Waldemar Cierpinski gets Olympic gold over 42.195 kilometers twice. A TV report also makes it a legend. He is benevolently critical of today’s services.
It is not far from another legend from the market square in Halle with the monument of the famous composer Georg Friedrich Handel. The sports shop of the Marathon Olympic champion in 1976 and 1980 is located right around the corner.
Owner Waldemar Cierpinski is still extremely popular in eastern Germany. He will be 75 years old this Sunday – the final day of the German Athletics Championships in Dresden.
Then the man who remains connected to the words of a TV report will be near the Bohemian spa town of Marienbad and will go on a bike tour with a few buddies. The celebration will then be celebrated on September 6th: His wife has already turned 75 this spring, the eldest son is 50, then there is a party for a 200th birthday.
Nowadays only football
According to Cierpinski, 250,000 kilometers were in his life. He thinks enough, he thinks, and today only plays football – a passion that he could never leave in his best times. The man with the showered hair is in conversation with the German press agency as people appreciate it: approachable, down-to-earth, modest and also funny, but not without clear opinion. And of course he wears a few running shoes.
There is also talk between the shelves full of current models on the GDR remote reporter Heinz Florian Oertel, who died in 2023. He accompanied Cierpinski’s finish in 1980 at Olympia in Moscow with the words: “Dear young fathers or prospective – have courage! Name your newcomers of today’s day Waldemar! Waldemar is here!”
Oertel’s report is omnipresent
The winner at the time did not find that fitting and said the “my friend Flori” too. But in view of the following fan post flood, Cierpinski noticed what Oertel had triggered and appreciated it for a long time. “People remembered that. I am addressed every day later,” he says. Some prospective parents would have actually taken Oertel’s suggestion literally and told him about it.
Cierpinski brought it to a sporty fame in 1976. In Montreal, he defeated Frank Shorter, who was again favorite in the marathon in Munich four years after gold.
Cierpinski tells how he sometimes trained up to four times a day and finally brought the trash to the trash from the fifth floor in the evening – so that he had to climb stairs again. He thought of this in 1976 when he could not close a gap to Shorter at first. And he also reports how he once set up with the most powerful GDR sports official Manfred Ewald because of the right footwear.
Appreciation for European champion Ringer
Cierpinski is still pursuing his successors with interest. He found the European championship title for Richard Ringer in Munich in Munich in 2022 that a year ago in Paris the Germans had been satisfactory at the Olympic Marathon. There was twelve best DLV athletes after Cierpinski, as one of several deserved ex-athletes, had previously encouraged in a video message.
“He said that something should be trusted,” Ringer reported now. He also ran a brave race at the Olympics. The fact that only the Ethiopier Abbe Bikila and the Kenyan Eliud Kipchoge besides Cierpinski were the Olympic champion two of the words. “Defending what is phenomenal,” said Ringer (36), who is now in the middle of preparing for the World Cup in Tokyo in mid -September.
Ringer: Don’t run as much as the Waldemar
However, he also refers to differences for today. While Cierpinski also liked to play football as a compensation, Ringer also uses the bike for time -consuming training. “There are many hours. I am not one who runs as much as the Waldemar,” he said, and also refers to the associated risk of injury. Cierpinski, however, says that he had not injured himself as often as in terms of football in the forest.
On the way with Gysi
Cierpinski still has enough appointments. Be it as a guest on marathon runs, where he inspires the active with his stories and anecdotes. Or on common talks with left-wing politicians Gregor Gysi on the Baltic Sea. In Halle, son Falk – formerly one of the best German marathon runners – looks after the only converted business.
Cierpinski once trained him. He passionately demands better payment for coaches in Germany. You shouldn’t have to see where you could get funds “It is a shame for Germany,” says Cierpinski.
Do not run so important under two hours
49 years ago in Montreal he won his first gold in 2:09:55 hours, in Moscow in 2:11:03 hours. Thanks to great progress in shoe technology, 35 seconds for the two-hour mark at an official marathon race are still missing.
“This is not important to me. I am not a friend of organized races,” says Cierpinski. Template would also take a lot of work for the head. For him, the 42.195 kilometers are “a competition man against man” – just like in 1980 against the second -placed Dutch Gerard Nijboer or four years earlier against Frank Shorter.
He finds doping suspicions as not fair
According to the German Association and the view of documents as a state-controlled doping in the GDR, the later head of the US anti-doping agency was convinced that Cierpinski defeated him with unfair means.
This rejects this with the indication that an anabolic steric, which has been an endurance athlete, would have been of no use to him as an endurance athlete. “Things have been misinterpreted,” he says. He still feels the accusations during the growing together of reunited Germany – even with reference to doping in the west – as unfair, one -sided and not justified. Shorter also congratulated him on a clean victory.