Ellen Buchleitner (née Kiessling, born 17 February 1968) is a German former

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 events ...

athlete who was a middle-distance specialist. Representing

East Germany East Germany, officially the German Democratic Republic (GDR; german: Deutsche Demokratische Republik, , DDR, ), was a country that existed from its creation on 7 October 1949 until its dissolution on 3 October 1990. In these years the state ...

, she won a silver medal in the

800 metres The 800 metres, or meters ( US spelling), is a common track running event. It is the shortest commonly run middle-distance running event. The 800 metres is run over two laps of an outdoor (400-metre) track and has been an Olympic event since the ...

at the 1989 European Indoor Championships and a bronze medal in the 800m at the 1989 World Indoor Championships, before going on to win a silver medal in the

1500 metres The 1500 metres or 1,500-metre run (typically pronounced 'fifteen-hundred metres') is the foremost middle distance track event in athletics. The distance has been contested at the Summer Olympics since 1896 and the World Championships in Athletic ...

at the 1990 European Championships. She won three East German national titles. Representing

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

, she finished fifth in the 1500m final at the 1991 World Championships and competed at the

1992 Barcelona Olympics The 1992 Summer Olympics ( es, Juegos Olímpicos de Verano de 1992, ca, Jocs Olímpics d'estiu de 1992), officially known as the Games of the XXV Olympiad ( es, Juegos de la XXV Olimpiada, ca, Jocs de la XXV Olimpíada) and commonly known as ...

. An eight-time unified Germany national champion, her winning indoor 1500 m time from 1991 remains the championship record. Her personal bests include 1:59.41 for the 800 metres, 4:04.44 for the 1500 metres and 8:46.99 for 3000 metres. She began competing as Ellen Buchleitner after marrying Austrian runner

Michael Buchleitner Michael Buchleitner (born 14 October 1969 in Mödling) is an Austrian long-distance runner. Up to 1999 he specialized in the 3000 metres steeplechase. He finished tenth at the 1993 World Championships in Athletics, 1993 World Championships and c ...

in 1994.

Career

Born in

Freital Freital is a town in the district of Sächsische Schweiz-Osterzgebirge in Saxony, Germany. The town is situated on a small river, the Weißeritz, and is southwest of Dresden. Geography Freital is located southwest of Dresden in the Döhlen Ba ...

, Bezirk Dresden, she joined Dresdner SC and started working with the club's

athletics Athletics may refer to: Sports * Sport of athletics, a collection of sporting events that involve competitive running, jumping, throwing, and walking ** Track and field, a sub-category of the above sport * Athletics (physical culture), competiti ...

coach Klaus Müller.Ellen Kiessling
Sports Reference. Retrieved on 2015-11-02. Her first international medal for

came on home soil in Cottbus, where she took the

bronze medal at the

1985 European Athletics Junior Championships The 1985 European Athletics Junior Championships was the eighth edition of the biennial athletics competition for European athletes aged under twenty. It was held in Cottbus Cottbus (; Lower Sorbian: ''Chóśebuz'' ; Polish: Chociebuż) is a un ...

. The

1986 World Junior Championships in Athletics The 1986 World Junior Championships in Athletics was the inaugural 1986 edition of the World Junior Championships in Athletics. It was held in Athens, Greece on 16–20 July. Results Men Women Medal table Participation According to an un ...

followed and at that meet she was sixth in the 800 m, but helped the East German

4×400 metres relay Four-wheel drive, also called 4×4 ("four by four") or 4WD, refers to a two-axled vehicle drivetrain capable of providing torque to all of its wheels simultaneously. It may be full-time or on-demand, and is typically linked via a transfer case ...

team to a bronze medal by running in the heats stage. She began to run longer distances and won the Willi Sänger Memorial

5K run The 5K run is a long-distance road running competition over a distance of . Also referred to as the 5K road race, 5 km, or simply 5K, it is the shortest of the most common road running distances. It is usually distinguished from the 5000 met ...

in 1988. Kiessling took her first national title at the

East German Athletics Championships The East German Athletics Championships (german: DDR Leichtathletik-Meisterschaften) was an annual outdoor track and field competition organised by the East German Athletics Federation, which served as the East German national championships for th ...

in 1989. That year proved to be the peak of her career. She began by winning her first senior medal at the

1989 European Athletics Indoor Championships The 1989 European Athletics Indoor Championships were held at Houtrust in The Hague, Netherlands, on 18 and 19 February 1989. Medal summary Men Women Medal table Participating nations * (7) * (13) * (8) * (4) * (15) * (3) * (9) * (11) * ( ...

