LUCKE, GABRIELE
East Germany/Germany
Born August 1970 in Leipzig, East Germany (now Germany)
[Active 1980s-1996]
Active as a junior and as a young adult until 1996. In August 1989 became the last women's singles champion of East Germany by dethroning Grit Schneider (7-5 6-3 in the final) in Karl-Marx-Stadt (now Chemnitz). More recently active again as a tennis player at senior level. Nowadays works as a non-medical therapist and sports therapist in Hamburg. A single mother.
The following is a translation of an article on Gabriele Lucke, the last female singles tennis champion of East Germany. The article originally appeared circa 2012 in the website of the Deutscher Tennis Bund (German Tennis Federation), here:
https://www.dtb-tennis.de/Tennis-Nat...Gabriele-Lucke
Gabriele Lucke
An old passion rekindled
By Jörg-Ingo Peter
Imagine you (a man) are being treated by a female non-medical sports therapist in Hamburg and you end up talking about tennis, and she says, ‘Yes, yes, I used to play it once myself – in the past, when my spine was still holding up’. ‘Well, that’s interesting,’ you say, and because you believe the therapist is very friendly, you add the following fateful sentence: ‘Wouldn’t you like to try playing it again? We could have a go at hitting some balls together.’
And then you actually find yourself standing on a tennis court with Gabriele Lucke. Maybe she has already invited you to use the informal ‘Du’ in conversation and is now called ‘Gabi’, and the court is not any old court but, as it turns out, part of the ‘TSV Duwo 08’ [a sports club located in Hamburg]. This club has many expert members who straight off realize: a) They haven’t the ghost of a chance against this lady; and b) This big-hitting lady with the unbelievably fast strokes should not have been lost to the sport of tennis.
And that is (almost) how it came about, not so many years ago, that Gabriele Lucke was reminded of her old passion. Since then she has been German champion (in 2010) Hamburg and German indoor champion (in 2011) and Vice-European champion in Baden-Baden (in 2011) in the over-40 age group. However, this new passion cannot really be compared with the old one because now she plays tennis as a ‘bonus’, only for the fun in the exercise and for the enjoyment of being with other tennis players. This makes things easier, and the successes happen, so to speak, by themselves.
The Last Women’s Tennis Champion of East Germany
But what about her past? Well, Gabriele Lucke was born in Leipzig in August 1970 and lived directly opposite the tennis courts at the LSC 1901 sports club. When her mother noticed that her five-year-old was bashing tennis balls very accurately against the garage door with her table tennis racket, she sought out someone at the club, who took charge of the girl. Gabi trained in a very disciplined manner with her coach/mentor – during the holidays she always began punctually at 8.15 in the morning – and very quickly had her first successes at different levels, from the local level on up to the East German Championships. As the number of cups grew, so did her dreams, but this East German citizen was to be denied many things. For example, as a 14-year-old, she had to turn down an offer from Lennart Bergelin, Björn Borg’s coach, to go Uppsala, Sweden, to train with Bergelin.
Everything changed in 1989: In the summer Gabi Lucke became the last official women’s singles champion of East Germany, was studying for her high school diploma and turned 19 years of age. Then the Berlin Wall fell in November and the young adult moved to Bielefeld [West Germany], where she made her living as a tennis coach, lived for tennis and enjoyed the freedom. She was unable to reach the top of German tennis because she had to spend the whole day on the court without a sponsor, training other players instead of improving her own game and making progress that way. However, it was still all tennis, tennis, tennis, until 1996, when she had an accident while on court that changed everything: a fractured verterbra.
It was in this painful, roundabout way, and also with the help of a Chinese doctor, that Gabi discovered a weakness for healing and started to train as a non-medical therapist and sports therapist in Hamburg, where her parents had moved. She obtained additional qualifications in chiropractic, osteopathy and neural therapy, opened her own practice in Poppenbüttel [a district of Hamburg], became a mother – her son Franz is now four years old – always holidayed in Hiddensee [an island in the Baltic Sea] or went mountain climbing in Vinschgau [in South Tyrol, Italy]… and almost forgot what a gifted tennis player she was. Fortunately, only almost!
Sources:
Deutscher Tennis Bund (German Tennis Federation), circa 2012 at:
https://www.dtb-tennis.de/Tennis-Nat...Gabriele-Lucke
Link to a photo of Gabriele Lucke playing tennis:
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=ga...=1507650476981
[Thank to Newmark for this information]
