Annegret Brießmann (born 28 July 1972) is a
1.0 point wheelchair basketball
Wheelchair basketball is basketball played by people with varying physical disabilities that disqualify them from playing a non-disabled sport. These include spina bifida, birth defects, cerebral palsy, paralysis due to accident, amputations (of ...
player, who plays for the Frankfurt . She has also played with the German national team which won a gold medal at the
2012 Summer Paralympics
The 2012 Summer Paralympics, branded as the London 2012 Paralympic Games, were an international multi-sport parasports event held from 29 August to 9 September 2012 in London, England, United Kingdom. They were the 14th Summer Paralympic Gam ...
in London. President
Joachim Gauck
Joachim Wilhelm Gauck (; born 24 January 1940) is a German politician and civil rights activist who served as President of Germany from 2012 to 2017. A former Lutheran pastor, he came to prominence as an anti-communist civil rights activist in E ...
awarded the team Germany's highest sporting honour, the ''
Silbernes Lorbeerblatt
Silbernes Lorbeerblatt (Silver Laurel Leaf), the highest sports award in Germany, was endowed on 23 June 1950 by the German President Theodor Heuss. It is awarded to athletes and teams of exemplary character that have won medals at Olympic and ...
'' (Silver Laurel Leaf).
Biography
Annegret Brießmann was born in on 28 July 1972.
She now lives in
Einhausen. As a teenager, she played
soccer for SKG Ober-Beerbach Fußball, and participated in
track and field
Track and field is a sport that includes athletic contests based on running, jumping, and throwing skills. The name is derived from where the sport takes place, a running track and a grass field for the throwing and some of the jumping eve ...
events with TSV Eschollbrücken. She also played
basketball
Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly of five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular court, compete with the primary objective of shooting a basketball (approximately in diameter) through the defender's h ...
with the local team, BSC Einhausen, for many years.
A skiing accident in Austria in 2005 resulted in a broken vertebra, rendering Brießmann a
paraplegic. She went back to track and field athletics, winning the German national championship in the
shot put with a throw of .
In athletics she had a
Disability sport classification
Disability sports classification is a system that allows for fair competition between people with different types of disabilities.
Historically, the process has been overseen by 2 groups: specific disability type sport organizations that cover mul ...
of T55. In the
International Paralympic Committee (IPC) world rankings her shot put throw of ranked her fifth in the world; her in
discus put her in eighth place; and in the
javelin with she was ranked eleventh.
Einhausen named her their Sportswoman of the Year in 2009. However, T55 classification events were dropped from the track and field program for the
2012 Summer Paralympics
The 2012 Summer Paralympics, branded as the London 2012 Paralympic Games, were an international multi-sport parasports event held from 29 August to 9 September 2012 in London, England, United Kingdom. They were the 14th Summer Paralympic Gam ...
in London.
Brießmann was introduced to the sport of
wheelchair basketball
Wheelchair basketball is basketball played by people with varying physical disabilities that disqualify them from playing a non-disabled sport. These include spina bifida, birth defects, cerebral palsy, paralysis due to accident, amputations (of ...
while in rehab.
She was classified as a
1.0 point player, the highest level of disability.
She played in
Darmstadt and
Aschaffenburg
Aschaffenburg (; South Franconian German, South Franconian: ''Aschebersch'') is a town in northwest Bavaria, Germany. The town of Aschaffenburg is not part of the Aschaffenburg (district), district of Aschaffenburg, but is its administrative sea ...
, then joined the in Frankfurt in 2010. Playing for Team Hessen, she won the women's championships in 2009, 2011 and 2012.
She began training with the national squad, and in July 2012 national coach
Holger Glinicki
Holger Glinicki (born 25 October 1952) is a German wheelchair basketball coach, who coached Hamburger SV. He was assistant coach of the German women's national team from 2003 to 2005. He has been coach of the team since 2006, during which time ...
nominated her for the national team for the London Paralympics.
In the Gold Medal match in London, the team faced the
Australia women's national wheelchair basketball team,
who had defeated them 48–46 in Sydney just a few months before, in front of a capacity crowd of over 12,000 at the
North Greenwich Arena.
The German team had been undefeated up to that point, but had started off slow in its games against the United States and China, winning these games by six-point margins, and seemed to play its best basketball only in the final minutes of a game.
They defeated the Australians 44–58 in front of a crowd of over 12,000 at the
North Greenwich Arena to win the gold medal,
the first that Germany had won in women's wheelchair basketball in 28 years.
It was the first gold medal that Germany had won in women's wheelchair basketball at the Paralympics since 1984.
They were awarded the Silver Laurel Leaf by President
Joachim Gauck
Joachim Wilhelm Gauck (; born 24 January 1940) is a German politician and civil rights activist who served as President of Germany from 2012 to 2017. A former Lutheran pastor, he came to prominence as an anti-communist civil rights activist in E ...
in November 2012,
and were named Team of the Year for 2012.
The German team lost the European Championship to the Netherlands before a home town crowd of 2,300 in Frankfurt in July 2013 by a point, 56–57.
It claimed silver at the
2014 Women's World Wheelchair Basketball Championship
Separate men's and women's Wheelchair Basketball World Championship tournaments were held in 2014. The women's tournament was held at the Mattamy Athletic Centre in Toronto, Canada between 20 and 28 June 2014. It was the largest women's ...
in
Toronto
Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the anch ...
, Ontario, Canada,
and beat the Netherlands in the 2015 European Championships, to claim its tenth European title.
At the
2016 Paralympic Games
The 2016 Summer Paralympics (), the 15th Summer Paralympic Games, were a major international multi-sport event for disabled sports, athletes with disabilities governed by the International Paralympic Committee, held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, fro ...
, it won silver after losing the final to the United States.
Achievements
*2012: Gold at the Paralympic Games (London, England)
*2013: Silver at the European Championships (Frankfurt, Germany)
*2014: Silver at the World Championships (Toronto, Canada)
* 2015: Gold at the European Championships (
Worcester
Worcester may refer to:
Places United Kingdom
* Worcester, England, a city and the county town of Worcestershire in England
** Worcester (UK Parliament constituency), an area represented by a Member of Parliament
* Worcester Park, London, Engla ...
, England)
* 2016: Silver at the Paralympic Games (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)
Awards
*2012: Team of the Year
*2012: Silver Laurel Leaf
References
External links
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Briessmann, Annegret
1972 births
Living people
German women's wheelchair basketball players
Paralympic wheelchair basketball players for Germany
Paralympic gold medalists for Germany
Paralympic silver medalists for Germany
Paralympic medalists in wheelchair basketball
Wheelchair basketball players at the 2012 Summer Paralympics
Wheelchair basketball players at the 2016 Summer Paralympics
Medalists at the 2012 Summer Paralympics
Medalists at the 2016 Summer Paralympics
Recipients of the Silver Laurel Leaf