There’s just no slowing her down
SCHINIAS, Greece — At age 42, seven-time gold medalist Birgit Fischer looks as fit and as fast as ever — bad news for the younger set trying to overtake her in flatwater kayak.
“I feel like I’m in as good shape as all the Olympics before,” Fischer said Monday after pacing Germany to the fastest preliminary time in the four-person, 500-meter kayak event. “I had the top times in training for the team and I’m quite satisfied with my performance today.”
Odds are that Fischer, racing in both the four (K-4) and pairs (K-2) in Greece, will keep competing well beyond Athens. The single mother of two is already past the point of retiring for family concerns — her son and daughter are well into their teenage years.
“They’re almost grown up now, so I think they’re happy when I’m away for training because I’m strict with them sometimes and give them a lot of tasks around the house,” she said.
Fischer thought she was done after winning gold medals in both the K-4 and K-2 in Sydney four years ago. She’s been looking into running a canoe or kayak touring company and guiding recreational trips.
The German team never pressured her to return, either.
“I think most of the team was happy to be rid of me,” she said with a laugh. “Maybe some wanted me back, but no one had the courage to ask such an old lady to come back to the team.”
But when a television station asked her to get back in a racing boat about a year ago for a short promotional clip, “it felt so good. I really got the taste of it again.”
Her attachment to racing approaches addiction. She learned to kayak at 8 and started competing internationally at 18, when she became her sport’s youngest-ever Olympic champion at the 1980 Games.
“I would compare it to an alcoholic who was sober for three years, then took a sip and was hooked again,” the oft-smiling redhead said.
Raised in the former communist state of East Germany, she still lives in Brandenburg, where she was born. She missed the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics because of the Soviet-led boycott.
In 1988, she won two golds and a silver, racing all three women’s events in Seoul. She also won a gold and silver at Barcelona in 1992 and again in Atlanta in 1996.
Her Sydney golds gave her 10 total medals. If she wins more, she’ll be the first woman to win medals at Olympics 24 years apart. And she says setting a 28-year mark isn’t out of the question.
“Since I’m fastest on the team in the single kayak, but I’m not doing that event this year and didn’t do it in Sydney. I’m planning on doing it in China,” she said.