Sports Physician - Athlete 1920
1920
Inge Bausenwein (1920-2008) won the German championship javelin throw in 1941, 1943, 1947 and 1949. In 1952 she was selected for the Helsinki Olympics, where she finished twelfth. After graduating in sports, history and geography, she worked as a teacher in a girls' school during the war years. In 1944 she got her degree in Medicine and she married the neurologist Jörg Bausenwein. After the Helsinki Games she became the team doctor of the German Olympic team, chairman of the Women's Sports section of the German Sports Medicine Association and responsible physician for youth sport at the German Ministry of Health. In 1960 she was appointed as a Sports Medicine teacher at the Universität Erlangen-Nuremberg. She founded the association for the promotion of spastic paralyzed children. In her private practice in Boxdorf, Germany, she accompanied people with reduced mobility during sports, but she was also the doctor of the figure skating duo Marika Kilius (1943-) and Hans-Jürgen Bäumler (1942-).
1920
Heinz-Adolf Heper (1920-) played football from 1948 to 1951 at 1. SC Göttingen 05 in the German Bündesliga. He obtained his doctor's degree with the treatise Performance increase through chemical aids in sport ('Leistungssteigerung durch chemical Hilfsmittel im Sport'), in which he described his own experience with Pervitine, which he described as 'typical doping substance from that time'. He swallowed it himself, but also delivered doses of ten milligrams to his team mates, of which he mentioned 'an increased will to win and a quicker comprehension' as positive effects. But he also noted 'annoying side effects', such as lack of air and increased ventilation. All in all, he diagnosed a 'big threat for the sportsman'. Whether or not he had informed his teammates about this in advance, Heper did not say. Later he became a football coach and he specialized in Sports Medicine.
1920
Sammy Lee (1920-2016), an American of Korean descent, won the gold medal in Olympic platform diving at the 1948 and 1952 Olympics. In 1948 he also won the bronze medal on the 3-meter springboard. After his own successes he coached fellow countrymen Pat McCormick (1930-), Bob Webster (1938-) and Greg Louganis (1960-) to an Olympic gold medal. In 1947 Lee graduated from the University of Southern California. In 1953 during the Korean War Lee served at the US Army Medical Corps in South Korea from 1953 to 1955, where he specialized in nose-throat-ears. At the 1956, 1964 and 1968 Olympics he was in the referee's seat at the diving contest.
1920
Jack Matthews (1920-2012) collected seventeen caps for the Wales National Rugby Team and six with the British Lions. He was a hard-core defender and at some point he was once described as 'a cross between a bulldozer and a brick wall'. In his youth he won the national athletics juniors 220 yards title and in 1939 he was senior’s national champion 100 yards, and third in the 220 yards. After studying Medicine at the Welsh National School of Medicine he was a general practitioner and in 1980 he was the team doctor of the Lions on their tour of South Africa. During his military service in World War II he was commissioned into the Royal Army Medical Corps, but he also focused on boxing. In 1943, Matthews fought future world champion Rocky Marciano (1923-1969) in an amateur boxing match. Marciano famously ended his career having won every professional match he fought in, but Matthews held him to a draw. He also became a medical officer of the Welsh Boxing Association. In 2009, Matthews suffered from a severe stroke that left him speechless
1920
Austrian Ludwig Prokop (1920-2016) became national champion swimming, fencing and modern pentathlon. At Schwimm-Union Sankt Pölten he also played water polo in the highest league, ans was also one of the founders of that team. In 1944 he graduated as a doctor and barely two years later he was appointed head of the Department of Sports Medicine, and in 1959 he became Professor of Sports Physiology at the University of Vienna. From 1974 to 1990 he was director of the Austrian Institute for Sports Medicine and Doping Control. He has published more than six hundred works and 24 books in several languages on sports physiology, changes through training, nutrition, doping, blood alcohol and sports damage. He was a member of the Medical Commission of the BOIC for decades and the Sydney Games in 2000 were his 26th participation. Some famous works are 'Sport - Missbrauch und Chance' from 1992 and 'Grenzen der Toleranz in der Medizin' from 1990. For many years he was vice-chairman of the FIMS and from 1976 to 1980 chairman of that association.
1920
American Steve Seymour (1920-1973) won the silver medal in the javelin throw at the 1948 Olympics in London. To improve his technique he spent 1946 in Finland, the following year he established an American record of 75m80. In total he won three American titles and the silver medal at the 1951 Pan American Games. He graduated from Los Angeles College of Osteopathic Physicians and Surgeons and settled as an osteopath in Los Angeles, where he also started an alcohol addiction clinic.
1920
Winning the 400 metres at the 1948 Olympics in London, Arthur Wint (1920-1992) was the first Jamaican Olympic gold medalist. He als won the silver medal in the 800m and due to a muscle injury he could not participate in the 4 x 400m relay. Four years later in Helsinki, however, he redeemed himself with the gold medal in the 4 x 400m relay in a new world record. He also renewed the silver medal of the 800m and he finished fifth in the final of the 400m. But he also excelled in high jump and long jump and he won in 1937 the 800m at the Central American Games in Panama. During World War II he joined the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan and was sent to the front as a pilot. After the war, he started studiing Medicine at St-Bartholomew's London Hospital, where he graduated in 1955 and he returned to Jamaica eventually settling in Hanover as the only resident doctor. From 1974 to 1978 he was high commissioner in Britain for his country and ambassador to Sweden and Denmark. Then he returned to his native country and went to work in the Linstead Hospital.
