German swim coach Norbert Warnatzsch, one of the country’s most-successful swim coaches in history, retired earlier this month. Warnatszch coached some of the most-accomplished German and East German swimmers in history.
In a 55-year coaching career, Warnatszch, 77, has helped coach swimmers to seven Olympic medals. He was voted German Swimming Coach of the Year in 2002, 2006, 2008, and 2009.
In 1980, he trained East German Olympic Champion Jorg Woithe to a gold medal in the 100 free. After the reunification of Germany, he coached several more of the country’s biggest name swimmers, including two of the biggest stars in the country’s history: Franziska van Almsick and Britta Steffen. He was Steffen’s coach at the Berlin Olympic Training Center in 2008 when she won double Olympic gold in the 50 and 100 free, leading her to World Records in both races in the late 2000s.
Steffen remembers less the torture of training and more the morning espresso conversation about God and the world with her “substitute father” before the 7 a.m. training session. “For me, what made Norbert so special was his well-rounded mix of incredible ambition and his humorous way of dealing with people. It worked perfectly for us for ten years,” said the Berliner. “Of course he had to scold us sometimes. But he always made sure that the mood in the team and during training remained good.
“I always said that his only hobbies besides swimming were evaluating, printing and laminating,” says Steffen, describing his love of detail. “Norbert always wanted to make everything measurable. And in the end he was right: if the series times and lactate values were right, success always followed. That gave him the necessary security in the decisive weeks.”
He has spent the last five years as assistant coach to the German national coach Bernd Berkhahn in Madgeburg, where he worked with Tokyo and Paris medalists Florian Wellbrock, Lukas Maertens, Oliver Klemet, and Isabel Gose.
“Norbert complemented my work professionally, but also with communication. I brought him to Magdeburg in 2019 because I really wanted to have a coach who had already proven that Germans can also win Olympic gold. Simply to give the athletes here the necessary self-confidence,” Berkhahn said. “We often argued quite loudly about training content, but in the end that actually always made things better,” he said with a wink.
“Working with Norbert always gave me a good feeling,” said 400 free Olympic champion Maertens. “He has experienced so much and knew a solution for every situation. He is also very empathetic, and he always had my back.”
Warnatszch is a former major in East Germany’s secret police force. He has always denied involvement in the East German doping program. A 1997 investigation by the public prosecutor’s office into his role in experiments with anabolic steroids on young swimmers in the 70s was eventually dropped.
“Being a coach is a passion” has has always been one of the guiding principles of the soon-to-be 78-year-old. Working with the young athletes has always given him joy, Warnatzsch emphasises. The fact that he spent years of his life in training camps far from home was therefore not a burden for him. But now it is time for retirement. From 2025, Norbert Warnatzsch will live with his wife in Kühlungsborn. On the Baltic Sea, of course: with a view of the water.
A press release from the DSV contributed to this article.
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