Waldemar Cierpinski (born 3 August 1950) is a former East German
athleteTrack and field athletics is a collection of sports events that involve running, throwing, jumping and walking. Organised athletics are traced back to the Ancient Olympic Games from 776 BC, and most modern events are conducted by the member clubs of the International Association of Athletics...
and two time Olympic Champion in the marathon.
Born in
NeugatterslebenNeugattersleben is a municipality in the district of Salzlandkreis, in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany....
(
Saxony-AnhaltSaxony-Anhalt is one of the sixteen Bundesländer that make up the Federal Republic of Germany. It has an area of , and a population of 2.45 million...
, former East Germany), Waldemar Cierpinski was originally a successful steeplechase runner but decided to switch to the marathon in 1974.
He was virtually unknown when he entered the
1976 OlympicThe 1976 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XXI Olympiad, were an international multi-sport event held in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, in 1976...
marathon. He ran with the lead pack until
Frank ShorterFrank Shorter is an American distance runner and winner of the marathon race at the 1972 Summer Olympics.Born in Munich, Germany, where his father, physician Samuel Shorter, served in the army, Frank Shorter grew up in Middletown, New York and graduated from Northfield Mount Hermon School, Yale...
of the
United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
broke free after the 25 km mark.
Waldemar Cierpinski (born 3 August 1950) is a former East German
athleteTrack and field athletics is a collection of sports events that involve running, throwing, jumping and walking. Organised athletics are traced back to the Ancient Olympic Games from 776 BC, and most modern events are conducted by the member clubs of the International Association of Athletics...
and two time Olympic Champion in the marathon.
Career
Born in
NeugatterslebenNeugattersleben is a municipality in the district of Salzlandkreis, in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany....
(
Saxony-AnhaltSaxony-Anhalt is one of the sixteen Bundesländer that make up the Federal Republic of Germany. It has an area of , and a population of 2.45 million...
, former East Germany), Waldemar Cierpinski was originally a successful steeplechase runner but decided to switch to the marathon in 1974.
He was virtually unknown when he entered the
1976 OlympicThe 1976 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XXI Olympiad, were an international multi-sport event held in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, in 1976...
marathon. He ran with the lead pack until
Frank ShorterFrank Shorter is an American distance runner and winner of the marathon race at the 1972 Summer Olympics.Born in Munich, Germany, where his father, physician Samuel Shorter, served in the army, Frank Shorter grew up in Middletown, New York and graduated from Northfield Mount Hermon School, Yale...
of the
United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
broke free after the 25 km mark. Cierpinski chased Shorter down then took the lead, winning the race by 51
secondThe second , sometimes abbreviated sec., is the name of a unit of time, and is the International System of Units base unit of time...
s.
Cierpinski's victory was so unexpected that eventual East German gold medalist goalie
Jürgen CroyJürgen Croy is a former international football goalkeeper for the German Democratic Republic and one of the great goalkeepers of all time.-Sporting career:...
rallied his football team by using him as an example, saying that if this "living example of mediocrity" could win a gold medal then they should be able to beat
PolandPoland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe . Poland is bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
(by a 3 to 1 score.)
Cierpinski finished in fourth place at the 1978 European Championships. In the
1980 Summer OlympicsThe 1980 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XXII Olympiad, were an international multi-sport event held in Moscow in the Soviet Union. In addition, the yachting events were held in Tallinn, and some of the preliminary matches and the quarter-finals of the football tournament...
, Cierpinski ran wisely and didn't match the suicidal pace the leaders had set. He caught up to the leaders at the 36 km mark and soon led by a healthy margin. Although
Gerard NijboerGerard Nijboer was a Dutch athlete who competed mainly in the Marathon.He competed for the Netherlands in three consecutive Summer Olympics, starting in 1980 , when he won the silver medal in the Men's Marathon...
from the
NetherlandsThe Netherlands is a country in Northwestern Europe, constituting the major portion of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It is a parliamentary democratic constitutional monarchy. The Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east...
narrowed the gap in the last kilometre, Cierpinski sprinted the last 200 m to win his second Olympic gold and duplicate the feat of legendary
EthiopiaEthiopia , officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country situated in the Horn of Africa. Ethiopia is bordered by Eritrea to the north, Sudan to the west, Kenya to the south, Somalia to the east and Djibouti to the northeast. Its size is 1,100,000 km² with an...
n
Abebe BikilaAbebe Bikila was a two-time Olympic marathon champion from Ethiopia. He was the first black African in history to win a gold medal in the Olympics. A stadium in Addis Ababa is named in his honor...
of winning two Olympic marathons.
Cierpinski finished third in the marathon in the
1983 World Championships in AthleticsThe inaugural World Championships in Athletics were run under the auspices of the International Association of Athletics Federations and were held at the Olympic Stadium in Helsinki, Finland between August 7 and August 14, 1983.-Track:...
. He was denied a chance of an unprecedented third Olympic marathon win by the
Eastern BlocThe terms Eastern Bloc, Communist Bloc or Soviet Bloc were used to refer to the former Communist states of Eastern and Central Europe, including the countries of the Warsaw Pact, along with Yugoslavia and Albania, which were not aligned with the Soviet Union after 1948 and 1960...
boycott of the
1984 Summer OlympicsThe 1984 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XXIII Olympiad, was an international multi-sport event held in Los Angeles, California, United States in 1984. Los Angeles was selected as the host of the Games on May 18, 1978 on the 80th IOC session at Athens, Greece, without a vote,...
.
In
Track & Field NewsTrack & Field News is a magazine founded in 1948 by brothers Bert Nelson & Cordner Nelson, focused on the world of athletics, known as "track and field" in the US....
World Rankings, Cierpinski was ranked first in the marathon in 1976 and 1980 and eighth in 1978 and 1983.
Waldemar Cierpinski is now a member of the German Olympic Committee. Since 2007 Cierpinski is honorary member of the SG WiP Goettingen 06.
Drug Allegations
It is now well known that East Germany operated a state-sponsored system of providing
performance-enhancing drugsIn sports, the use of performance-enhancing drugs is commonly referred to by the disparaging term "doping", particularly by those organizations that regulate competitions. The use of performance enhancing drugs is mostly done to improve athletic performance. This is why many sports ban the use of...
to as many as 10,000 athletes from about 1968 to 1988.
As a result, 1976 silver medallist
Frank ShorterFrank Shorter is an American distance runner and winner of the marathon race at the 1972 Summer Olympics.Born in Munich, Germany, where his father, physician Samuel Shorter, served in the army, Frank Shorter grew up in Middletown, New York and graduated from Northfield Mount Hermon School, Yale...
has advocated the belief that Cierpinski cheated and has supported official review of past performances, i.e. considering stripping medals from athletes who are found later on to have cheated, as a deterrent to drug-cheats.
However, it should be noted that Cierpinski never failed a drugs test during his competitive career (as did most East German athletes later known to have doped) and no investigation or evidence to back the beliefs of Shorter has been conducted or come to light; both Cierpinski's Olympic gold medals and other competitive results remain.
External links