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Sports star after a stroke of fate: She conquered the world in a wheelchair

2022-01-04T09:31:27.591Z


Sports star after a stroke of fate: She conquered the world in a wheelchair Created: 01/04/2022Updated: 01/04/2022 10:29 AM Got three gold medals in wheelchair racing in 1988 at the Paralympics in Seoul (South Korea). © Repro: Weber They achieved outstanding achievements and brought fame and splendor to their homeland: the famous sons and daughters of the region. This includes Margit Quell from


Sports star after a stroke of fate: She conquered the world in a wheelchair

Created: 01/04/2022Updated: 01/04/2022 10:29 AM

Got three gold medals in wheelchair racing in 1988 at the Paralympics in Seoul (South Korea).

© Repro: Weber

They achieved outstanding achievements and brought fame and splendor to their homeland: the famous sons and daughters of the region.

This includes Margit Quell from Mammendorf, who has won the Paralympics several times.

Mammendorf

- It was a hot summer 1960. Until mid-July there was nothing to indicate that a few days later the lives of eight children from Mammendorf would change forever.

Margit Quell was one of the children.

The girl had celebrated her twelfth birthday a few weeks earlier when her hometown became a hotspot for the polio epidemic that was rampant in Upper Bavaria.

From then on she had to cope with her life in a wheelchair.

The wheelchair is not a handicap

61 years later, the multiple Paralympic winner says: “At the age of twelve, I was torn from a beautiful childhood.

From then on I had to fight. ”And:“ The sport helped me. ”Even more: The ten-time gold medalist has conquered the world from Mammendorf, has traveled to all continents except Australia and seen the big capitals.

The wheelchair was and is not a handicap, she says.

On the contrary: Without him she would not be Margit Quell, who is now 73-year-old fitter than ever, has set local political standards and, as an ambassador for the district, has given impetus far beyond its borders.

With a school cone: Margit Quell 1954. © tb

Everything started normally.

She was born as the daughter of the master cheese maker Andreas Schweiger.

Mother Frieda had given birth at home.

After a happy childhood with four siblings, Margit attended elementary school up to 6th grade.

Until the dangerous polio virus spread through drinking water.

Quell's older sister was also ill, but the course was milder.

Margit Quell, on the other hand, spent a year and a half in the Schwabing hospital, where she was prepared for a life in a wheelchair and attended the state school for the physically handicapped in Munich.

She finished her boarding school with very good grades, began an apprenticeship as a banker and stayed with the company as a financial advisor until she retired.

One and a half years in the Schwabing clinic.

© tb

Despite the blow of fate, the child became a cheerful teenager.

As a pretty girl in a wheelchair, she caused a sensation when she and her clique visited the Brucker disco strongholds Edi-Bar and Waldcafé, rolled through the folk festival or rocked the halls at Munich's famous carnival balls.

But their real life, that was the sport.

Her international career began when she celebrated her first triumphs as a track and field athlete and swimmer in Vienna and England.

1968 followed at the Paralympics in Tel Aviv (Israel) - the third handicap game ever - gold and bronze in the breaststroke and backstroke.

If the competitions had already had the media status they have today with daily live broadcasts: Margit Quell would certainly have been the superstar.

The Paralympics in Heidelberg, Toronto, Arnhem (Netherlands) and Stoke Mandeville (England) followed.

In the meantime, Quell had also made a name for herself as an outstanding athlete.

Javelin was her domain, but she was just as good at the shot put and marathon.

With swing: Quell in the shot put in 1984 at the Paralympics in Stoke Mandeville (England).

© Repro Weber

As a three-time gold medalist, she ended her active career in Seoul (South Korea) in 1988.

But not her existence in the Paralympic family, which she then officially represented in Barcelona, ​​Atlanta, Athens, Turin, Beijing, Vancouver, London, Sochi, Rio de Janeiro and Pyeongchang.

Most recently, Corona prevented a visit to the Summer Games in Tokyo.

She will also miss the Winter Paralympics in Beijing.

A sensation on the dance floor

The sport also had an impact on her personal life. A year after her Paralympics premiere in Tel Aviv, Margit Quell met her future husband Bernd at a basketball game and married in Fürstenfeldbruck in 1969. The mayor at the time, Willi Buchauer, found the newly married couple an apartment in the then newly built settlement on Konrad-Adenauer-Straße. In 1971 daughter Tirza was born, who, like her mother, later caused a sensation in the German wheelchair dance scene. After her athletics career, Margit Quell shone with her dance partner Carsten Lenz as multiple German champion and became European champion in 1991 and 1993 in Munich and Oslo.

Brilliant appearance: Margit Quell wins the 1st European Championships in wheelchair dancing in 1991 in Munich together with partner Carsten Lenz.

© Repro: Weber

Mother and daughter politically active

Mother and daughter share a political home in the SPD.

Both sat on the Mammendorfer municipal council, Margit Quell also sat on the district council from 1996 to 2020.

As a sports advisor, of course, but also as a driving force for accessibility and inclusion.

Her husband, who died in 1992, brought her to the SPD.

Order of Merit: Quell with Horst Seehofer 2014. © tb

She held honorary positions in sport politics as treasurer at the Bavarian Disabled and Disabled Sports Association, was chairman of SV Mammendorf - where she founded the swimming department in 1984 - and an official at the German Wheelchair Sports Association.

Her name is also closely associated with the University Sports Club (USC) in Munich, after she was a founding member of the wheelchair sports department in 1975.

For 24 years, Quell has lived with her daughter Tirza and family in a wheelchair-accessible house on the western outskirts - with an unobstructed view of the sports field.

Source: merkur

All news articles on 2022-01-04

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