Heinz Frei

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Heinz Frei (front) in 2012 at the Paralympics

Heinz Frei (born January 28, 1958 in Solothurn ) is a Swiss racing wheelchair athlete . He is considered to be one of the most successful Swiss athletes of all time, a pioneer of wheelchair sport and a "legend".

The trained surveyor, who has been a wheelchair user since an accident in a mountain run in 1978 , has been participating in the Paralympics since 1984 and has won numerous medals, including 15 gold medals at the Summer Games alone. He can also look back on numerous victories in athletics EMs and World Championships and has been Swiss Sportsman of the Year several times (1992, 1993, 1995–1999, 2008, 2009). In 1994 and 1996 Frei won the wheelchair classification of the Boston Marathon . In 2005 he finally celebrated his 100th marathon victory in Berlin . Despite his age of over 50 for a top athlete, Frei remains successful, winning three of his fifteen gold medals at the 2008 and 2012 Summer Paralympics .

In 2016, Frei took fourth place in the mixed relay of handbikers at the Paralympics in Rio de Janeiro together with Lukas Weber and Tobias Fankhauser . He announced that he had competed in the Paralympics for the last time.

On March 16, 2017 Heinz Frei put the Tissot Velodrome in Grenchen with 40.821 kilometers a first mark for a Stundenbestleistung for handbikers to this discipline to open another perspective. So far, the world cycling association UCI does not hold these records.

Frei works as a sports advisor for the Swiss Paraplegic Association , Wheelchair Sport Switzerland Nottwil (as of 2016).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Heinz Frei - Swiss Paralympic. In: swissparalympic.ch. Retrieved January 15, 2017 .
  2. ↑ Heinz Frei. In: Para Team Racing. Retrieved March 16, 2017 .
  3. ↑ Stefanie Pauli: Heinz Frei: "I would have liked other games at the end". In: srf.ch. October 2, 2016, accessed March 16, 2017 .
  4. ↑ Inka Grabowsky: Heinz Frei sets the hour mark with the hand bike. In: landbote.ch. Retrieved March 16, 2017 .
personal data
SURNAME Free, Heinz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss racing wheelchair athlete
DATE OF BIRTH January 28, 1958
PLACE OF BIRTH Solothurn