Renate STECHER

Renate Stecher completely dominated women's sprinting in the early 1970s, establishing a winning streak of 90 successive outdoor wins at 100m and 200m. She first came to international prominence at the 1969 European Championships at Athens, where she was second in the 200m, and was a member of East Germany's gold medal winning 4 x 100m relay team. In 1970 at Budapest, she commenced what would become a remarkable record at European Cup meets, by winning the 200m and placing second in the 100m. At the next European Championships, held at Helsinki in 1971, she was the winner of both the 100m and 200m, and a member of the East German 4 x 100m relay team which came second behind West Germany. Coincidentally, the same results occurred for these three events at the Munich Olympic Games the next year. In the 100m final at Munich Stecher led all the way, winning easily in a new World Record of 11.07sec with Raelene Boyle (Australia) second in 11.23sec.

In the final of the 200m, she was up against defending Olympic champion Irene Szewinska (Poland) as well as Boyle, who had won the silver medal behind Szewinska in 1968. Stecher was again victorious. Beating everyone but Boyle by a huge margin. Boyle gave her a good battle down the straight, but eventually succumbed, running 22.45sec to Steher’s 22.40sec, both women dipping below the existing World Record. The 4 x 100m relay final turned into a cold war showdown between East and West Germany. Stecher received the baton a metre behind Heide Rosendahl and it was expected that she would be able to make up this deficit. However, the West German defended the challenge valiantly, and the East German team had to be content with a silver medal. (Ron Casey)

Following the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, Renate Stecher continued to dominate women's sprinting in Europe as she had done since 1970. At the European Cup meet at Edinburgh in 1973, she won three gold medals, in the 100m, 200m, and 4 x 100m relay. During that year on 7 June, Stecher became the first woman to break the 11-second barrier for 100m, clocking a hand timed 10.9sec at Ostrava, Czechoslovakia. Because of the vagaries in World Record keeping during the transition period between hand and automatic timing, this time was accepted as a World Record, although Stecher's 11.07sec set at the 1972 Olympics was the fastest automatic time and also the World Record. In July at Dresden, she lowered this time to 10.8sec, the last hand timed World Record accepted for the women's 100m.

The following year at the European Championships at Rome, she finished second to Irene Szewinska (Poland) in both the 100m and 200m, although she did win a gold medal in the 4 x 100m relay. From competing in three European Championships she had won a total of eight medals, equalling the record of Fanny Blankers-Koen (Netherlands) for most European Championships medals. In the European Cup at Nice in 1975 she repeated her performance at the previous Cup meet in 1973 winning gold medals in the 100m, 200m, and 4 x 100m relay, bringing her total gold medals at European Cup meets to a record number of seven.

At the 1976 Olympic Games, Stecher was still competitive, but her dominance had started to fade. She ran second behind Annegret Richter (West Germany) in the 100m, and placed third behind her team mate Barbel Eckert and Richter in the 200m. She finished with a gold medal in the 4 x 100m relay, with West Germany second, reversing the 1972 result. (Ron Casey)