Thirty years ago in Hamburg the dazzling career of Monica Seles. Sport has been mixed and confused with crime reporting due to the insane act of an anonymous German citizen. That day Gunter Parche leaves the anonymity in which he had always lived for 38 years to break in, armed with a knife, during a break in Seles’ match against Magdalena Maleeva.
A stab in the back and a grimace of pain from the Serbian athlete. The wound is not particularly deep, less than two centimeters, but it causes a psychological shock to the champion. . . . Seles pFor two years she stays away from the fields game then tries to go back to being the best in the world. She would retire in 2008 but in fact in 2003 his career was already over.
Fates died in 2022
Günter Parche instead he died in August 2022but the news only spread in April 2023. He was 68 years old and he had been in a nursing home for 14 years for psychiatric illnesses in Nordhausen. For his insane act against Seles, the district court of Hamburg had sentenced him to two years’ imprisonment with probation for dangerous bodily harm. A penalty always considered too mild by Seles.
Sick love for Steffi Graf
But who was Günter Parche? A mediocre student and then a factory worker, raised with an aunt and no friends. No vices, little social life and, as the psychiatric expert wrote during the 1993 trial, a significantly reduced ability to control. Günter had neither a partner nor a wife but a great and only invented love: the one for Steffi Graf. Just the crazy passion for the German tennis player and the will return the primacy in the world ranking to his idol, would have led to the crazy gesture. Steffi had been defeated by Seles in the 1990 Roland Garros final (first Slam title for the then 16-year-old Serbian) and then ousted from the title of best tennis player in the world. Park first would have attempted suicide then he would decide to restore Queen Graff to the throne. He arrived in Hamburg with a bag of contents some brands, some pajamas and a knife and as if in a trance he struck Seles in the back.