{"id":476,"date":"2023-06-16T07:35:00","date_gmt":"2023-06-16T07:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/drmirkin.com\/2018\/12\/02\/micheline-ostermeyer-olympian-and-concert-pianist\/"},"modified":"2023-06-20T15:19:26","modified_gmt":"2023-06-20T15:19:26","slug":"micheline-ostermeyer-olympian-and-concert-pianist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/drmirkin.com\/?p=476","title":{"rendered":"Micheline Ostermeyer, Olympian and Concert Pianist"},"content":{"rendered":"
It takes so much work and time to train to become outstanding at any endeavor that there are very few people who have risen to the top of the world stage in more than one field. One of the most impressive people who ever lived was Micheline Ostermeyer of France. She was born in 1922 and died at age 78 in 2001, and was a concert pianist who won three Olympic medals in the 1948 Olympics.<\/div>\n
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Double Olympic Champion<\/strong><\/div>\n
On the first day of the 1948 Summer Olympics, the 26-year-old Ostermeyer went from third to first place with her final throw in the discus.\u00a0 A few days later, she won the shot put by more than two feet, and on the last day of the competition, she placed third in the high jump behind American Alice Coachman and British Dorothy Tyler.\u00a0 Her high jump was good enough to establish a French national record.\u00a0 She celebrated her Olympic victories with a piano recital at France\u2019s team headquarters and went on to become a famous concert pianist.<\/div>\n
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Ostermeyer said that playing the piano gave her “strong biceps and a sense of rhythm.”\u00a0 Today, great female shot putters and discus throwers are large women who may have taken male hormones or have polycystic ovary syndrome, a condition that causes a woman to have huge bones and muscles and often a lot of fat.\u00a0 Today’s top female shot put and discus throwers are well over six feet tall and almost all weigh more than 200 pounds.\u00a0 Ostermeyer was 5’10” tall and weighed 160 pounds.<\/div>\n
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Exercise Strengthens Your Brain<\/strong>
\nPeople who exercise regularly are significantly smarter than those who don\u2019t exercise (Scientific Reports<\/em>, March 31, 2023;13(5310):). Exercise helps make you both smarter and stronger (Front Hum Neurosci<\/em>, 2015;8:1044). Anything that strengthens your muscles also helps to strengthen your brain (Alzheimer\u2019s Dement<\/em>, Spr 2, 2007;Suppl:S38-44).
\nIf you want to improve your memory, exercise regularly (J Cogn Enhanc<\/em>, 2, 135\u2013136 (2018). Exercise improves memory (Cochrane Database Syst<\/em>, 2015;4:CD005381), even in later life (BMJ<\/em>, Feb 2023;94(5):349-356; BMC Public Health<\/em>, 14, 510 (2014)). Even short term exercise improves memory by causing muscles to release BDNF (brain-derived neurotrophic factor) that makes you smarter (Eur J Sport Sci<\/em>, 2020;20:43\u201350). However, I know of only one Olympic champion who went on to become a world-famous concert pianist.<\/div>\n
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Victor Hugo’s Genes<\/strong><\/div>\n
Micheline Ostermeyer was a great-niece of the famous French author, Victor Hugo, and niece of renowned composer Lucien Paroche. She was born in Pas-de-Calais in 1922 to a musical mother and an athletic father. Her mother taught her how to play the piano and her father taught her how to run and jump.\u00a0 She spent her early childhood in Tunisia and returned with her family to France. However, the Ostermeyers were Jewish, and the family fortunately escaped back to Tunisia and avoided Hitler’s holocaust during World War II.\u00a0 In 1941, at age 19, she played the piano weekly on Radio Tunis and won five individual Tunisian national track and field championships.<\/div>\n
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After the defeat of Hitler, Ostermeyer returned to France where she resumed her training in both music and sports.\u00a0 She practiced on the piano five hours a day, and still was able to win 13 French national titles in the shot put, high jump, 60 meter dash and heptathlon.\u00a0 She was graduated with highest honors from the National Conservatoire of Music in Paris three months before the 1948 Olympics.\u00a0 After winning two gold medals and one bronze medal in the 1948 Olympics, she gave a Beethoven recital to the French national team and their officials.\u00a0 On the world stage, she was overshadowed by Fanny Blankers-Koen<\/a>\u00a0of Holland, who won four gold medals at the same Olympics.<\/div>\n
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No Such Condition as “Muscle-Bound”<\/strong><\/div>\n
How could a person with muscles so large and strong that she is the best female shot putter and discus thrower in the world still have the extremely fine coordination required to be an outstanding concert pianist?<\/div>\n
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In 1937, Dr. Peter Karpovich of Springfield College in Massachusetts published a ground-breaking paper showing that lifting weights helps men and women improve their coordination. His paper was ridiculed by most athletes in professional sports.\u00a0 At that time, baseball players who ruled the radio waves never lifted weights because they thought that large muscles would interfere with their ability to catch and hit a ball, and the prevailing attitude was that lifting weights made you “muscle-bound.”\u00a0 Today, people who require extraordinary coordination and dexterity to do their jobs — violinists, pianists, watchmakers and so forth — should know that there is no such condition as \u201cmuscle-bound.\u201d<\/div>\n
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