Sports Physician - Athlete 1957
1957
At the 1983 European Athletics Championships in Helsinki, German Werner Bastians (1957-) finished fifth with his teammates of the 4 x 100m. He ran the 100m at the 1976 Olympics in Montréal, but didn't pass the series. During the 1978 German Championship he became second in the 100m. In 1978 and 1980 he won the German 60m indoor championship, in 1979 that of the 200m. After graduating, he specialized in Orthopedic Surgery and opened a practice in Dortmund, where he also became the team physician at the local football club Borussia Dortmund.
1957
Dutchman Albert Boonstra (1957-) swam the 100 and 200m breaststroke at the 1980 Olympics in Moscow, as well as the 4 x 100 meter medley. He was also national record holder in both breast stroke numbers and was called up for the ECs of 1977 and 1983. After graduating, he settled as a general practitioner. During the 1991 World Championships in Perth, Australia, he was the team physician of the Dutch team. He was a federal physician at the Royal Dutch Swimming Federation. Later he also won silver medals wice and a bronze medal once at the European Masters Championships and a silver medal at the World Championships.
1957
In 1960 Anthony Catanese (1957-) started with judo in the Queens Judo Center of Forest Hills, New York, in which he reached the black belt fourth dan. Later he also did karate and he started his own judo school. He graduated from the New York Medical School and specialized in Urology. In addition, he obtained diplomas for Emergency Medicine, Traumatology and Sports Medicine. He settled in the Somerset Medical Center of Somerville as an Urolologist with a special interest in Urogenital Oncology. He also acted as a competition physician at judo.
1957
Irene Epple-Waigel (1957-) is a former German Alpine skier. In total she won 11 World Cup races and two World Cups in the giant slalom and the combiné. She won the silver medal in the giant slalom at the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid but also in the downhill at the 1978 World Championships in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, where her sister Maria Epple (1959-) captured the gold medal. In 1983 she won the first Super-G race for women in the Swiss Verbier. In 1980 she was elected German sportswoman of the year. In 1992 she completed her medical studies at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München. with the thesis 'Die Wirkungen unterschiedlich resorbierbarer Kohlenhydrate on the Kohlenhydrat- und Fettstoffwechsel von adipösen und normalgewichtigen Probanden'. She specialized in vegan and vegetarian food and settled in the Augsburger Medienzentrum. In 1994, she married Theo Waigel (1939-), who was Minister of Finance from 1989 to 1998, and she herself was in the German Parliament for 12 years.
1957
Andrea Hübner (1957-) won the 200m medley at the first World Swimming Championship in Belgrade in a new world record of 2.20.51. She also added the gold medal with the GDR team of the 4 x 100m freestyle. The following year, during the EC in Vienna, she won the silver medal in the 200m medley and two years later she stopped her sporting career. After her Medicine studies, she settled as a general practitioner in Stuttgart.
1957
At the 1980 Olympics in Moscow, Viktor Markin (1957-) won the 400m in a new European record 44.60. Afterwards he won the 4 x 400m with the Russian relay team. He interrupted his sporting career to study medicine in Novosibirsk and specialized in paediatrics. At the 1982 European Championships he made a comeback with a bronze medal on the 400 and 4 x 400m and the following year in Helsinki he won the gold medal with the relay team at the first World Athletics Championships. Because Russia boycotted the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, he stopped his sports carriere and started a medical practice in Novosibirsk.
1957
Lucky Meisenheimer (1957-) was selected by the University of Kentucky for the American NCAA swimming championships. However, he came into the news in a bizarre manner when he swam a half-mile with a foot in his mouth. It would not be the last time. He wrote the novella 'The Immune' and with his record collection of yo-yos he was included in the Guinness book. After completing his Medicine studies at the University of Kentucky College of Medicine in 1983, he specialized in Dermatology at the Medical University of South Carolina, after which he settled in Orlando, Florida, where he became head of department of Dermatology since 2003. from the Orlando Regional Medical Center.
1957
Dutch rower Anne-Marie Quist-Boelens (1957-) finished fifth with the coxed four at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, and with the coxed eight she captured the bronze medal. After graduating from the University of Utrecht she specialized in Sports Medicine.
1957
German Professor Neuro-Radiology Jürgen Reul (1957-) opened the private clinic Beta in Bonn, which specialized mainly in Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS). That happened after he, as the head of that department at the Medizinischen Fakultät der Uni Bonn, became unhappy with the University management.
"The professional agreements were not respected," he criticized the responsible Ministry of Scientific Research of North Rhine-Westphalia, "the obstruction of good medical care goes so far that I can no longer reconcile my medical conscience."
Reul was an avid practitioner of extreme endurance sports, he cycled annually between 6,000 and 8,000 kilometers, he ran 40 marathons in 12 years and he regularly competed in triathlons, lik the Ironman of Hawaii (five times). In 2002 he finished the Marathon des Sables and in 2003 the Race-Across America. In 2004 he climbed the Kilimandjaro, in 2005 he cycled the Transaustralia by Bike and in 2006 the Transeuropa. In 2007 he climbed l'Alpe d'Huez a few days before the official stage of the Tour de France, administering EPO himself to test the effects of this product.
But then fate struck, he himself got ALS, which did not stop him from disputing desert races in Namibia in 2015, a course of more than 100km. Then it went downhill steeply and he became completely paralyzed and could not even speak anymore.
1957
When William Tan (1957-) from Singapore was two years old, he became a victim of polio, keeping him paralyzed from the diaphragm. At the age of 15, ex-policeman Wahid Baba, who himself was paralyzed on the left side of his body, initiated him in the wheelchair sport. He became a special athlete and in 1988 he earned selections for the Paralympics of Seoul, the Commonwealth Games and the Asia-Pacific Games. But the best sporting achievement was his participation in sixty ultra-marathons worldwide, where he collected eighteen million dollars for people in need. In 2005 he finished in the marathons of New York and Boston. In April 2007 he became the first wheelchair athlete to finish the North Pole marathon, a race that was part of seventeen marathons in seven continents. He used the two million dollars involved to provide free medical assistance in developing areas where airplanes were converted into operating rooms. He graduated from Newcastle University and specialized in Neuroscience. In 2009 he was diagnosed with leukemia, but thanks to his willpower he also overcame that disease. In 2010 he improved his best time in the marathon of Berlin and in 2014 and 2015 he traveled the 500 kilometers between London and Paris by wheelchair, with which he collected new funds for research in leukemia and lymphoma.
