Olympic champion in Atlanta 1996: Ilke Wyludda dies at the age of 55

She won gold in the discus throw for Germany at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta. Now Ilke Wyludda has died in Halle/Saale at the age of 55. and relies on information from her former training colleague Silke Renk-Lange (54). Nothing more is known about the circumstances of her death, but the former athlete is said to have been suffering from an illness for a long time.

Ilke Wyludda, who was born in Leipzig in 1969, first competed for the GDR and later for the Federal Republic of Germany and was among the world leaders in discus throw and shot put from the 1980s to the end of the 20th century. Her greatest successes include silver medals at the 1991 World Championships in Tokyo and 1995 in Gothenburg, as well as gold at the 1990 European Championships in Split and 1994 in Helsinki. She crowned her career with Olympic gold at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta. Four years later in Sydney it was only enough for seventh place.

After her active career, Wyludda became a physiotherapist, studied medicine and then worked as an anesthetist. In December 2010, she had to undergo an amputation of her right lower leg after an open wound became bacterial infected. And so Wyludda returned to sport: in 2012 she competed in the F58 class at the Summer Paralympics in London and achieved ninth place in the discus throw and fifth place in the shot put. At the 2014 European Disabled Championships in Swansea she won the silver medal in the shot put and bronze in the discus throw, and at the 2015 World Disabled Championships in Doha she won a silver medal in the shot put. She finally ended her career in October 2017.