He was 78 years old
Olympic javelin throw champion Wolfermann dies
Updated 12/18/2024 – 6:16 p.mReading time: 2 minutes
Klaus Wolfermann was one of the big winners in Munich in 1972. A year after winning gold, he shone with a javelin throw world record. Now the athlete, who was born in Altdorf near Nuremberg, has died.
German sport mourns the loss of Olympic javelin throw champion Klaus Wolfermann. The Franconian died on Wednesday night at the age of 78, as his family confirmed to the German Press Agency. The Bayerischer Rundfunk had previously reported.
Wolfermann had triumphed at the 1972 Summer Games in Munich by two centimeters over his great Latvian rival Janis Lusis. The 1.76 meter tall athlete was often called “the little giant with the golden arm”.
September 3, 1972 was the hosts’ golden Sunday in the Munich Olympic Stadium: Hildegard Falck won the 800-meter run and Bernd Kannenberg won the 50-kilometer walk, as did Wolfermann, and Heide Rosendahl also took silver in the pentathlon.
Wolfermann threw the javelin out to 90.48 meters in his fifth attempt. After the competition, he shrugged his shoulders and approached Lusis, who had previously shone as a serial winner for the Soviet Union. “Sorry, I’m sorry that I won,” he said to him: “He said: It doesn’t matter, I already won in Mexico.” Lusis’ death in April 2020 hit Wolfermann hard: the former rival had long since become a friend.
Two days after that Sunday in Munich, a Palestinian terrorist organization carried out its murderous attack on the Israeli sports team. Among the eleven hostages killed was the weightlifter Josef Romano, with whom Wolfermann had trained before the games.
“Of course I was shocked,” Wolfermann recalled a few years ago. Like other German athletes at the time, he was provided with bodyguards. “People not only had concerns, but also fear.”
The trained toolmaker from SV Gendorf came to javelin throwing through gymnastics, handball and the decathlon. Ten days before the 1972 Olympics he exceeded the 90-meter mark for the first time; Lusis was the world record holder at the time with 93.80 meters. In May 1973, Wolfermann exceeded this record in Leverkusen with 94.08 meters. His record stood for almost four years.
Wolfermann never won a medal at the European Championships. There were no world championships back then. Between 1969 and 1974 he was German champion six times in a row. He missed the 1976 Olympics due to an arm injury.
Germany’s Athlete of the Year in 1972 and 1973 remained connected to sport with his marketing agency even after his career and was socially committed to, among other things, FC Olympia.