Michael Rösch

Michael Rösch
Association	Germany (until 2012) Belgium (since 2014)
birthday	4th May 1983 (age 37)
place of birth	Pirna ,  GDR
Career
job	Trainer
society	SSV Altenberg
Trainer	Wilfried Bock, Frank Ulrich
Debut in the World Cup	2004
World Cup victories	4 (2 individual wins)
status	resigned
End of career	18th January 2019
Medal table
Olympic medals 1 × 0 × 0 × World Cup medals 0 × 0 × 3 × SWM medals 2 × 1 × 0 × JWM medals 4 × 4 × 0 ×
winter Olympics gold 2006 Turin Season  Biathlon world championships bronze 2007 Antholz Season bronze 2008 Östersund Season bronze 2009 Pyeongchang Season  Summer biathlon world championships silver 2009 Oberhof sprint gold 2009 Oberhof persecution gold 2009 Oberhof Mixed relay silver 2014 Tyumen sprint gold 2014 Tyumen persecution  Biathlon Junior World Championships gold 2001 Khanty-Mansiysk Season silver 2002 Ridnaun singles gold 2002 Ridnaun Season gold 2003 Kościelisko sprint silver 2003 Kościelisko Season silver 2004 Haute Maurienne sprint silver 2004 Haute Maurienne persecution gold 2004 Haute Maurienne Season
World Cup balance
Overall World Cup	5th ( 2005/06 )
Individual World Cup	9. (2005/06)
Sprint World Cup	7th ( 2006/07 )
Pursuit World Cup	5th (2005/06)
Mass start world cup	9th (2006/07)
Podium placements 1. 2. 3. singles 0 0 1 sprint 1 5 0 persecution 1 0 1 Season 2 6th 9

Michael "Ebs" Rösch (born May 4, 1983 in Pirna ) is a former Belgian - German biathlete who competed for Germany until 2012 and started for Belgium in 2014 . He grew up in Zinnwald-Georgenfeld .

Career

Michael Rösch, the son of the former biathlon world champion Eberhard Rösch , started biathlon at the age of nine. He is four times junior world champion, three times with the relay and in 2002/03 in the sprint. He achieved a sixth place in the sprint at the 2003/04 World Cup finals in Fort Kent , but could not build on this performance in the following season. On December 16, 2005, he finished second in the sprint in Osrblie, Slovakia , after finishing third over 20 km the previous day, his first podium in a World Cup.

On January 14, 2006, he was relegated to second place by the Norwegian Frode Andresen in the sprint in Ruhpolding with a difference of 3.8 seconds. However, he took his first win in the pursuit a day later when he beat Raphaël Poirée in a photo finish. At the XX. At the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin , he won the 4 × 7.5 km biathlon relay with Ricco Groß , Sven Fischer and Michael Greis and thus his first Olympic gold medal. Rösch made a significant contribution to winning the gold medal with very fast and error-free shooting and a strong mileage and had the second best individual time of all athletes, only beaten by Ole Einar Bjørndalen .

In the same year Rösch was fifth in the overall World Cup ranking. At that time he was considered by many experts as the greatest talent in German biathlon and as the "Crown Prince" who could build on the great successes of the generation around Ricco Groß and Sven Fischer . In the following years, however, Rösch's performance deteriorated. In the 2008/2009 season he managed only one podium in a single race (2nd place in the sprint in Oberhof). In the end, it was enough for 16th place in the overall World Cup.

At the Summer Biathlon World Championships 2009 in Oberhof, Rösch won the gold medal in the mixed relay with Magdalena Neuner , Tina Bachmann and Christoph Stephan and took silver in the sprint. In the pursuit competition Michael Rösch became world champion. Since the winter season 2009/2010 Rösch experienced a career low. After weak World Cup races at the end of 2009 (106th place in the sprint in Pokljuka ), Rösch was downgraded to the second-class IBU Cup by the national coach . Even there he only achieved lower placements. He was not nominated for the Olympic Winter Games in Vancouver . In the 2010/11 season he first started in the IBU Cup, only to then no longer be nominated for this because of his results. After that, he only started in the Germany Cup. On December 9, 2011, Rösch returned to the World Cup: In Hochfilzen, he finished 27th in the sprint and 12th in the subsequent pursuit race. In 2011 he also took part in the 90 km long Wasalauf in the classic technique.

