Hans-Georg Aschenbach

Hans-Georg Aschenbach, born in October 1951, is a former ski jumper who represented East Germany. He became junior world champion in 1969 and won his first national title two years later. In 1973 he won the FIS Ski Flying World Championships, and in 1974 he won the Four Hills Tournament as well as both ski jumping events at the Nordic World Ski Championships in Falun, which earned him the title of East German sportspersonality of the year. A knee injury kept him out of most of 1975, but he returned to win the Olympic gold medal in the individual normal hill at the 1976 Winter Olympics. He retired right after those Games to work as a military and sports doctor. In 1988, while serving as physician to the East German ski jumping team, he defected to West Germany, where he worked as an orthopedic surgeon.