Word: niemann
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Crossing the street. On a frozen pond. Even on the perfectly planed surfaces of a world-class oval or rink. World champions and gold-medal favorites tumble as ignominiously as tots on double runners. Ask Brian Boitano of the U.S. and Kurt Browning of Canada. Or Germany's Gunda Niemann, the favorite in the women's 3,000-m race last week. One second she is in full stride, the next she is sliding on her derriere. Bye-bye, medal. Is anyone surprised that ice is meant to be slippery...
First to survive was German librarian Gunda Niemann, who had finished seventh in the event at Calgary. Niemann carries not a teddy bear but a judo doll to each competition, and it brought her luck. She shot from the starting line faster than countrywoman Heike Warnicke and won the 3,000 m going away by a comfortable three seconds. Back in the pack, but victorious in a different sort of race, with no finish line, was American Mary Docter. She caused a pre- Olympic sensation with the admission that she was battling an addiction to drugs and alcohol. Docter finished...
...silver was the first winter medal for her country, and she had another chance for gold in the 1,000. As did Blair, who treated the intervening 1,500- m race as training, easing up for the last 400 m. In that race, German Jacqueline Boerner edged teammate Niemann for the gold, completing a comeback almost as dramatic as Ye's. While training on her bike outside Berlin in August 1990, Boerner was struck -- deliberately, she claims -- by a driver behind the wheel of a Trabant, the flimsiest vehicle on four wheels. "If it had been a real...