Erhard Keller

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Olympic medal record
Men's Speed Skating
Gold 1968 Grenoble 500 m
Gold 1972 Sapporo 500 m

Erhard Keller (born 24 December 1944 in Munich, Germany) is a former speed skater.

Competing for West Germany, Erhard Keller specialised on the sprint distances – the 500 m and the 1,000 m – and he joined the world's sprint skating elite in 1965. In December 1967, he equalled Yevgeny Grishin's world record on the 500 m by skating that distance in 39.5 seconds and the next month, on 28 January 1968, he beat Grishin's world record, to the very day five years after Grishin had set it[1].

Keller, studying dentistry at the Munich University at the time, then participated in the 1968 Winter Olympics in Grenoble. There, the "flying dentist" became Olympic Champion on the 500 m (a distance in which he was still the world record holder), making him the first German Olympic Champion in speed skating in history – before any other East German or West German or German Olympic Champions in speed skating that would follow[2].

In 1971, Keller became champion at the ISU Sprint Championships (the forerunner of the World Sprint Championships). The next year, he became Olympic Champion on the 500 m again (setting a new Olympic record in the process) at the 1972 Winter Olympics in Sapporo. After the 1972 speed skating season, Keller became a professional speed skater and he graduated in dentistry in 1973. After 1974, Keller no longer participated in any international tournaments. He became a professional dentist in Munich in 1975 and only participated for a few more years in national tournaments.

Contents

[edit] World records

Over the course of his career, Keller skated 6 world records (his 500 m world record of 38.0 equalling the existing world record; others would equal it too):

Distance Result Date Location
500 m 39.2  28 January 1968 Inzell
500 m 38.42 14 March 1971 Inzell
500 m 38.3  2 January 1972 Inzell
500 m 38.0  4 March 1972 Inzell
1,000 m 1:18.5  4 March 1972 Inzell
Sprint combination 155.800 5 March 1972 Inzell

[edit] Personal records

To put these personal records in perspective, the last column (WR) lists the official world records on the dates that Keller skated his personal records.

Distance Result Date Location WR
500 m 38.0 4 March 1972 Inzell 38.0
1,000 m 1:18.5 4 March 1972 Inzell 1:18.8
1,500 m 2:05.5 5 March 1967 Inzell 2:03.9
3,000 m 4:42.0 1 January 1966 Inzell 4:26.8
5,000 m 8:08.0 13 January 1967 Madonna di Campiglio 7:28.1
10,000 m 17:20.6 9 January 1966 Madonna di Campiglio 15:33.0
Big combination 183.938 14 January 1967 Madonna di Campiglio 178.253
Small combination 178.446 5 March 1967 Inzell none
Sprint combination 155.800 5 March 1972 Inzell 156.500

Note that the small combination was not an official ISU world record event until 1981.

Keller has an Adelskalender score of 180.663 points.

[edit] References

Notes
  1. ^ Keller 1968, p. 124-126.
  2. ^ Keller 1968, p. 178-187.
Bibliography
  • Eng, Trond. All Time International Championships, Complete results 1889 - 2002. Askim, Norway, WSSSA Skøytenytt, 2002.
  • Keller, Erhard. 74 Schritte zum Ziel, Inzell gab mir die Chance. Munich, Germany: Copress-verlag, 1968. (in German)

[edit] External links

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Olympic champions in men's 500 m speed skating
1924: Charles Jewtraw · 1928: Bernt Evensen / Clas Thunberg · 1932: Jack Shea · 1936: Ivar Ballangrud · 1948: Finn Helgesen · 1952: Ken Henry · 1956: Yevgeny Grishin · 1960: Yevgeny Grishin · 1964: Terry McDermott · 1968: Erhard Keller · 1972: Erhard Keller · 1976: Yevgeny Kulikov · 1980: Eric Heiden · 1984: Sergey Fokichev · 1988: Uwe-Jens Mey · 1992: Uwe-Jens Mey · 1994: Alexander Golubev · 1998: Hiroyasu Shimizu · 2002: Casey FitzRandolph · 2006: Joey Cheek