Robert Bartko

Robert Bartko (2018)

Robert Bartko (born December 23, 1975 in Potsdam , GDR ) is a German sports official and former racing cyclist .

Cycling career

Robert Bartko (2nd from right) in the 1998 World Champion four

Robert Bartko achieved his greatest successes as a track racing driver , especially in the endurance disciplines individual and team pursuit . After winning first medals at the track cycling world championships in 1998 , he was able to win the first two world championship titles in individual and team in 1999 at the home world championships in Berlin.

At the Olympic Games in Sydney in 2000 , Bartko had a team-internal duel with Jens Lehmann in the final - as at the World Cup a year earlier - which he won and won the gold medal. Together with Lehmann as well as Guido Fulst and Daniel Becke , he drove to the second gold medal in the team pursuit, whereby the four-man, who was supervised by Robert Lange , was the first team ever to break the four-minute limit with 3: 59: 710 minutes and thus one set a new world record over this distance.

After the Olympic Games, Bartko was looking for a new sporting challenge with moderate success in road cycling. After two years with the Telekom team , he was part of the Dutch Rabobank team until the end of 2004 . Then he successfully returned to the track, with two more world titles in the single pursuit in 2005 and 2006 .

In 2008 Robert Bartko reached only 16th place with a time of 4: 25.142 minutes at the World Championships in Manchester. The track four (Bartko, Becke, Henning Bommel , Patrick Gretsch ) finished ninth with 4: 06.941 minutes. This meant that the pursuers could not qualify for the Olympic Games in Beijing . In August 2011 Bartko resigned from the national team after the Association of German Cyclists planned without him for the Olympic Games in London in 2012 and declared that he would concentrate on six-day and standing races in the future.

In January 2014 Bartko announced that he would retire from competitive cycling after the six-day race in Copenhagen (January 30 to February 4, 2014). He won this last six-day race of his career together with Marcel Kalz .

Functionary and trainer

From 2009 Bartko was part of the LKT Team Brandenburg . He was also involved as Vice President for Marketing and Communication in the Brandenburg Cycling Association . In March 2013 he ran unsuccessfully for the office of Vice President of the Association of German Cyclists (BDR). In September of the same year he acquired his A-Trainer certificate at the Academy of the German Athletics Association in Mainz . In 2014 he graduated from the European Sports Academy in Potsdam .

From December 2014 Bartko was sports director of the German Speed Skating Association (DESG). He gave up his positions in cycling. After the German speed skaters lacked success at the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang , he resigned from his position as sports director of DESG. He is the chairman of the sponsoring association of the Berlin Olympic Training Center and has been responsible for sports advice and association funding at the DOSB since 2019 .