, taking the runner-up spot behind Romania's

Doina Melinte Doina Ofelia Melinte (; née Beșliu on 27 December 1956) is a retired Romanians, Romanian middle-distance runner. She competed at four Olympics (1980–92), and won a gold medal in the 800 metres and a silver medal in the 1500 metres in 1984. S ...

. The following month she recorded a lifetime indoor best of 1:59.68 minutes at the

1989 IAAF World Indoor Championships The 2nd IAAF World Indoor Championships in Athletics were held at the Budapest Sportcsarnok in Budapest, Hungary from March 3 to March 5, 1989. There were a total number of 373 participating athletes from 62 countries. Results Men 1985 , 1987 ...

– this brought her the bronze medal as the top three all finished within half a second, beaten only by her compatriot

Christine Wachtel Christine Wachtel (born 6 January 1965), is a German track and field athlete who won the silver medal for East Germany at the 1988 Olympic summer games in Seoul in the 800 metres run. Her time of 1:56.64 put her second to her training pa ...

and Soviet runner Tatyana Grebenchuk. In the outdoor season she set three further lifetime bests: 1:59.41 minutes for the 800 m, 4:04.44 minutes for the 1500 m and 8:46.99 minutes for the

3000 metres The 3000 metres or 3000-metre run is a track running event, also commonly known as the "3K" or "3K run", where 7.5 laps are run around an outdoor 400 m track, or 15 laps around a 200 m indoor track. It is debated whether the 3000m shoul ...

. Her 1500 m best, recorded in

East Berlin East Berlin was the ''de facto'' capital city of East Germany from 1949 to 1990. Formally, it was the Allied occupation zones in Germany, Soviet sector of Berlin, established in 1945. The American, British, and French sectors were known as ...

, ranked her seventh in the world on time that season.Ellen Kiessling
Track and Field Brinkster. Retrieved on 2015-11-02. She was the fourth-place finisher at the

European Cup The UEFA Champions League (abbreviated as UCL, or sometimes, UEFA CL) is an annual club football competition organised by the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) and contested by top-division European clubs, deciding the competit ...

(1500 m) and

1989 IAAF World Cup The 5th IAAF World Cup in Athletics was an international track and field sporting event sponsored by the International Association of Athletics Federations, held on September 8–10, 1989, at the Estadi Olímpic Lluís Companys in Barcelona, Spain. ...

(3000 m).Ellen Kiessling

Association of Road Racing Statisticians The Association of Road Racing Statisticians is an independent, non-profit organization that collects, analyzes, and publishes statistics regarding road running races. The primary purpose of the ARRS is to maintain a valid list of world road record ...

. Retrieved on 2015-11-02. Kiessling proved to be the final East German 1500 m champion in 1990, winning both indoors and out. Her international success continued that year as although she narrowly missed a medal at the

1990 European Athletics Indoor Championships The 1990 European Athletics Indoor Championships were held in Glasgow, United Kingdom, on 3 and 4 March 1990. It was the last time that the event had been held annually and not biennially as it is now, as well as the last time that it was held ov ...

, coming fourth behind Britain's

Lorraine Baker Lorraine Baker-Strain (born 9 April 1964) is an England, English former Middle-distance running, middle-distance runner who competed in the 800 metres. She represented Great Britain at the Summer Olympics, Olympic Games in 1984 Summer Olympics, ...

, she won the first and only major outdoor senior medal of her career at the

1990 European Athletics Championships The 15th European Athletics Championships were held from 26 August to 2 September 1990 in Split, Croatia, SFR Yugoslavia. The host stadium was Stadion Poljud. It was the last participation of East Germany (which was already scheduled to be merged ...

– her 1500 m silver behind

Snežana Pajkić Snežana Pajkić-Jolović (born September 23, 1970 in Ćuprija, SR Serbia, Yugoslavia) is a former middle distance runner from Serbia. She won the gold medal for Yugoslavia in the women's 1500 metres at the 1990 European Athletics Championships i ...

meant the East German women featured in the top two of all track events from

100 metres The 100 metres, or 100-meter dash, is a sprint race in track and field competitions. The shortest common outdoor running distance, the dash is one of the most popular and prestigious events in the sport of athletics. It has been conteste ...

up to 1500 m that year. After the

unification of Germany The unification of Germany (, ) was the process of building the modern German nation state with federalism, federal features based on the concept of Lesser Germany (one without multinational Austria), which commenced on 18 August 1866 with ad ...

