Institute for research and development of sports equipment
Located in Berlin -based Institute for Research and Development of Sports Equipment (FES) focuses on the design of customized sports equipment for the competitive sports in Germany. The disciplines cycling , canoeing , rowing , athletics , triathlon , sailing , sport shooting , skeleton , swimming , skiing , speed skating , tobogganing and bobsleigh are supervised. In addition, the Paralympic disciplines of sailing are also supported for the German Disabled Sports Association.
The institute was founded on March 1st, 1963 in the GDR as a development department for sports equipment of the research center of the DHfK with the aim of promoting top-class sport by developing individually adapted sports equipment for athletes. Disc wheels were first made for racing bikes, later complete bikes. One of the most conspicuous bikes was the time trial machine with a handlebar attached to the fork head, from this model the first time trial machines made of carbon developed in 1982 and thus long before Western manufacturers ( Cervélo 1996).
After the reunification , the institute was continued and financed from federal funds. Legally, the FES is represented together with the Institute for Applied Training Science in Leipzig by the joint sponsoring association IAT / FES of the German Olympic Sports Confederation (DOSB). The sponsoring association includes 24 leading associations, six regional sports federations, the Cologne Trainer Academy and the DOSB.
The FES has a share in numerous sporting successes of German athletes in the above-mentioned sports at world championships and the Olympic Games . Many of the most successful German bobsleigh and toboggan sleds were and are being developed by the FES. After the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, the work of the FES was criticized because its bobsleighs were not competitive for the German team. In preparation for the 2018 Olympic Games, national coach René Spies ensured that both FES and Wallner developed new bobsleighs for the men in order to create a competitive situation. Johannes Lochner and Francesco Friedrich bet on Wallner bobs; Friedrich switched to FES immediately before the Olympics. At the 2018 Winter Olympics , all three gold medals and one silver medal went to the FES bobsleigh.
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Footnotes
- ↑ Welt Online: For fans of cycling, the FES is a myth Marc Bator, April 3, 2015
- ↑ Christoph Becker: Two-man bobsleigh in Sochi: No “Olympic-worthy” sled. FAZ.net , February 17, 2014, accessed on February 26, 2015 .
- ↑ Hanna Raif: Bob Baumeister: Wallner makes the Germans afloat. In: merkur.de. February 17, 2018, accessed February 24, 2018 .
- ↑ Jörg Kramer: Bobsledding: Steering takes time. In: zeit.de. February 7, 2018, accessed February 24, 2018 .