Dieter Speer won a bronze medal at the 1972 Sapporo Winter Games in the biathlon relay together with Hansjörg Knauthe, Joachim Meischner and Horst Koschka, finishing behind the Soviet Union and Finland. In his own warm-up Speer noticed that Soviet runner Aleksandr Tikhonov had fallen in the first-leg and broken his ski, and he loaned him his own ski. In 1968 he finished 18th in the 20 km and sixth with the relay. Speer was GDR champion over 20 km in 1970, and won three relay national titles (1968-70) with his team, SG Dynamo Zinnwald, adding an individual bronze in the 20 km in 1972.
Speer had started his career as a water polo player and later competed as a long-distance track runner, but in 1964 he moved to biathlon as he was needed for his excellent Russian knowledge as a translator. In 1971 he became the first German biathlon World Champion, winning the 20 km ahead of Tikhonov. In 1970 and 1973 he won two relay bronze medals at the World Championships. He later worked as a youth coach and ran more than 20 marathons with a PB of 2-51. He was educated at the Deutsche Hochschule für Körperkultur (DHfK) Leipzig (German High School for Sports Culture), graduating as a sports teacher, but after German reunification ran a roller shutter store.
East Germany