Johanna Welin

Johanna Welin

Johanna Welin
Personal information
Nationality  Germany
Born (1984-06-24) 24 June 1984
Pajala, Sweden
Sport
Country Germany
Sport Wheelchair basketball
Disability class 2.0
Event(s) Women's team
Team USC Munich
Achievements and titles
Paralympic finals 2012 Summer Paralympics, 2016 Paralympics
Medal record
Wheelchair basketball
Paralympic Games
2012 London Women's Wheelchair basketball
2016 Rio de Janeiro Women's Wheelchair basketball
IWBF World Championship
2014 Toronto, Canada Women's wheelchair basketball

Johanna Welin (born 24 June 1984) is a Swedish-born German 2.0 point wheelchair basketball player. She played for USC Munich in the German wheelchair basketball league, and for the national team that won the gold medal at the 2012 Summer Paralympics in London, after which President Joachim Gauck awarded the team with the Silbernes Lorbeerblatt (Silver Laurel Leaf).

Biography

Johanna Welin was born on 24 June 1984 in Pajala, Sweden, a small town near the border between Sweden and Finland about 100 kilometres (62 mi) north of the Arctic Circle. She has played football for Töreboda IK in the Swedish league. In the winter, her passion was snowboarding, until a bad fall in a snowboarding competition at Gothenburg in January 2004 left her paralysed from the waist down.[1][2] She then took up wheelchair basketball, playing for GRBK Gothenburg in the Swedish league, but Sweden had no national women's team. She spent two semesters studying German in Insbruck, but there was no wheelchair basketball team there, and she began playing for USC Munich, initially for their second team. There, she caught the attention of Holger Glinicki, the coach of the German national team, who asked her if she would like to play for the German national team. She took German citizenship, a relatively painless procedure for an athlete, and made the German national team, which went on to win gold at the 2011 European Championships in Nazareth, Israel, defeating the Netherlands in the final, 48-42.[3][2]

In June 2012 she was named as part of the team that competed at the 2012 Summer Paralympic Games in London,[4] where they faced the Australia women's national wheelchair basketball team,[5] a team that had defeated them 48-46 in Sydney just a few months before.[6] They defeated the Australians 44-58 in front of a capacity crowd of over 12,000 at the North Greenwich Arena to win the gold medal,[5] the first that Germany had won in women's wheelchair basketball at the Paralympics since 1984.[7] They were awarded another Silver Laurel Leaf by President Joachim Gauck in November 2012[8] and were again named Team of the Year for 2012.[7] In February 2013, Welin's name was entered in the Golden Book of Munich.[9] The German team claimed silver at the 2014 Women's World Wheelchair Basketball Championship in Toronto, Canada,[10] and beat the Netherlands in the 2015 European Championships, to claim its tenth European title.[11] At the 2016 Paralympic Games, it won silver after losing the final to the United States.[12]

She has modelled for the advertising campaigns of team sponsors ING DiBa and LoFric, and is currently studying medicine in Munich.[1][2]

Achievements

Awards

Sydney July 2012
Johanna Welin in the game against Japan 
Johanna Welin in the game against Japan 
Johanna Welin in the game against Japan 

Notes

  1. 1 2 "Rollstuhlbasketballerin Johanna Welin: Vom Polarkreis zum paralympischem Traum". Rolling Planet (in German). 28 July 2012. Retrieved 17 February 2013.
  2. 1 2 3 Kayser, Sebastian (6 September 2012). "Mit Schweden-Happen um Gold". Bild (in German). Retrieved 17 February 2013.
  3. ↑ "Nu Nguyen-Thi darf nicht mit: Holger Glinicki benennt Kader für die Paralympics". Rolling Planet (in German). 12 June 2012. Retrieved 17 February 2013.
  4. 1 2 "Nu Nguyen-Thi darf nicht mit: Holger Glinicki benennt Kader für die Paralympics". Rolling Planet (in German). 12 June 2012. Retrieved 17 February 2013.
  5. 1 2 3 "Germany claim women's crown". Official site of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. 7 September 2012. Archived from the original on 30 April 2013. Retrieved 6 February 2013.
  6. ↑ Mannion, Tim (21 July 2012). "Victory for Rollers and Gliders as London Awaits". Australian Paralympic Committee. Retrieved 17 February 2013.
  7. 1 2 3 "Rollstuhlbasketballerinnen sind Mannschaft des Jahres" (in German). HSV-Rollstuhlsport. 26 November 2012. Retrieved 27 June 2015.
  8. 1 2 "Verleihung des Silbernen Lorbeerblattes" (in German). Bundespräsidialamt. 7 November 2012. Retrieved 6 February 2013.
  9. 1 2 "Münchner Paralympics-Gewinnerinnen tragen sich ins Goldene Buch ein" (PDF) (in German). City of Munich. Retrieved 27 June 2015.
  10. 1 2 "2014 WWWBC: Germany". Wheelchair Basketball Canada. Archived from the original on 2 February 2015. Retrieved 28 June 2014.
  11. 1 2 "Germany earn 10th women's European Wheelchair Basketball Championship title as hosts Britain win men's gold". Inside the Games. Retrieved 9 September 2015.
  12. 1 2 "USA clinch women's basketball gold". International Paralympic Committee. 16 September 2016. Retrieved 17 September 2016.
  13. ↑ "Rollstuhlbasketball-EM: Deutsche Damen nach über einem Jahrzehnt entthront". Rolling Planet (in German). 6 July 2013. Retrieved 29 March 2014.
  14. ↑ "Paralympic - Wheelchair Basketball Women Germany:". Rio 2016. Retrieved 17 September 2016.

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