Sports in the GDR

A country with a population of 15 million people achieved enormous successes in sport throughout its history. Until 1964, at all post-war Olympic Games, German athletes from West and East Germany competed as a single team — the "United Team of Germany" (UTG). The last such Olympics was the Tokyo Olympics in 1964, where the UTG took fourth place in the unofficial medal standings, after the United States, the USSR, and Japan. At the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, the athletes of the GDR and the FRG competed separately, and the GDR came fifth, while the FRG was only eighth in the medal standings. In Munich in 1972, the GDR athletes came third (after the USSR and the United States teams). In 1976 in Montreal and in 1980 in Moscow, the GDR came second in the medal standings after the USSR. In 1988 in Seoul, the GDR was again in second place. The names of athletes from the GDR thundered around the world in the 1970s and 1980s: track and field athletes Heike Drechsler and Marita Koch, swimmers Kristin Otto and Barbara Krause, rowers Kay Bluhm and Birgit Fischer-Schmidt. There were its heroes in winter sports as well, for example, figure skaters Gabriele Seyfert and Katarina Witt, and speed skater Gunda Niemann.