Marlies Göhr ( Oelsner, born 21 March 1958 in Gera) is a former East German track and field athlete, the winner of the 100 metres at the inaugural World Championships in 1983. She ranked in the top 10 of the 100 m world rankings for twelve straight years, ranking first in six of those years. During this time she won many medals as a sprinter at major international championships and set several world records. Biography The 1970s Competing under her maiden name of Oelsner, Marlies finished second in the 100 m in her first major international at the 1975 European Athletics Junior Championships in Athens. The following year, at the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal, she qualified for the 100 m final, finishing eighth, but went on to win her first Olympic gold medal on East Germany's victorious 4 x 100 m relay team. Her breakthrough year was in 1977, winning the 100 m title at the East German championships at Dresden in a world record time of 10.88 s. This landmark performance was the first time a woman had run under 11 seconds with electronic timing. Later that year, she won the 100 m title at the inaugural World Cup in Düsseldorf, where she also won a silver medal in the relay. She had a unique style of running, dubbed 'sewing machine' (or 'staccato') for the high frequency of relatively short-paced strides (this is very easy to see in the 1977 World Cup ). Marlies continued to dominate in 1978, competing under her married name of Göhr. She won the gold medal in the 100 m in that year's European Championships in Prague and was just beaten by one hundredth of a second in the 200 m by Lyudmila Kondratyeva (Soviet Union). In 1979, at the World Cup in Montreal, she was beaten into second place in the 100 m by Evelyn Ashford (U.S.), thus starting a competitive rivalry. The 1980s In early 1980 Göhr confirmed herself as the firm favourite for the Olympic 100 m title. During a two-week span in May she ran 10.98 s at Potsdam, followed by an 11.00 s at Jena and at Dresden she ran a fast 10.93 sec, second only to her own world record time of 10.88 s. At the Moscow Olympic Games Göhr's main opposition was Lyudmila Kondratyeva (Soviet Union) who had beaten Göhr in the 200 m at the