Birgit Fischer works in her new, small garden. Almost daily. Your own birthday present, a sky swing, is already there.Now the benches have to be straightened. Because the party for the 60th birthday of the most accomplished German athlete at the olympic Games will be held outdoors on Friday – as is almost always the case. “It’s going to be just a small party with family and a few friends. I’m no longer the big party girl I used to be,” says the canoe racing legend.
Fischer: “the garden and a canoe is enough for me”
Fischer is in the process of reorganizing her life. Not only with the garden on the outskirts of Brandenburg. She also left Bollmannsruh am Beetzsee and now lives again in a small apartment in the Havel city. “The house was now much too big,” she explains the move. She doesn’t need much anyway. “The garden and a canoe are enough for me,” says the celebrant.
As they are still drawn to the water. She started canoeing at the age of six.”If I had grown up in the mountains, I would definitely have become a cross-country skier, I still like that to this day. I also tried judo once,but at the beginning we only had to do falling exercises. I didn’t enjoy it,” she says. So she followed her siblings to the canoe club, were her father was also a trainer.
What followed was a one-off balance sheet. “As far as the sport is concerned, I have no regrets,” says the world-class canoeist. She won 12 Olympic medals and no fewer than 37 medals at World Championships (27 gold, 6 silver, 4 bronze).Stunning numbers to be proud of. But: She would have won the most medals as a team. And that includes everyone who was in the boats. “Everyone had to pull together, otherwise there would not have been success,” says Fischer.
Twelve Olympic and 37 World Championship medals
Birgit Fischer at the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens. Imago Images
She is happy that it is indeed no longer a problem to reconcile children and sport, as the many successful over-30 medal winners at the Olympic Winter Games in Beijing have now proven: “Mothers organize themselves better. But I was even attacked at the time.”
“She was a super talent, you only get that once in a hundred years. It’s difficult to say to children today: This is how you have to train, than you’ll be so successful,” said Jens Kahl, the sports director of the German Canoe Association, once about Fischer. But she doesn’t see herself as the great role model for everyone.“Maybe in a club, but not for sport across the country. To do this, you have to be available and not work in the garden,” she emphasizes. especially since she is not particularly interested in sports. She looked at the short summaries of the Winter Games in the evening, that was enough for orientation. She can’t say much about her successors in canoe racing either, only this much: “I lack the athleticism of the women. Other nations are much further along in that regard.”
Birgit Fischer has made her peace with her life