In mid-September 2012 it was announced that he would like to compete for Belgium in the future . Rösch gave up his post with the federal police. Naturalization in Belgium lasted until January 2014. A participation in the Olympic Winter Games 2014 was not possible for him because he had not had the citizenship of Belgium long enough at that time, but he was able to win silver in the sprint and the title in the pursuit race at the summer biathlon world championships 2014 in Tyumen win first international biathlon medals for Belgium. Since Belgium had no contingent for athletes in the biathlon world cup, Rösch had to qualify for the world cup. In his first competitions under the Belgian flag as part of the IBU Cup in March 2014 in Martell , Italy , he met the criteria for receiving a wildcard with a 19th place in the sprint and an 11th place in the pursuit. He got this for the 2014/15 season , in which he was 50th in the singles at the start in Östersund . In other sprint races he also clearly missed the points in Östersund and Hochfilzen. It was only in Oberhof at the beginning of 2015 that he was able to win his first points in a sprint race for Belgium as 30th. Rösch achieved his greatest World Cup success after changing nationality on December 10, 2016 in Pokljuka with 6th place in the pursuit race.

On January 12, 2019, he announced his retirement from competitive sports at the World Cup in Oberhof. He contested his last individual races a week later at the home world cup in Ruhpolding. However, he was still available for relay races. His last World Cup race was the relay race in Canmore, Canada in February 2019.

After his resignation, Rösch remains loyal to biathlon. From May 1, 2019, he will work for the Saxon Sports Association and will be responsible for the development of the youngsters at the Altenberg base. At the same time he is studying at the Sports University in Cologne .

Awards

Rösch has received several awards. In 2006 he was athlete of the year in Saxony and third with the team in the election for German athlete of the year . In addition, he was voted the winner of the “Winter Star” 2006 election in the “Best Team” category by viewers of Bayerischer Rundfunk and readers of the Bild newspaper with the Olympic biathlon relay. In 2007 he was named Police Sportsman of the Year.

successes

Winter Olympics:

• 2006: 1 × gold (relay)

World Championships:

• 2007: 1 × bronze (relay)
• 2008: 1 × bronze (relay)
• 2009: 1 × bronze (relay)

Junior World Championships:

• 2001: 1 × gold (relay)
• 2002: 1 × gold (relay), 1 × silver (individual)
• 2003: 1 × gold (sprint), 1 × silver (relay)
• 2004: 1 × gold (relay), 2 × silver (sprint, pursuit)

Biathlon World Cup placements: The table shows all placements (depending on the year of the event, 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	Season	total
1st place		1	1		2	4th
2nd place		5			6th	11
3rd place	1		1		9	11
Top 10	3	14th	15th	10	22nd	64
Scoring	14th	49	42	25th	25th	155
Starts	23	78	50	25th	25th	201
Status: after the individual in Antholz 2016/17

Web links

Commons : Michael Rösch  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Michael Rösch's website
• Michael Rösch in the IBU database (English)
• Michael Rösch in the database of the Visma Ski Classics (English)
• The Truth Behind "Better Than Fuck" Spox.com, December 24, 2016.
• Rösch's ordeal back to Olymp Sport1, December 12, 2016.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Alexander Dölling: Groß: renouncing Rösch is justified. In: T-Online. October 12, 2010, accessed December 18, 2015 . 
2. ↑ Rösch will start for Belgium in the future. In: Sport1.de. September 14, 2012, accessed December 18, 2015 . 
3. ↑ Finally no more fish waste. In: tagesspiegel.de , March 15, 2015.
4. ↑ dpa: "That's for you, Klaus!" In: FAZ.net . December 11, 2016, accessed October 13, 2018 . 
5. ↑ Biathlete Michael Rösch announces the end of his career - xc-ski.de cross-country skiing. In: xc-ski.de. January 12, 2019, accessed on January 13, 2019 (German).