»November 1989 – this was not only the day the (Berlin) wall fell but also the day I was finally released from my unloved sport discipline. Ever since I can remember, I had never wanted to be a diver … yet I had put in a picture-book GDR career. I was only five years old when ›scouted‹ at kindergarten by officials. A few days later, the training began. And once you were part of the socialist competitive sports system and reasonably talented, it was pretty difficult to get out of its clutches.«
– Sandra Kaudelka

Olympic gold medallist Marita Koch is still the best 400-metre runner of all time. Never really wanting to, she became a GDR figurehead, not to mention Erich Honecker’s favourite athlete. Shot-putter Udo Beyer was once an Olympic champion, three-time world-record holder and captain of the East German athletics team. Today, he runs a travel agency. Brita Baldus, formerly the best springboard diver in the GDR, has to this day not found a job – despite two degrees from colleges in her hometown of Leipzig. Sprinter Ines Geipel planned to defect to the West during the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles but now knows that she was lucky to survive.
Sandra Kaudelka has gone in search of the sports stars of yesteryear. In doing so, she gives us a rare inside view of an authoritarian state which either flatters people with privileges or – if expectations are not met – destroys them again with no regard for life and health. With great sensitivity, Einzelkämpfer portrays celebrated athletes of the past and shows how, after the revolution in 1989, private dreams of personal happiness had to be adjusted, assuming they were surprisingly met.