Euro Legends: Week 4 – Thomas Wessinghage (GER) – On the road to the 29th European Athletics Indoor Championships in Birmingham, European Athletics will be reviewing the history of this great event, focussing on some of the stars of yesteryear. Week 4 focusses on Thomas Wessinghage (GER) who won a staggering 6 Gold, 5 silver and 1 Bronze medal in the Championships.

Germany’s Thomas Wessinghage
Surely no male athlete in the history of the European Athletics Indoor Championships has quite embraced the event like endurance great Thomas Wessinghage.

During a glorious career the polite, articulate German won a staggering total of six gold, five silver and one bronze medal to boast an enviable record at the event.

A European outdoor 5000m champion in 1982 Wessinghage’s first taste of the European Indoor Championships came ten years earlier in Grenoble when he featured in the gold medal winning 4x800m West German team.

Then aged just 20 Wessinghage admitted he was in awe of simply being part of the team which included Franz-Josef Kemper, the man who was fourth in the 800m at the 1972 Munich Olympics, and Harold Norpoth the 1964 Olympic 5000m silver medallist

The following year in Rotterdam – with Wessinghage running the third leg – Germany retained their title by just two hundredths of a second from Czechoslovakia after Kemper, with his customary late kick, snatched a dramatic victory

„We don’t often tend to be part of a team in athletics so it was nice to win,“ says Wessinghage reflecting on his first two European Indoor gold medals. „Guys like Kemper and Norpoth were men I really looked up to and it was a great experience.“

By 1974 Wessinghage was strong enough to win selection in the individual 1500m where he finished runner-up to the defending champion Henryk Szordykowski of Poland.

Again it was another step in the right direction for his burgeoning career and he recalls no shame in finishing second behind the more experienced Pole in Gothenburg.

„I was never a dare devil or an all or nothing runner,“ he reflects. „I was satisfied I had established myself on the international scene.“

But the following year a stronger Wessinghage was to take his first European individual title in Katowice, taking the metric mile by almost a second from Pyotr Anisim of the Soviet Union.

„I didn’t consider myself favourite but I remember outkicking the rest of the field and I never had too many problems during the race,“ he recalls. „I was obviously pleased to win but sometimes the best victories are when you start to doubt yourself.“

In 1976 he had to settle for 1500m silver behind his clubmate and fellow Leverkusen member Paul-Heinz Wellmann in front of his home spectators in Munich but their was no sense of bitterness from Wessinghage.

„Paul-Heinz had a very fast career and emerged to the top quicker than me,“ he added. „I was willing to accept at that stage a silver medal.“

He missed the 1977 championships in San Sebastian because he was completing his medical examinations but the 1978 edition in Milan proved arguably his most disappointing when complacency denied him the 1500m gold medal against Finn Antti Loikkanen. He was edged out by seven-hundredths of a second in 3:38.16 and explains: „I did not concentrate enough and I eased up a little in the final five metres.“

In 1979 he collected his fourth 1500m silver medal when Irish indoor legend Eamonn Coghlan ran away from the field in Vienna but in 1980 he regained the 1500m title he had first captured five years earlier.

The German enjoyed arguably the best season of his career in 1980 setting the then second fastest time in history for the metric mile of 3:31.58 behind British great Steve Ovett. And his first major achievement of the year came at the European Indoors in Sindelfingen when he cruised to victory in 3:37.54 from Ireland’s Ray Flynn.

Cruelly denied the chance to compete in the 1980 Moscow Olympics because of the West German boycott Wessinghage bounced back from the devastating blow to comfortably retain his European indoor crown in Grenoble from countryman Uwe Becker in 1981.

He skipped the 1982 championships because of commitments in the USA but achieved the sixth and most rewarding of his European indoor gold medals in Budapest 1983.

„I injured my ankle during a game of basketball, had an operation and I was out of action for seven months,“ says Wessinghage of the countdown to the championships. „I barely made it back for the Europeans but I was very happy to win, it was one of the most satisfying.“

Wessinghage went on to win 1500m bronze in 1984 and 3000m silver in 1985 before finishing fifth in the 3000m at the 1986 edition in Madrid – his 13th and final appearance at the championships.

But what was it about the championships which appealed? „I quickly established a preference for indoor running above cross country,“ he explains. „I was quite a muscular runner and I was not suited to running on the soft mud. The indoors always offered a nice break from the hard training in the winter and the Europeans were always a big target for me. But he adds: „I wouldn’t say I was as well suited to indoor running as someone like Eamonn Coghlan, he was the master of the boards.“

Today Wessinghage, 54, is manager of a large re-hab clinic which deals with orthopedic disorders in Damp in northern Germany by the Baltic coast. He still runs five times a week and regularly competes in marathons. This year he plans to run in London and New York and in his last appearance in the English capital two years ago he ran a highly respectable 2:55.

He has three older children from a first marriage and one seven-year-old girl from a second marriage and while his medical career has been a huge success he looks back fondly on his athletics accomplishments during a golden age for the sport.

„Track and field was the one issue in my life for two decades and I was very happy to be around in an era with great guys like Cram, Coe and Ovett,“ he says.

Source
Courtesy

EAA
European Athletics.
european-athletics.org