Beat Hefti

Beat Hefti
nation	Switzerland
birthday	3rd February 1978
place of birth	Herisau
size	182 cm
Weight	110 kg
Career
position	Pusher, pilot
society	Lake Zurich bobsleigh club / Central Switzerland bobsleigh club / St.Moritz bobsleigh club
status	resigned
End of career	June 28, 2019
Medal table
Olympic medals 1 × 0 × 3 × World Cup medals 1 × 2 × 3 × EM medals 3 × 1 × 0 × JWM medals 2 × 1 × 0 × National medals 6 × 8 × 2 ×
Olympic games bronze Salt Lake City 2002 Two-man bobsleigh bronze Turin 2006 Two-man bobsleigh bronze Turin 2006 Four-man bobsleigh gold Sochi 2014 Two-man bobsleigh  Bobsleigh and Skeleton World Championships silver Cortina 1999 Four-man bobsleigh bronze St. Moritz 2001 Two-man bobsleigh bronze Calgary 2005 Two-man bobsleigh gold St. Moritz 2007 Four-man bobsleigh silver St. Moritz 2013 Two-man bobsleigh bronze Igls 2016 Two-man bobsleigh  European bobsleigh championships silver St. Moritz 2009 Two-man bobsleigh gold Igls 2010 Two-man bobsleigh gold Igls 2013 Two-man bobsleigh gold Koenigssee 2014 Two-man bobsleigh gold Koenigssee 2014 Four-man bobsleigh gold St. Moritz 2016 Two-man bobsleigh Bobsleigh Junior World Championships gold Calgary 2000 Two-man bobsleigh gold Calgary 2000 Four-man bobsleigh silver Cortina 2004 Two-man bobsleigh Swiss championships (as a pilot) silver St. Moritz 2008 Four-man bobsleigh bronze St. Moritz 2008 Two-man bobsleigh silver St. Moritz 2009 Four-man bobsleigh gold St. Moritz 2009 Two-man bobsleigh gold St. Moritz 2010 Two-man bobsleigh silver St. Moritz 2011 Four-man bobsleigh silver St. Moritz 2011 Two-man bobsleigh silver St. Moritz 2012 Four-man bobsleigh gold St. Moritz 2013 Four-man bobsleigh gold St. Moritz 2013 Two-man bobsleigh gold St. Moritz 2015 Two-man bobsleigh silver St. Moritz 2017 Four-man bobsleigh silver St. Moritz 2017 Two-man bobsleigh bronze St. Moritz 2018 Four-man bobsleigh silver St. Moritz 2018 Two-man bobsleigh gold St. Moritz 2020 Two-man bobsleigh
Placements in the Bobsleigh World Cup
Debut in the World Cup 1999  Overall World Cup two 1. ( 00/01 , 01/02 , 04/05 )  Overall World Cup foursome 1. ( 99/00 , 01/02 )
last change: February 17th, 2020

Beat Hefti (born February 3, 1978 in Herisau ) is a former Swiss bobsleigh athlete .

Life

Signature of Beat Hefti

Hefti denied the first race of his career as a brakeman in two- and four-man of Marcel Rohner . With this he became vice world champion of the four-man bobsleigh in Cortina d'Ampezzo in 1999 and overall world cup winner in this discipline in the 1999/2000 season. After switching to Martin Annen and winning the overall World Cup title also in the two-man bobsleigh in the 2000/01 World Cup, he won the bronze medal with Annen at the 2001 World Championships in St. Moritz . The following winter 2001/02 was the most successful for the team so far. In addition to winning the bronze medal in the two-man bobsleigh at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City , it triumphed in both overall World Cups, in both the two-man and four-man bobsleigh. Two seasons followed without any major successes before they won the two-man bobsleigh title again thanks to consistently good results in the 2004/05 Bobsleigh World Cup . They also achieved bronze at the World Championships, which took place in Calgary in 2005 . Hefti also won the bronze medal, even in both disciplines, together with Annen at the 2006 Olympic bobsleigh competitions in Turin .

After Martin Annen's career ended in 2007, Hefti worked as a pusher in Ivo Rüegg's team. Although he never competed in World Cup races there, he achieved his greatest success to date: winning the gold medal in the four-man bobsleigh at the 2007 Bobsleigh World Championship in St. Moritz. Before the 2007/08 season , he founded his own team - both in the two-man and four-man bobsleigh - with which he initially competed in the European Cup. For the 2008/09 season he qualified with Thomas Lamparter in the team for the World Cup and won his first World Cup race in the two-man bobsleigh there on November 29, 2008 in Winterberg . Hefti also placed well in the other two-man bobsleigh races of the season, while the four-man bobsleigh team always missed the top 10 in the first competitions. At the end of the season he finished first in the two-man bobsleigh and seventh in the four-man bobsleigh in the overall World Cup standings. In the next season he was able to win four races in the two-man bobsleigh, but in the end he only finished fourth. In the four-man bobsleigh, it was only enough for 16th place in the overall World Cup ranking. Hefti secured his greatest success as a pilot by winning the gold medal in the two-man bobsleigh at the 2010 European Championships in Igls . At the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver , he was unable to take part in the two-man bobsleigh race due to a concussion he suffered in a training fall. In the four-man bobsleigh, he took part as a push in Ivo Rüegg's team, which took sixth place. In 2013, 2014 and 2016 Hefti was again European champion in the two-man bobsleigh.

In 2014, Hefti and Alex Baumann won the silver medal in the two-man bobsleigh at the Olympic Games in Sochi . On November 24, 2017, the International Olympic Committee announced that Russian bobsleigh rider Alexander Zubkov would be banned from participating in the Olympic Games for his doping offenses. In addition, all medals won at the Olympic Winter Games in Sochi were stripped of him. In March 2019, Hefti / Baumann were finally awarded the Olympic victory retrospectively. On the occasion of a ceremony in Schwellbrunn on June 28, 2019, Hefti was subsequently presented with the gold medal. He announced his resignation.

In February 2020, Hefti surprised with a lightning comeback and won his sixth gold award as a pilot at the Swiss championships in the two-man bobsleigh with his pusher Dominik Schläpfer.

Professionally, Hefti offers bobsleigh taxi rides for company events in St. Moritz and Innsbruck and event projects at Micarna in Bazenheid . He lives with his family in Schwellbrunn.

Web links

Commons : Beat Hefti  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Beat Hefti in the database of the International Bobsleigh & Skeleton Association
• Beat Hefti in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )
• Beat Hefti in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely accessible)
• Beat Hefti's website
• Bobsleigh museum

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Beat Hefti . PDF, accessed on July 16, 2019.
2. ↑ IOC confirms: Hefti will definitely inherit Olympic gold. In: srf.ch. March 28, 2019, accessed March 28, 2019 . 
3. ↑ Beat Hefti and the Swiss bobsleigh sport between Putin, gold and Austrian witches. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung . June 28, 2019, accessed April 24, 2020 .