{"id":1040009306,"date":"2025-12-18T19:00:03","date_gmt":"2025-12-18T19:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/athleticsweekly.com\/?p=1040009306"},"modified":"2025-12-19T10:23:42","modified_gmt":"2025-12-19T10:23:42","slug":"guido-muller-masters-athlete-extraordinaire-dies-aged-87","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/athleticsweekly.com\/news\/guido-muller-masters-athlete-extraordinaire-dies-aged-87-1040009306\/","title":{"rendered":"Guido M\u00fcller, masters athlete extraordinaire, dies aged 87"},"content":{"rendered":"

German hurdler notched up huge number of world and European age-group titles and world records but had suffered from Parkinson's disease in recent years.<\/p>\n

Guido M\u00fcller, arguably the greatest masters athlete of all-time, died on December 9 aged 87.<\/p>\n

The German athlete enjoyed a 38-year career in masters athletics where he won 48 world, 103 European and 156 German titles.<\/p>\n

He also set a stack of age-group world records, some of which still stand such as his 300m hurdles marks as an M60 (42.31), M65 (43.88), M70 (45.24) and M75 (49.65).<\/p>

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Guido M\u00fcller (Tom Phillips)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Such was his brilliance, he was named World Athletics masters athlete of the year three times. When he won one of these awards in 2014, he held a remarkable 17 masters world records at the time spanning the M45 to M75 age groups.<\/p>\n

Born in Stuttgart in 1938, as a younger athlete he held a PB of 51.3 for the 400m hurdles and narrowly missed making the East German team for the Tokyo Olympics in 1964.<\/p>\n

He then took a break from sport to pursue family and business interests but returned in the early 1980s with a venom and increasingly raised eyebrows from onlookers with his amazing age-defying athleticism.<\/p>\n

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Guido M\u00fcller<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

M\u00fcller finally retired from competition in 2019 after making his mark in the social media era with athletes of all ages viewing clips of his races.<\/p>

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He also appeared on the cover of Athletics Weekly<\/em> in 2014 alongside British Olympic distance runner Julia Bleasdale.<\/p>\n

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The World Masters Association said: \"In the United States, a masters athlete with M\u00fcller\u2019s accomplishments would be called the \u201cGOAT\u201d\u2014the Greatest of All Time.<\/p>\n

READ MORE: Older, slower, better<\/a><\/p>

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\"During 38 years in masters athletics he was named World Masters athlete of the year three times, Europe\u2019s senior athlete of the Year twice and amassed an extraordinary record: 48 world titles, 103 European titles, and 156 German national titles.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

German hurdler notched up huge number of world and European age-group titles and world records but had suffered from Parkinson's […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":1040009309,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_searchwp_excluded":"","inline_featured_image":false,"wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_championship":0,"wds_primary_country":0,"wds_primary_sports":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,35971],"tags":[],"championship":[],"country":[],"sports":[35998],"class_list":["post-1040009306","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-obituaries","sports-400m-hurdles"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/athleticsweekly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1040009306","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/athleticsweekly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/athleticsweekly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/athleticsweekly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/athleticsweekly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1040009306"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/athleticsweekly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1040009306\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/athleticsweekly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1040009309"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/athleticsweekly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1040009306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/athleticsweekly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1040009306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/athleticsweekly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1040009306"},{"taxonomy":"championship","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/athleticsweekly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/championship?post=1040009306"},{"taxonomy":"country","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/athleticsweekly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/country?post=1040009306"},{"taxonomy":"sports","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/athleticsweekly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sports?post=1040009306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}