The career of Katrin Krabbe could best be described as brief and spectacular, and ultimately,
as controversial. As a 16-year old, Krabbe made an impressive debut at the 1986 World Junior
Championships in Athens, finishing 4th in the 100m, and winning two medals, a bronze in the
200m, and a silver in the 4 x 100m relay. Just prior to the next edition of the World Junior
Championships, at Sudbury, Krabbe had set a world junior record over 100m of 10.89sec,
but at Sudbury, she finished second at that distance to compatriot Diana Dietz.
Two days later, Krabbe beat Dietz by over half a second to win the 200m title in a wind-assisted
time of 22.34sec. The next day, Krabbe and Dietz combined with two teammates to win the gold
medal for East Germany in the 4 x 100m relay, clocking a new world junior record of 43.48sec.
This earned Krabbe her fifth medal at the World Juniors, a record for either sex. Later that year,
Katrin competed in her only Olympic Games, where she finished 6th in her semi-final of the 200m.
Krabbe's entrance into international competition as a senior was just as spectacular as she had
achieved in the junior ranks. At the 1990 European Championships in Split, Krabbe was supreme
in the 100m, winning her heat and semi-final easily, before convincingly winning the final in
10.89sec, to equal her personal best set two years earlier. Two days later on 30 August, in the
200m final, Krabbe became the seventh woman to win the 100m/200m double at the same
European Championships when she won the gold medal (see photo above, No. 287) from
compatriot Heike Drechsler and Galina Malchugina (Soviet Union). Krabbe won a third gold
medal in the 4 x 100m relay, running the second leg on the East German team which recorded
the year's fastest time of 41.68sec. (Ron Casey)
.