Wilfried Soltau ( German: Wilfried Soltau ; June 17, 1912 ) - a German canoe rower , played for the German national team in the late 1930s - mid 1950s. Participant of two summer Olympic Games, two-time bronze medalist of the Olympic Games in Helsinki, winner of the World Championship bronze medal, multiple winner and medalist of regattas of national importance.
| Wilfried Soltau | |
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| personal information | |
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| A country |  Germany |
| Specialization | canoe sprint |
| Date of Birth | June 17, 1912 (107 years old) |
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Biography
Wilfried Soltau was born on June 17, 1912. He was rowing in Hamburg at the HKC canoe club.
He first made his name in 1937, having won the national championship of Germany paired with Heinz Ozenbrugg in the classification of double crews. The first serious success at the adult international level was achieved in the 1938 season, when he joined the German national team and attended the first world championship in kayaking and canoeing in the Swedish city of Vaxholm, from where he brought the bronze dignity won in the double crew at a distance of 1000 meters. Due to the outbreak of World War II, he was forced to interrupt his sports career.
At the end of the war, Soltau returned to sports and already in 1947 he again became the champion of the country. He could speak at the 1948 Olympic Games in London , but due to the division of Germany into Germany and the German Democratic Republic, differences arose between the German National Olympic Committee and the International Olympic Committee , as a result of which German athletes could not participate in these Games.
Thanks to a series of successful performances in 1952, Wilfried Soltau was awarded the right to defend the country's honor at the Helsinki Summer Olympics . He started here with his young partner Egon Drews (Drews was 14 years younger) in the canoe-double program at distances of 1000 and 10000 meters - in both cases he took third place in the finals and thereby won bronze Olympic medals.
Having become a two-time Olympic bronze medalist, Soltau remained in the main part of the FRG rowing team and continued to take part in major international regattas. So, in 1954, he went to represent the country at the World Championships in French Macon, where he managed to reach the finals in two disciplines and was close to prize positions. As one of the leaders of the West German national team, he successfully qualified for the 1956 Olympic Games in Melbourne , where he represented the so-called United German Team , assembled from athletes from Germany and the GDR (at that time he was already 44 years old). Paired with the same Egon Drevs in ten on two kilometers he stopped a step away from the prize positions, taking fourth place behind the crews from the USSR, France and Hungary. Soon after the end of these competitions, he decided to end the career of a professional athlete, having lost his place in the national team to young German rowers - during his long sports career from 1937-1956, he became a total of 18 times the champion of national championships in various rowing disciplines.
Literature
- Bodo Harenberg (Red.): Die Stars des Sports von AZ . Darmstadt 1970
- Volker Kluge: Olympische Sommerspiele Die Chronik II Berlin 1998 ISBN 3-328-00740-7
Links
- Wilfried Soltau - Olympic statistics at Sports-Reference.com
- Wilfried Soltau - medals at major international competitions
- Lists of kayaking and canoeing champions and prize winners (1936-2007 )