Reinhard Heß (ski jumper)

Reinhard Hess
nation	German Democratic Republic
birthday	June 13, 1945
place of birth	Lauscha ,  Germany
date of death	December 24, 2007
Place of death	Bad Berka ,  Germany
Career
society	Chemistry Lauscha
End of career	1965

Reinhard Heß (born June 13, 1945 in Lauscha , † December 24, 2007 in Bad Berka ) was a German ski jumper , sports educator and ski jumping trainer. As head coach from 1988 to 1990 he was in charge of the GDR ski jumpers and from 1993 to 2003 he was national coach of the German national ski jumping team.

biography

Reinhard Heß grew up in Lauscha in Thuringia . His parents worked in the glass industry. Hess was a member of the BSG Chemie Lauscha and became a ski jumper at the age of twelve . His sporting role model was Helmut Recknagel .

In 1959, Heß won the “German Sports Echo Cup” in Oberhof in his age group. As part of the support system in the German Gymnastics and Sports Association (DTSB), he attended the children's and youth sports school in Zella-Mehlis, which had opened five years earlier, from the age of 15 . At the age of 18 he became a member of the GDR youth team. In 1964 he became youth champion of the GDR in Johanngeorgenstadt . In 1965, however, he had to end his career as an active ski jumper because of a back problem. He made his longest jump with 112 meters in Oberhof. Reinhard Heß had been married to Regina Heß since 1968 and had a daughter in 1972.

After studying at the German University of Physical Culture (DHfK), Erfurt branch from 1965 to 1971, Heß became a qualified sports teacher. He worked as a sports teacher at the children's and youth sports school Zella-Mehlis and later as head coach of SC Motor Zella-Mehlis . In 1988 he became the head coach of the ski jumping association in the GDR . In his first season in 1988/1989 he won gold on the normal hill and silver on the large hill as a trainer at the World Championships in Lahti ( Finland ) with the athlete Jens Weißflog .

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, Hess moved to the German Ski Association (DSV) and became the responsible trainer for the ski jumpers' B team. After a debacle for the German ski jumpers at the 1993 World Championships in Falun ( Sweden ), Heß was appointed head coach of the national ski jumping team by the then sports director Helmut Weinbuch as the successor to Rudi Tusch .

Initially, Hess' greatest achievement was to lead successful East and West German ski jumpers to new successes in earlier years and to integrate training methods and trainers from the GDR. Jens Weißflog (gold) and Dieter Thoma (bronze) as well as the team (gold) achieved great successes at the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer .

After Weißflog and Thoma resigned, Heß led the jumpers Martin Schmitt and Sven Hannawald to world championship titles, Olympic medals and World Cup victories. Sven Hannawald's win of all four competitions in a Four Hills Tournament in winter 2001/2002 was the apex of Hess's coaching career. In 2003, Hess had to resign after the World Cup in Predazzo ( Italy ), the first important competition without a medal during his coaching days. According to media reports, Sven Hannawald in particular worked towards the resignation. He was succeeded by Wolfgang Steiert , who was Hess's assistant at the time and Hannawald's exercise bike.

During Hess's coaching time, ski jumping developed into the most important winter sport in the media due to the success of German athletes, so that Hess became known to a broader public as a result. By marketing ski jumping as “Formula 1 of winter” by the TV station RTL , Hess became one of the most popular people (“goldsmith”, “man with the flag”) in ski jumping after the ski jumpers Sven Hannawald and Martin Schmitt. After his resignation, Hess took over an office in the German Ski Association as the superordinate head coach. He also worked as a co-commentator for the television station Das Erste .

On April 5, 2002, Reinhard Heß received the honorary citizenship of his hometown Lauscha, later he also became an honorary citizen of the city of Suhl , where he lived. He contracted pancreatic cancer in early 2006 and has since stopped working. He died on December 24, 2007 in the presence of his family in the Bad Berka Central Clinic .

Well-known athletes trained by Reinhard Heß

• Jens Weißflog
• Dieter Thoma
• Martin Schmitt
• Sven Hannawald
• Michael Uhrmann

literature

• Reinhard Heß (with Egon Theiner ): More than a job. Autobiography of the national ski jumping trainer. Wero Press, Pfaffenweiler, 2002, ISBN 3-9808049-4-1

Web links

Commons : Reinhard Heß  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Reinhard Heß in the catalog of the German National Library
• Successful trainer Reinhard Heß succumbs to cancer –FAZ.net on December 24, 2007 in the FAZ .net