Christian empire

Christian Reich (born September 23, 1967 in Aarau ) is one of the most successful Swiss bobsledders of the late 1990s and early 2000s.

He started his career as a brakeman in 1986. In 1989 he won silver in the four-man bobsleigh with Nico Baracchi . In this capacity he took part in the Olympic Games in Albertville (1992) and Lillehammer (1994) . Both times the Celeriner Christian Meili was the pilot.

Christian Reich began his pilot career in 1995. This went very quickly. In 1997 he was able to celebrate his first world championship medal as a pilot in the four-man bobsleigh. He took silver behind Reto Götschi and in front of Marcel Rohner . However, the triple Swiss victory was later revoked, the Swiss are said to have used irregular axes.

As a pilot, Reich took part in the games in Nagano (1998) and Salt Lake City (2002) . While he finished fourth in 1998, he won the long-awaited Olympic medal in the two-man bobsleigh in Salt Lake in 2002. There he fought a thrilling duel with Christoph Langen , which he only just won in the last run. Martin Annen followed at a considerable distance . Further successes of Christian Reich were World Cup bronze in the 2-man and 4-man bobsleigh, overall World Cup victory in the 2-man bob as well as a European championship title, various EM medals, two Swiss championship titles and various SM medals.

After the Olympic Games in 2002, Reich announced his retirement from active sports. Then he was a successful head coach of the Monaco national team (2002 to 2006). After that he was material manager for the bobsleigh division of the Swiss Bobsleigh, Sled and Skeleton Sports Association (SBSV) until after the Olympic Games in Vancouver (2010). In this function he was also co-project manager of the material development project "CITIUS" which the SBSV together with the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich and well-known partners from industry (SIA, SIKA, VZUG, Georg Kaufmann, Indrohag, Quadrant, RUAG etc. ) realized. In autumn 2010 he was elected the new Vice President Sport of the international bobsleigh federation FIBT.

Web links

• Christian Reich in the database of Sports-Reference (English; archived from the original )