Hoff, Karen

Karen Hoff was born on May 29, 1921 in the city of Runners in the Central Jutland region. She began to actively engage in rowing at the age of thirteen during the Second World War , she was trained at the local club of kayaking and canoeing “Gudenaa”.

The first serious success at the adult international level was in the 1948 season, when she joined the Danish national team and played at the World Championships in London, where she won the 500-meter double kayak competition with her partner Bodil Svendsen .

Thanks to a series of successful performances, she was awarded the right to defend the country's honor at the Summer Olympic Games in London - she started among lone kayaks five hundred meters away, qualified from the first place in the preliminary stage and was also the best in the decisive final race, thereby winning the Olympic gold medal.

Having become an Olympic champion, Hoff for some time remained in the main composition of the Danish rowing team and continued to take part in major international regattas. So, in 1950, she visited the home world championship in Copenhagen, from where she brought the silver dignity award won in the half-kilometer single race - only the representative of Finland Silvi Saimo , the next Olympic champion in the women's single-lane discipline, finished better than her. The last time showed any significant result in the 1952 season, when she received the Danish champion title for the seventh time.

Subsequently, Karen Hoff worked as a store manager and until late age she did not stop rowing - she regularly performed at various amateur and veteran competitions.

She died on February 29, 2000 at the age of 78 years ^[1] .

• Karen Hoff - Olympic Statistics at Sports-Reference.com
• Karen Hoff - medals at major international competitions
• Lists of kayaking and canoeing champions and prize winners (1936-2007 )