Marita koch biography
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Personal Bests
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Marita Koch
German sprint track and field athlete
Marita Koch (later Meier-Koch; born 18 February 1957) is a German former sprinttrack and field athlete. During her career she set 16 world records in outdoor sprints as well as 14 world records in indoor events. Her record of 47.60 in the 400 metres, set on 6 October 1985, still stands.
Biography
[edit]Born in Wismar, East Germany, Marita Koch displayed exceptional speed even as a young child and was defeating boys much older than herself in sprint races whilst at school. By the time she had turned 15 years old, she was training under Wolfgang Meier. Meier worked as a naval engineer, but also coached athletics part-time. Koch and Meier moved to Rostock where Koch began to study medicine. However, she decided to stop her studies and focus on running instead. Koch was coached by Meier for her entire career, and they later married. She retained her maiden name, and is now known as Marita Koch-Meier. She and her husband have a daughter named Ulrike.[2] In 2019, Ulrike married Tony Drechsler, son of former East German long jump world record holder Heike Drechsler.[3]
Koch has held world records over several distances from 50 m to 400 m. Some of her best performances are as follows:
Koch ran a 40
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Koch, Marita
German sprinter Marita Koch (born 1957) was, in the words of track coach Miroslav Kvac, "the most remarkable woman sprinter of our time," (as quoted on the website of the International Amateur Athletic Federation, or IAAF). The degree to which she dominated her competition in short distance races during her peak years in the late 1970s and early 1980s has rarely been matched, in track and field or in any other sport. Some have called her the greatest female athlete of all time.
Before her retirement in 1987, due to injuries, Koch broke world records 31 times. At one point, she had notched the six fastest times ever run by a woman in the 400 meters, as well as eight of the ten fastest times in the 200 meters. One of her individual records, her blistering pace of 47.60 seconds in the 400-meter race at the 1985 World Cup in Canberra, Australia, still stands and is the second-oldest record in any sport in Olympic competition. No runner has even approached that record. Koch also held records at distances down to 50 meters. She lost 400-meter races only twice during her peak years. Only one set of jewels was missing from her racing crown, but it was politics, not competition on the track, that kept them from her. At the peak of her career, she was unable to compete