Petra Felke who represented East Germany in competition, was the only woman to reach 80 metres with the old style javelin in a career where she broke the world record four times along with winning Olympic gold - and her presence in the sport can be felt again.
Now Petra Meier, her ability is running in the family because her son Tom Meier is starting to make his mark in style.
At just 16, he has thrown an under-18 state record for the area of Thuringia in central Germany with his 71.50m effort in Halle.
It came in a club competition but it seems history is all around the teenager wherever he looks.
He is a member of the Leichtathletik Club Jena, the city where 18 years ago next month Jan Zelezny, of the Czech Republic, set the men’s world record of 98.48m which still stands.
It is, of course, early days in the career of Meier but reaching over 70m is one of the keys of progression and he seems very much on his way as he showed in Halle by winning by over a metre.
His mother’s greatest success came in Seoul in 1988 when she won Olympic gold with 74.68m, the East German gaining revenge on Great Britain’s Fatima Whitbread who had beaten her at the two previous major events, the 1986 European Athletics Championships in Stuttgart and 1987 World Championships in Rome.
Felke also wrote herself into history books with her four world record throws with the old javelin, two of them coming on the same day – 4 June 1985 - in Schwerin when she reached 75.26m and 75.40m.
She had quite a duel with Whitbread who succeeded her as world record-holder when she threw 77.44m in the qualifying rounds in Stuttgart in 1986 before Felke regained the mark with 78.90m in 1987 and then hit 80m in 1988.
After 1999, the specifications of the javelin changed concerning the levels of gravity of the spear and the world record is now 72.28m held by the Czech Republic’s Barbora Spotakova.