ENDER, KORNELIA

born Oct. 25, 1958, Plauen, E.Ger. East German swimmer who was the first woman to win four gold medals in one Olympic Games. Ender's natural ability was spotted when she was a child while playing on family vacations, and she was trained from a young age by demanding East German coaches, who included weight lifting in her training. She was 13 when she won two silver medals at the 1972 Olympics in Munich. At the 1976 Games in Montreal, at age 17, she won four gold medals in the 100-metre freestyle, the 200-metre freestyle, 100-metre butterfly, and the 400-metre medley relay, and a silver medal in the 400-metre freestyle relay. In three of the events she set new world records (all since broken) and in the fourth equaled an existing world record. Though Ender had excellent freestyle and butterfly strokes, it was her strong starts and expert turns that most often made the difference in her victories. Hers were the first Olympic gold medals won by an East German woman swimmer. She retired soon after the Olympics, having broken 23 world records in her career. During the 1976 Olympics, there were many accusations that Ender and her teammates had been using illegal performance-enhancing anabolic steroids. In 1991 a number of East German coaches admitted that some of the women swimmers had been given steroids, although Ender was never named.