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Nikolaus Anton "Toni" Merkens (21 June 1912 – 20 June 1944) was a racing cyclist from Germany and Olympic champion.[1] He represented his native country at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, where he won the gold medal in the men's 1000 meter match sprint event.[2]

Toni Merkens

Toni Merkens
Personal information
Full name	Nikolaus Anton Merkens
Nickname	Toni
Born	(1912-06-21)21 June 1912 Cologne, German Empire
Died	20 June 1944(1944-06-20) (aged 31) Wildbad, Nazi Germany
Team information
Discipline	Track
Role	Rider
Rider type	Sprint, stayers
Medal record Men's track cycling Olympic Games 1936 Berlin Sprint

Racing career

Merkens trained as a bicycle mechanic with Fritz Köthke. In 1933 he won his first German championship in sprint. In 1934, he was able to repeat this success and also won the British Open Championships and the Grand Prix de Paris. At the World Championships he finished fourth. In 1935 he again won the championships in Germany and the UK and the Paris Grand Prix. At the World Championships in Brussels, he also won the title in the final against Dutch cyclist Arie van Vliet 2-1.

During the first race of the 1936 Olympic final, Merkens clearly interfered with Arie van Vliet, but no foul was called by the officials. Van Vliet also lost the second race of the final and received the silver medal. After a protest by the Dutch team, Merkens, rather than being disqualified, was fined 100 marks.[3]

Merkens turned professional immediately after the 1936 Olympics. In 1937 and 1939, he was German Vice Champion in the sprint. In 1940 he was the German champion in stayers, and was Vice Champion in 1941. In 1942 he won the German professional championship in the sprint and was Vice Champion again in the stayers.

World War II

Merkens was drafted into the army in 1942. Merkens was killed in World War II fighting the Soviets on the Eastern Front. He was struck between the heart and lungs by a shell splinter, and died in a hospital in Wildbad after becoming ill with meningitis.[4]

Commemoration

In the Munich Olympiapark, the road between the main stadium and the velodrome is called Toni-Merkens-Weg (Toni Merkens Way). A memorial stone was erected in 1948 at the velodrome in Cologne.

References

This article may be expanded with text translated from the corresponding article in German. (August 2012) Click [show] for important translation instructions. View a machine-translated version of the German article. Machine translation like DeepL or Google Translate is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Consider adding a topic to this template: there are already 9,792 articles in the main category, and specifying|topic= will aid in categorization. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing German Wikipedia article at [[:de:Toni Merkens]]; see its history for attribution. You should also add the template {{Translated|de|Toni Merkens}} to the talk page. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

Literature

• Volker Kluge (1997). Olympische Sommerspiele. Die Chronik I, Berlin. ISBN 3-328-00715-6
• Pascal Sergent, Guy Crasset, Hervé Dauchy (2000). Mondial Encyclopedie Cyclisme. Volume 3 G-P, UCI. ISBN 90-74128-73-4

На других языках

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- [en] Toni Merkens

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[es] Toni Merkens

Anton "Toni" Merkens (Colonia, 21 de junio de 1912 - Bad Wildbad, 20 de junio de 1944) fue un ciclista en pista alemán, que fue profesional entre 1937 y 1942.

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[fr] Toni Merkens

Toni Merkens (né le 21 juin 1912 à Cologne et mort le 20 juin 1944 à Bad Wildbad) est un coureur cycliste allemand, champion olympique de la vitesse individuelle aux Jeux olympiques de 1936 à Berlin.

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[it] Toni Merkens

Nikolaus Anton "Toni" Merkens (Colonia, 21 giugno 1912 – Bad Wildbad, 20 giugno 1944) è stato un pistard tedesco.

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