Wehling‘s unrivalled hat-trick

For Ulrich Wehling, 19 February 1980 would almost have remained a day like any other. However, on this day in Lake Placid, the athlete from the former GDR was crowned Olympic champion in the Nordic combined for the third time in a row - an achievement that is still unrivalled today. Wehling won in Sapporo in 1972 and in Innsbruck in 1976. ‘I had two operations behind me,’ Wehling recalls in a newspaper interview. He therefore did not want to travel to the Olympics 1980. ‘But I was persuaded to lead the young team.’ So he travelled to the USA for his last competition after all. He was already in the lead after the jumping competition. In the cross-country race, which took place the next day, he kept thinking about what he could achieve. ‘And I actually made it,’ says Wehling and is probably delighted that he was persuaded to travel to Lake Placid.

His three gold medals in a row are not only unique in his sport, but also a rarity in winter sports as a whole. Only the Swedish figure skater Gillis Gräfström (1920, 1924, 1928) and the German luger Georg Hackl (1992, 1994, 1998) have ever achieved this feat. And despite his success and fame, the organisers of Lake Placid made a mistake in 1980. They engraved Wehling's name incorrectly on the medal. Instead of Ulrich, it now indelibly reads Ullrich.