Frank-Peter Roetsch

Frank-Peter Roetsch
Association	DDR Germany
birthday	April 19, 1964
place of birth	Guestrow
Career
job	commercial agent
society	SG Dynamo Zinnwald
status	resigned
Medal table
Olympic medals 2 × 1 × 0 × World Cup medals 5 × 5 × 0 × GDR medals 12 × ? × ? × JWM medals 2 × 0 × 0 ×
winter Olympics silver 1984 Sarajevo singles gold 1988 Calgary singles gold 1988 Calgary sprint  Biathlon world championships silver 1983 Antholz singles silver 1983 Antholz Season gold 1985 Ruhpolding sprint silver 1985 Ruhpolding singles silver 1985 Ruhpolding Season silver 1986 Oslo Season gold 1987 Lake Placid singles gold 1987 Lake Placid sprint gold 1987 Lake Placid Season gold 1989 Feistritz Season GDR championships gold 1983 sprint gold 1983 Season gold 1984 Season gold 1985 singles gold 1985 sprint gold 1985 Season gold 1986 Season gold 1987 singles gold 1987 sprint gold 1988 singles gold 1988 Season gold 1989 Season  Biathlon Junior World Championships gold 1981 Season gold 1982 Season
World Cup balance
Overall World Cup	1.  ( 1983/84 , 1984/85 , 1986/87 )

Frank-Peter Roetsch (born April 19, 1964 in Güstrow , Schwerin district , GDR ) is a former German biathlete . He is one of the most successful athletes in the history of the sport.

Sports career

Frank-Peter Roetsch is the son of a miner. Between 1970 and 1982 he attended the polytechnic high school and later the children's and youth sports school , which he graduated with the Abitur. First he was a Nordic combined athlete , here he followed his older brother Thomas, who made it up to the GDR youth champion in the sport. Both ran for Stahl Altenberg . Because he was not very strong at first and was not accepted into the KJS, he switched to biathlon and the SG Dynamo Zinnwald club in 1978 , where his father was the head of the training center at the time. Success was quickly achieved here. In 1979 and 1981 Roetsch was Spartakia winner, 1981 and 1982 junior world champion in the relay. Since 1982 he was employed by the People's Police , where he achieved the rank of captain until the fall of the Berlin Wall . He also joined the SED .

Roetsch's debut in the men's field caused a sensation. He made his first race as part of the Biathlon World Championships in 1983 and won the silver medal in the individual behind Frank Ullrich . In the sprint he was fourth and missed a second medal by just under five seconds. He won the second medal with Ullrich, Mathias Jung and Matthias Jacob as the last runner in the relay behind the team from the Soviet Union. At the GDR championships, Roetsch won the sprint title. This was the start of an outstanding career. In the 1983/84 season he not only won the overall World Cup, but also the individual silver medal at the 1984 Winter Olympics in Sarajevo . Roetsch missed another medal in the relay race in fourth place, in the sprint he came in seventh place. In 1985 he repeated winning the overall World Cup and was GDR champion in individual, sprint and relay. The 1985 biathlon world championships in Ruhpolding brought the first international title with victory in the sprint. In the individual he won silver behind Juri Kaschkarow as well as with Jacob, Ralf Göthel and André Sehmisch in the relay competition. Frank-Peter Roetsch was the first biathlete to do without climbing wax on his skis and to use the skating technique. As a result, he was able to take 4th place at the 1985 World Cup in Oberhof on the sprint distance despite seven shooting errors.

Roetsch continued his career at the highest level, although the 1985/86 season did not quite match the success of previous years. André Sehmisch won the overall World Cup , Roetsch did not make it into the top three places. The 1986 Biathlon World Championships in Oslo did not bring any medals either in the sprint with eighth place or in individual with 23rd place. He won this with Jürgen Wirth , Sehmisch and Jacob in the relay competition with the silver medal behind the team of the USSR. Roetsch got back on the road to success in 1987. He won the overall World Cup for the third and last time. At the World Championships in Lake Placid , he won all three possible titles. He also won the individual and sprint titles at national level. In 1987 he began studying sports at the German University of Physical Culture in Dresden. The following season brought Roetsch's greatest success. In Calgary , where he was the flag bearer of the GDR delegation at the opening of the Winter Olympics , he won both the individual and the sprint title. This made him the first biathlete who managed to win both individual titles. With the season, however, he achieved a disappointing result in fifth place.

In 1989 Roetsch took part in a world championship for the fifth time. With fifth place in the sprint and eighth in the individual, he again achieved very good results. In the season he won his last international title with Frank Luck , Sehmisch and Birk Anders . The turning point brought some changes for Roetsch. He finished his sports studies without a degree and began to work as a sales representative for an office supplies company in Ansbach at the beginning of 1991 . In Lahti he ran his last World Cup in 1991 and achieved very good results with seventh place in the individual and four with the team. His third and last Olympic Winter Games in 1992 were also Roetsch's last major event. In the individual he only reached an unsatisfactory 53rd place, in the sprint he showed his class again in ninth place. After the season he ended his international career.

Roetsch is married and has two sons. He currently lives in Dresden and works as a freelance sales representative in the field of sports marketing. At times he worked as a co-commentator for Eurosport .

Awards

• 1984 Patriotic Order of Merit in silver
• 1986 Patriotic Order of Merit in Gold
• 1988 Gold Medal for the Patriotic Order of Merit

Biathlon World Cup placements

The table shows all placements (depending on the year, including the Olympic Games and World Championships).

• 1st - 3rd Place: Number of podium placements
• Top 10: Number of placements in the top ten (including podium)
• Points ranks: Number of placements within the point ranks (including podium and top 10)
• Starts: Number of races run in the respective discipline

placement	singles	sprint	persecution	Mass start	team	Season	total
1st place	3	3				2	8th
2nd place	3	2				3	8th
3rd place		1					1
Top 10	10	13			1	7th	31
Scoring	11	13			1	7th	32
Starts	12	13			1	7th	33
Status : (data not complete)

literature

• Klaus Gallinat, Olaf W. Reimann:  Roetsch, Frank-Peter . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 2. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .

Web links

Commons : Frank-Peter Roetsch  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Frank-Peter Roetsch in the IBU database (English)
• Literature about Frank-Peter Roetsch in the state bibliography MV
• Frank-Peter Roetsch in the database of Sports-Reference (English; archived from the original )