Katrin Borchert
Katrin Borchert is an East German-born Australian sprint canoeist who competed from the late 1980s to 2001. Competing in three Summer Olympics, she won three medals with one silver and two bronzes. During her career, she has represented four different countries: East Germany, then West Germany, then Germany followed by Australia.
Borchert was born in 1969 in Waren an der Müritz, a town in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, East Germany. She won the Junior World Championship in 1987 but was overshadowed by Birgit Fischer. Borchert went to the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, Korea, as a reserve for East Germany but did not compete. Her opportunity arose when Fischer went on maternity leave after the Seoul Olympics; she won three gold medals at the 1989 World Championships in Plovdiv.
Borchert and her coach, Kersten Neumann, went to West Germany for the 1990 season; this was a year prior to the German reunification. From a base in Essen, she competed at the 1990 World Championships and won one gold medal and three bronze medals. In 1991, she competed for the reunited Germany and won two gold medals and a bronze medal at the World Championships.
Fischer made a return for the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, Spain, and old rivalries became hostile when Borchert lost nomination to Fischer in the K-1 and K-2, and only got nominated for the K-4. Things came to a head when the national coach, Joseph Capousek, did not nominate Borchert for the 1993 World Championships; Capousek was at the time in a relationship with Fischer. Borchert resigned from the national team in 1993 and in February 1994, she emigrated to Australia.
Borchert won K-2 500 m and K-2 1000 m events at the 1998 World Championships in Hungary with Anna Wood. They won the K-2 1000 m world champion title in 1999. Borchert would win a total of twenty medals at the ICF Canoe Sprint World Championships with nine golds for four different countries. At the Sydney Olympics the pairing finished sixth in the K-2 500 m, while she won bronze in the K-1 500 m event.
In March 2003, Borchert decided to return to Germany to win nomination for the 2004 German Olympic team. She was prevented from competing for Germany at the 2003 World Championships through the Australian Canoe Federation not granting their permission quickly enough.
In 2009 Borchert was inducted into the Queensland Sport Hall of Fame.
