Athlete profile: Anke Baier-Loef

Posted: Tue February 3, 1998 at 5:00 PM ET

Athlete notes

A silver medal winner in the last Olympics, Baier-Loef has become a relative afterthought on the deep German team with the emergence of powerful sprinters, Franziska Schenk and Sabine Völker in recent years...and with Monique Garbrecht returning after missing a year of major competitions in 1996, Baier-Loef has fallen to fourth on the depth chart of German sprinters...still, Baier-Loef has something that both Garbrecht and Schenk also have just one of -- an Olympic medal...that experience should help Baier-Loef in Nagano, especially in the 1,000-meter race...Baier-Loef's rise began in early 1993 when, to improve her standings in the sprints, she sought out Germany's most renowned distance coach, Gabi Fuss...following the 1992-93 season, Baier-Loef enlisted the famous coach of Gunda Niemann-Stirnemann and Heike Warnicke..."I convinced Gabi that she would have the time," says Anke. "She is very good with sprinting. Gabi doesn't just know distance skating. She knows skating"...today, Baier-Loef remains Fuss's only top skater of note...both Warnicke and Niemann-Stirnemann left Fuss for Stephan Gneupal, though they continue to train in Erfurt...under the guidance of Fuss, Baier-Loef skated a strong 1,000-meter race in Lillehammer and won the silver medal while recording a personal best...but the German was merely a sidenote to a race which saw American-hero, Bonnie Blair,win her fifth Olympic gold medal...Blair beat out Baier-Loef by well over a full-second..."She is the best," said Baier-Loef of Bonnie after the race...the 1994 Olympics was where romance continued to blossom between Anke and Dutch sprinter Arie Loef...Arie retired after Lillehammer, moved to Erfurt with Anke and is now a civil engineer in Erfurt...Arie finished a middling 24th in the 500 and 22nd in the 1,000 inside the Viking Ship...at the 1992 Winter Games, Baier furnished a promising eighth in the 500 meters and was actually on bronze medal pace in the 1,000m over the first 600 meters..."I had a nosebleed from my nervousness just 10 minutes before the race," she says. "I think my concentration went down. My last lap, I don't know where my head was"...having attended law school, Baier-Loef has often had to juggle studies and training...she regularly takes time off from school to compete and train...she admits she is on a longer-term plan, though that is normal for Germany, where the average length of studies for a student are some of the highest in the world..."I hope to become a lawyer by 2000," she says...Anke's father is a lawyer, but she feels her attending law school is incidental to her father's profession..."From eighth grade on I went to sports school in Erfurt," she says. "When I was home, it was not so often to speak with him about things like law"...Baier-Loef started her speed-skating career in roundabout fashion...like many East German athletes, she focused on track and field at a young age, competing in long jump, triple jump and 60m, 400m and 800m running events...in 1985 she won the 60 meter dash and triple jump at a qualifying competition for East Germany's prestigious Spartikiade..."We were told that if we won we could go to the Spartikiade and compete in roller skating, which is what I really wanted to do," she says...Baier-Loef won the roller skating all-around title at the Spartakiade, and then was asked by coaches to enter the youth sports school in Erfurt in 1986...in Erfurt, she switched to speed skating since roller skating offered no potential gold medals for the state...in the weaker of her two events, the 500 meters, Baier-Loef has continually tried to improve her first steps off the line...at last year's World Sprint Championships in Hamar, Norway, Baier-Loef's first split time was merely average in both races -- tenth in the first race, ninth in the second...her town of Eisenach is rich in history...it is the birthplace of Johann Sebastien Bach and was the home of Martin Luther...Eisenach was also the headquarters for the famous East German car, the Wartburg, whose dirty exhaust and spartan interior symbolized much of East Germany's socialist economy...Anke's mother is the director of an elementary school...Anke speaks a little English...