods store in Rostock. The business was successful, and then expanded to the second store. In an interview with the German television network ZDF, she told that her own business does not make them rich, but provides them with a good life. In accordance with her character, Koch does not use his famous sports career to advertise in the store premises. According to her, people do not come to admire the gold medals of the Olympic Games or world championships. They want to buy something.

Suspicion in doping

Only one thing threatened to disturb Koch's peace: a growing scandal about the use of doping in sport in general and in the Olympics in particular. There were rumors that the phenomenal success of the East German sports programs in the 1980s was based on drug therapy, and in 1992 the British Broadcasting Corporation showed a documentary television movie with the participation of a West German scientist who claimed to have cracked the codes contained in the records of East Germany and Identified Koch as one of the athletes who took steroids.

The scandal broke out with renewed force in 1995, when the French Olympic champion Marie-Joe Perek, another Wolfgang Meyer's ward, pointed to the deterioration in the results of athletes after the introduction of new methods of drug control in the late 1980s. She referred to Koch's record as one of the dubious ones, but she in an interview in 2000 replied that now that Perek is training with her husband, the French athlete learns how she worked to achieve this result. In 2005, the declassified files of the secret police of the GDR also seemed to increase the likelihood that Koch was doping. Marita Koch categorically denies the suspicion of doping, since at the World Championships in Helsinki in 1983 she was tested three times, and always successfully. According to her, the same applies to her career in general: she was a mature and responsible athlete.

German runner with tenderness remembers his outstanding sports career. "It was a great time," says Marita Koch. - Athletics gave me a lot, despite the fact that the victories were worth a lot of hard work. I would repeat all this in the same way. "

Interesting Facts

Before leaving the sport in 1987 due to injuries, Marita Koch set 31 world records. She showed 6 times the best time in women's 400m races, as well as 8 of the 10 best results in a 200m run. One of her achievements is a swift 47.60s at a distance of 400m at the 1985 World Championships in Canberra - Still remains the second oldest record in the Olympic sport. No runner could even come close to this result.

Marita Koch also showed a record time at distances of up to 50 m. In her peak years, she lost 400-meter races only twice. In her sports collection there is only one set of awards, but the reason for this was politics, not the struggle on the treadmill. At the peak of her career in 1984, she was unable to participate in the Olympic Games in Los Angeles because of the boycott of the Soviet Union and its satellites. The investigation of the use of steroids in the national sports programs of the former East Germany after the collapse of the socialist system in 1989 affected Koch, but she insists on her innocence.