Sports Physician - Athlete 1974
1974
German Melanie Aalburg (1974-) started competitive sailing at an early age at the Segler-Verein Stößensee Berlin. In 1985 she sailed from Hamburg to Reykjavik and back to Hamburg via the Faerör Islands and the Shetlands. Four years later from Hamburg to the North Cape in Norway and back. With her twin sister, she celebrated her 18th birthday on the Atlantic Ocean in a violent storm on her way from Hamburg to Madeira. In 1999, she was a crew member of the famous 18-meter sailboat 'Manfred Kerstan', which crossed the South Atlantic between Buenos Aires and Cape Town in 29 days. In 2006, she was part of the first German 'ladies-only team' to participate in the transatlantic 'HSH Nordbank blue race' between the American Newport and Hamburg. In 2000 she participated in the European Championship in the Laser-II class, in 2003 in the World Cup and in 2003 and 2005 she was crowned German champion. In 1996, 2003 and 2005 she ran the Berlin Marathon. After graduating from the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, she specialized in Sports Medicine and Nutritional Medicine and settled in a group practice in Berlin-Reinickendorf.
1974
Omar Amr (1974-) finished seventh with the US water polo team at the 2004 Athens Olympics. He competed for the Newport Water Polo Foundation in Newport Beach, California. After studying Medicine at Harvard Medical School, he specialized in Emergencies and practiced that profession with MD Delivered in Orange County, Califormia, which sends doctors on a home visit.
1974
At the 2004 Olympics in Athens, the Dutch rower Hurnet Dekkers (1974-) won bronze with the eight with helmswoman. In 2001 she had won the 2,000m at the Dutch indoor championship and her chrono of 6min30sec06 set a new world record. She repeated this afterwards on the 6.000m with a time of 20min57.7. In 2007 she renewed her indoor title. After obtaining her degree in Medicine from the University of Amsterdam, she specialized as a Rehabilitation Physician for Children. She also became chair of the CP working group dealing with Cerebral Palsy in Children and Adults.
1974
Christian Schmidt (1974-) became German heavyweight bodybuilding champion and finished second at the European Championships. He graduated from the University of Würzburg and specialized in Orthopedic Surgery and Sports Medicine.
1974
Tycho van Meer (1974-) was called up ninety times for the Dutch hockey team and scored seventeen times in those games. At the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, he won gold with the Dutch team. As a club he played for Oranje Zwart Eindhoven, HGC Wassenaar and Amsterdamsche Hockey & Bandy Club. After graduating as a doctor in Leiden, he specialized in Gynecology and worked at the Medical Center Alkmaar.
1974
Swiss professional duathlon athlete Christian Wenk (1974-) was among the best in the world, until he crashed his bicycle into a parked car in 2000 during a training session in Japan at a speed of 70 km/h. Not only did he have a collapsed lung, rib fractures, a bitten tongue and a severe concussion, but he was paralyzed from the waist down by three broken thoracic vertebrae.
"The accident happened on September 20, 2000. I struggled for my life for three weeks. My rehabilitation started on October 10 and 10 weeks later I was back home. On January 1, 2001, I started my training as an assistant physician. At the beginning everything was heavy, since the circulation and the load capacity were still unstable. Fortunately, my then Chief overlooked a few things. But in February I already worked at the Internal Medicine department of the Unispital Zurich."
In 2002 he graduated from the University of Zurich and specialized in Internal Medicine. He then became Oberarzt Notfallmedizin at the Notfallstation Hirslanden Klinik St. Anna in Lucerne.
He became a trainer of the Swiss Handbiketeam, a sport that he also practiced himself and for which he was allowed to go to the Paralympics.
In the fall of 2017 he suffered a heavy fall and had two hip prostheses implanted in the Sursee hospital in Lucerne. During that operation, however, something went wrong, Wenk remained in a coma for days and had severe pneumonia. He suspected that vomit entered his lungs during anesthesia, causing an infection. Later the operated hip was found to be infected. Although Wenk pointed out symptoms to doctors, his diagnosis was not accepted. When one of the wounds burst open with a huge amount of pus, Wenk sought help from St. Anna's private clinic in Lucerne. But the infection had stiffened his hip joints and he was unable to sit. After a long search, he found a doctor in Basel who wanted to operate on him. After a critical article in early September 2018 in the magazine 'SonntagsBlick', in which he denounced that he had not been taken seriously by his colleagues, he asked for an appointment in Sursee. After weeks of infusion, a dangerous thrombosis had developed in his arm. The hospital management advised Wenk to contact another specialist. After dozens of surgeries, he hoped he could sit upright again.
