Hans Grodotzki

Hans Grodotzki was an East German long-distance runner whose twin Olympic silver medals at Rome in 1960 still stand alone in German athletics history. He died in Potsdam on 18 September 2026, aged 90.

Born on 4 April 1936 in Preussisch Holland in East Prussia, now Paslek in Poland, Grodotzki was forced as a child to leave his hometown with his parents and two siblings when the Second World War ended and frontiers shifted. The family resettled in Menteroda in Thuringia, in the Soviet occupation zone that became the German Democratic Republic. After school he worked as a miner in the Volkenroda potash mines and played football and table tennis in his spare time. In 1954 a chance race exposed his talent for running and he began formal athletics training with SC Aktivist Brieske-Senftenberg.

Military service took him into the Kasernierte Volkspolizei and then, after the founding of the National People's Army, into the army sports system. Under coach Erich Bock at ASK Vorwarts Erfurt he set an East German junior 5,000 metres record of 14:18.0 in 1956. In 1958 he was posted to Potsdam and trained under Curt Eins at ASK Vorwarts Berlin. Within months he was on the East German national team.

At the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome he competed for the United Team of Germany. On 2 September he took silver in the 5,000 metres in 13:44.6, finishing just behind New Zealand's Murray Halberg. A week later, on 8 September, he won silver again in the 10,000 metres in 28:37.0 behind the Soviet Union's Pyotr Bolotnikov. No other German athlete has won an Olympic medal in the men's 10,000 metres, and among German middle- and long-distance runners only Gunhild Hoffmeister has matched his feat of two medals at a single Games.

His racing career was interrupted by a ruptured Achilles tendon in 1962 during European Championship trials and ended in 1964. He studied at the Karl Liebknecht Pedagogical College in Potsdam, graduating as a diploma sports teacher in 1969, and worked as a coach and sports officer with ASK Vorwarts Potsdam until 1981, later as a civilian employee of the NVA. After German reunification he worked for LAC Halensee Berlin.

The East German state awarded him the Patriotic Order of Merit in silver. In 1991 the German Athletics Association gave him the Rudolf Harbig Memorial Award, honouring him as a representative of athletes from the former GDR who had been excluded from the DLV until 1990. He was married to artistic gymnast Karin Jorzik, who died in 1991, and they had a daughter. Colleagues and fans remembered him as Blonder Hans, the fair-haired Potsdam runner whose Rome silvers defined a generation of East German distance running.

German and Olympic record keepers marked his death in September 2026. He remains the only German Olympic medallist in the men's 10,000 metres and a lasting name in Potsdam sport.