Annegret Brießmann

Annegret Brießmann was born in Ober-Beerbach on 28 July 1972.[1][2] She now lives in Einhausen. As a teenager, she played soccer for SKG Ober-Beerbach Fußball, and participated in track and field events with TSV Eschollbrücken. She also played basketball with the local team, BSC Einhausen, for many years.[3]

A skiing accident in Austria in 2005 resulted in a broken vertebra, rendering Brießmann a paraplegic.[4] She went back to track and field athletics, winning the German national championship in the shot put with a throw of 16.70 metres (54.8 ft).[2] In athletics she had a Disability sport classification of T55. In the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) world rankings her shot put throw of 6.10 metres (20.0 ft) ranked her fifth in the world; her 16.7 metres (55 ft) in discus put her in eighth place; and in the javelin with 12.31 metres (40.4 ft) she was ranked eleventh.[5] Einhausen named her their Sportswoman of the Year in 2009.[6] However, T55 classification events were dropped from the track and field program for the 2012 Summer Paralympics in London.[5]

Brießmann was introduced to the sport of wheelchair basketball while in rehab.[3] She was classified as a 1.0 point player, the highest level of disability.[1][2] She played in Darmstadt and Aschaffenburg, then joined the Mainhatten Skywheelers in Frankfurt in 2010. Playing for Team Hessen, she won the women's championships in 2009, 2011 and 2012.[2] She began training with the national squad, and in July 2012 national coach Holger Glinicki nominated her for the national team for the London Paralympics.[3]

In the Gold Medal match in London, the team faced the Australia women's national wheelchair basketball team,[7] who had defeated them 48–46 in Sydney just a few months before,[8] in front of a capacity crowd of over 12,000 at the North Greenwich Arena.[7] The German team had been undefeated up to that point, but had started off slow in its games against the United States and China, winning these games by six-point margins, and seemed to play its best basketball only in the final minutes of a game.[9] They defeated the Australians 44–58 in front of a crowd of over 12,000 at the North Greenwich Arena to win the gold medal,[7] the first that Germany had won in women's wheelchair basketball in 28 years.[10] It was the first gold medal that Germany had won in women's wheelchair basketball at the Paralympics since 1984.[10] They were awarded the Silver Laurel Leaf by President Joachim Gauck in November 2012,[11] and were named Team of the Year for 2012.[10]

The German team lost the European Championship to the Netherlands before a home town crowd of 2,300 in Frankfurt in July 2013 by a point, 56–57.[12] It claimed silver at the 2014 Women's World Wheelchair Basketball Championship in Toronto, Ontario, Canada,[13] and beat the Netherlands in the 2015 European Championships, to claim its tenth European title.[14] At the 2016 Paralympic Games, it won silver after losing the final to the United States.[15]

• 2012: Gold at the Paralympic Games (London, England) [7]
• 2013: Silver at the European Championships (Frankfurt, Germany) [12]
• 2014: Silver at the World Championships (Toronto, Canada) [16]
• 2015: Gold at the European Championships (Worcester, England) [14]
• 2016: Silver at the Paralympic Games (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)[15][17]

• 2012: Team of the Year [10]
• 2012: Silver Laurel Leaf [11]

• Annegret Briessmann at the International Paralympic Committee
• Annegrit Brießmann at Team Deutschland Paralympics (in German)