Anja Fichtel-Mauritz

At the 1988 Olympics, Anja Fichtel was the centre of a West German fencing triumph. She won the individual foil title – accompanied on the podium by compatriots Sabine Bau and Zita-Eva Funkenhauser – as well as the team title. These titles had not come as a complete surprise: Fichtel had won the individual world title at the 1986 championships, a title she would reclaim in 1990, while losing the 1989 final. The West German team, and later the unified German team, also heavily benefited from Fichtel’s presence, winning six World Championship medals, including three golds (1985, 1989, 1993).

Fichtel also won two additional Olympic medals. The first of these, a team silver, came in Barcelona 1992, barely two months after giving birth to her first child. She had married Austrian fencer Merten Mauritz in 1990, and competed as Fichtel-Mauritz at the 1992 and 1996 Games. After her third Olympic appearance (bronze with the German team), she decided to retire, expecting her second child. Several years later, now divorced, she attempted a mostly unremarkable comeback.

Fichtel also won ten individual national titles. She was awarded the Silver Bay Leaf, Germany’s highest sports award. In 2001, she was named “Fencer of the Century” and in 2015 she was inducted into the German Sports Hall of Fame. She later worked as a youth trainer at the Tauberbischofsheim Regional Olympic Base.