Martina Hellmann

Martina Helga Hellmann (née Opitz; born 12 December 1960) is a retired German track and field athlete who represented East Germany. She was the Olympic champion in the discus throw at the 1988 Summer Olympics. She also won the World Championship in that event in 1983 and again in 1987. Born in Leipzig, Saxony, Hellmann was sixteen years old when she began participating in the event. In 1977 she gave the participants' oath at the opening of the East German gymnastics and sport festival. That summer she set the world record for 16-year-olds with a throw of 55.00 meters. Her career was plagued by sickness and injury until 1983 when she became the surprise world champion. She was unable to compete at the 1984 summer Olympic games due to her country's boycott. On 6 September 1988 she threw the discus 78.14 metres, farther than any woman had ever thrown it before or after. However, this throw was in an unofficial tournament in the East German training camp at Kienbaum set up to decide the final GDR place for the Olympic games in Seoul and was not eligible to be considered a world record. During this session she threw the following distances, two of them exceeding the world record at the time, and two more that were ever exceeded by only one female thrower: 76.92m – 78.14m – 70.52m – 76.56m – 75.66m – 74.04m (the women's world record, set in July 1988, is 76.80 m). Ilke Wyludda threw a lifetime best 75.36 m, but had to stay home. Five of Hellmann's throws during that competition were better than her official best of 72.92 metres, achieved in August 1987 in Potsdam, and which ranks her ninth on the world all-time list and sixth among German discus throwers, behind Gabriele Reinsch, Ilke...