, she began competing for the new German team in 1991. She became the country's first post-unification 1500 m champion with a win at the German Indoor Athletics Championships. Her winning time of 4:05.50 minutes remains (as of 2015) a championship record. She built on this by winning over the same distance at the German Athletics Championships later that year. She won a 1500 m bronze for the hosts at the 1991 European Cup in

Frankfurt Frankfurt, officially Frankfurt am Main (; Hessian: , "Frank ford on the Main"), is the most populous city in the German state of Hesse. Its 791,000 inhabitants as of 2022 make it the fifth-most populous city in Germany. Located on its na ...

before going on to take fifth place in the event at the

1991 World Championships in Athletics The 3rd World Championships in Athletics, under the auspices of the International Association of Athletics Federations, were held in the Olympic Stadium in Tokyo, Japan between August 23 and September 1. 1517 athletes from 167 countries participa ...

. She repeated her indoor and outdoor national title double in the 1992 season and went on to represent Germany at the 1992 Summer Olympics. However, at the Olympics in Barcelona she failed to finish in the first round and was eliminated. This was her only Olympic appearance and her last major outing at world level. She ended the 1992 season with a win at the Natternbach Silvesterlauf 5K. She missed the 1993 season but returned in 1994 to reclaimed her indoor and outdoor national titles from Antje Beggerow and Simone Weidner, respectively. In what was her final year of major international competition, she ranked highly but failed to win a medal, placing fifth at the

1994 European Athletics Indoor Championships The 1994 European Athletics Indoor Championships were held in Paris, the capital city of France in between 11 and 13 March 1994. This was the last edition to feature race walking. Medal summary Men Women Medal table * Athletes of the Federal ...

, fourth at the 1994 European Cup and seventh at the

1994 European Athletics Championships The 16th European Athletics Championships were held from 7 August to 14 August 1994 in the Olympic Stadium of Helsinki, Finland. Men's results Complete results were published. Track 1986 , 1990 , 1994 , 1998 , 2002 , Field 1986 , 1990 , 199 ...

. She ran for the

ASV Köln Athletik-Sport-Verein Köln e.V. is a multi-sports club from Cologne, Germany. It has sections for rugby union, athletics, triathlon and karate General history The club was formed on 27 February 1929, under the name of Akademischen Sportverein Kö ...

sports club that year and was part of its national championship winning 3×800 m relay team.Leichtathletik - Deutsche Meisterschaften (Staffeln - Damen - Teil 2)
Sport Komplett. Retrieved on 2015-11-02. She did not compete in major championships after 1994, but claimed her eighth German title in the 1500 m in 1995 (bringing her national title total to eleven). After she retired from the sport, she began working as a

make-up artist A make-up artist, also called a makeup artist, and often shortened to MUA, is an artist whose medium is the human body, applying makeup and prosthetics on others for theatre, television, film, fashion, magazines and other similar productions inc ...

. She and

(an Austrian runner) married in 1994 and the pair had a daughter in 1999 and a son in 2008.

Personal bests

:All information from TilastopajaEllen Kiessling
Tilastopaja. Retrieved on 2015-11-02. *

– 1:59.41 minutes (1989) *

– 4:04.44 minutes (1989) *

Mile run The mile run (1,760 yards or exactly 1,609.344 metres) is a middle-distance foot race. The history of the mile run event began in England, where it was used as a distance for gambling races. It survived track and field's switch to ...

– 4:26.66 minutes (1990) *

– 8:46.99 minutes (1989) *

(indoor) – 1:59.68 minutes (1989) *

(indoor) – 4:06.50 minutes (1991)

National titles

**1500 metres: 1989, 1990East German Championships
GBR Athletics. Retrieved on 2015-11-02. *

East German Indoor Athletics Championships The East German Indoor Athletics Championships (german: DDR Leichtathletik-Hallenmeisterschaften) was an annual indoor track and field competition organised by the East German Athletics Association (german: Deutscher Verband für Leichtathletik de ...

**1500 metres: 1990East German Indoor Championships
GBR Athletics. Retrieved on 2015-11-02. * German Athletics Championships **1500 metres: 1991, 1992, 1994,

1995 File:1995 Events Collage V2.png, From left, clockwise: O.J. Simpson is O. J. Simpson murder case, acquitted of the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman from the 1994, year prior in "The Trial of the Century" in the United States; The ...

German Championships
GBR Athletics. Retrieved on 2015-11-02. **3×800 m relay: 1994 * German Indoor Athletics Championships **1500 metres: 1991, 1992, 1994German Indoor Championships
GBR Athletics. Retrieved on 2015-11-02.

International competitions

References

External links