|
By the time Dieter Baumann had arrived at the 1996 Olympic Games in
Atlanta, he was somewhat of an Olympic veteran, having won the silver
medal in the 5000m in 1988, and the gold medal four years later. He was
also in the best form of his career to that point, having set a new
5000m personal best of 13min 01.72sec in 1995. However, other athletes
had been setting much faster times than Baumann's during 1995 and 1996,
and he would find it a difficult challenge to successfully defend his
Olympic title. In the end, the task was beyond him, but he still
finished a creditable 4th in 13min 08.81sec, less than one second behind
the winner. Incredibly, in 1997, at the age of 32, Baumann was running
faster than ever, and he set a number of career personal bests during
that year.
One of these occurred very early in the season, on 5 April
at Barakaldo, where Dieter won the European 10000m challenge in 27min
21.53sec. Two months later, he won the 3000m (see photo above)
at the European Cup in Munich on 21 June in a Cup record time of 7min
41.08sec. On 13 July, he set his career best time over 1500m, when
winning at Stuttgart in 3min 33.51sec. On 10 August he competed in his
third World Championships in Athens, where he finished 5th in the 5000m.
Three days later, Baumann broke 13 minutes for 5000m for the only time
in his career, setting a new personal best of 12min 54.70sec. Baumann
had another good year in 1998, winning the silver medal in the 10000m at
the European Championships in Budapest, but that hard run took its
toll, as he finished only 13th in the 5000m four days later. On 19
October 1999, Baumann tested positive for the drug Nandrolene and
received a two-year suspension. (Ron Casey)
|