Matthias Menz

Matthias Menz
nation	Germany
birthday	September 14, 1981
place of birth	Steinbach-Hallenberg ,  GDR
Career
society	SC Steinbach-Hallenberg
National squad	since 2000
status	resigned
End of career	2009
Medal table
JWM medals 1 × 0 × 0 ×
Nordic Junior Ski World Championships gold 2001 Karpacz team
Placements in the World Cup
Debut in the World Cup	February 10, 2001
Overall World Cup	16. ( 2002/03 )
Sprint World Cup	14th ( 2002/03 )
Placements in the Grand Prix
Debut in the Grand Prix	August 26, 2000
Overall rating	08. ( 2005 )
Placements in the Continental Cup (COC)
Debut in the COC	January 21, 2001
COC wins (individual)	05 ( details )
COC victories (team)	01 ( details )
Overall ranking COC	01. ( 2008/09 )
Podium placements 1. 2. 3.  singles 5 5 3  team 1 0 0

Matthias Menz (born September 14, 1981 in Steinbach-Hallenberg ) is a former German Nordic combined athlete .

Career

First junior successes

Menz grew up in a family of athletes. The grandson of the first ski department head of SC Steinbach-Hallenberg and sports instructor Karl-Heinz Menz (1921–1974) came to skiing through his mother, who was a leading member of the referee and organization team at the Steinbach-Hallenberg Ski Club. In the early years of his childhood he began cross-country skiing and ski jumping , from which his activity as a Nordic combined athlete later developed.

In 1994 Menz won the Thuringian state championships. A short time later he finished the national ski games in second place overall. In the following year he also achieved a good result with third place. After finishing fourth in the national ski games in 1995/96, he also started at the OPA ski games for the first time in 1996. Menz came fourth in Samoëns , France . At the German youth championships in 1996 Menz reached 11th place. He was able to win the Germany Cup 1996/97 after two second places and one victory in Oberhof . He repeated the overall victory in the following season 1997/98.

Debut in the senior squad

On August 26, 2000 he made his international debut in the Summer Grand Prix in Klingenthal . However, he remained without points. In January 2001 he won the Singles B World Cup in Klingenthal. He then made his debut in the Nordic Combined World Cup on February 10, 2001 at the Gundersen Competition in Liberec . With 29th place, he immediately scored his first point win. Until the end of the 2000/01 season , however, it was the only point win. He finished the season as 53rd overall.

In the 2001/02 season Menz started again as a member of the B-team in the B-World Cup. It was not until the end of December that he came back to the A-squad and ended up on a good 16th place in the individual in Oberwiesenthal . In January 2002 he achieved his best World Cup result to date with sixth place in the sprint in Liberec. After he achieved mixed results at the Summer Grand Prix 2002, Menz started his most successful 2002/03 season with a fourth place in Kuusamo . As he and the other World Cup all but Chaux-Neuve finished in the points, he was at the FIS Nordic World Ski Championships 2003 in the Italian Val di Fiemme for the first and only time at a World Cup team. Menz reached 11th place in the sprint. He ended the season after he reached sixth place again in Oslo in 16th place in the overall World Cup standings.

Performance slump and end of career

As a result, he rarely achieved success in the World Cup. In December 2003 Menz temporarily switched back to the B World Cup before he achieved mixed results in the World Cup in February and March 2004. The best result was rank 25 in Oslo. On February 11, 2005, he started with the team for the first time at the Team World Cup. He achieved second place together with Georg Hettich and Sebastian Haseney . In the individual World Cup, he remained without front places. In January 2007 Menz went back to the B World Cup and won the mass start race in Val di Fiemme. For the Nordic World Ski Championships 2007 Menz was not given a starting place by national coach Hermann Weinbuch .

At the Summer Grand Prix 2007, Menz and the team in Berchtesgaden managed to land on the podium again. At the beginning of the 2007/08 season he won the individual competition in Høydalsmo in the B World Cup before he reached second place in the sprint the day before. He was also on the podium three times in Vuokatti . After he got a place in the World Cup team at short notice, Menz achieved the best World Cup result of the season with 12th place in Oberhof. At the Summer Grand Prix 2008 he achieved two top 10 placements in Hinterzarten and Oberstdorf .

In January 2009 Menz finally started again in the B-World Cup, which has since been renamed the Nordic Combined Continental Cup. He won again the competitions in Eisenerz and Rovaniemi before ending his active career at the end of the season. And that despite the fact that he achieved victory by far in the overall standings that season.

statistics

World Cup Statistics

The table shows the placements achieved in detail.

• 1st – 3rd place: Number of podium placements
• Top 10: Number of places in the top ten
• Points ranks: Number of placements within the point ranks
• Starts: Number of races run in the respective discipline

placement	Single a	sprint	Mass start	team		total
				sprint	Season
1st place
2nd place					2	2
3rd place
Top 10	1	4th	1		2	8th
Scoring	20th	34	5		2	61
Starts	39	46	11		2	98
Status: end of career

^a including individual races and Gundersen individual starts

Web links

Commons : Matthias Menz  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Matthias Menz in the database of the International Ski Association (English)
• Matthias Menz on The-Sports.org

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h} Brief portrait of Matthias Menz. (No longer available online.) In: Club website. SC Steinbach-Hallenberg, archived from the original on December 4, 2013 ; Retrieved November 30, 2013 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
2. ↑ World Ski Championships 2003 - Men's Sprint K120 / 7.5 Km. FIS-Ski.com, accessed on November 27, 2013 (English).  
3. ↑ World Cup Pragelato February 11, 2005 - Men's Team HS140 / 3x5 km. FIS-Ski.com, accessed on November 27, 2013 (English). 
4. ↑ Combiner Menz receives last place for Oberhof. Handelsblatt , December 29, 2007, accessed on November 27, 2013 (English).