René Wolff

René Wolff
	René Wolff (2020)
To person
Nickname	Heintje
Date of birth	April 4th 1978
nation	Germany
discipline	Track cycling
Driver type	sprinter
End of career	2007
Societies)
2004-2007	RSC Turbine Erfurt
Most important successes
	Olympic Summer Games 2004 - team sprint (with Stefan Nimke and Jens Fiedler ) 2004 - sprint UCI track world championships 2005 - sprint 2003 - team sprint (with Jens Fiedler and Carsten Bergemann ) UCI Track World Championships for Juniors 1995, 1996 - Sprint
Team (s) as coach
2010–2017 ; 2018–	National railway team (short term) of the Netherlands ; National railway team (short term) of New Zealand
	Last updated: August 28, 2018

René Wolff (born April 4, 1978 in Erfurt ) is a former German track cyclist who was an active Olympic champion and two-time elite world champion. After his active career, he became a cycling coach and from 2010 was responsible for the Dutch national track team in the short-term disciplines. In 2018 he moved to New Zealand as national coach .

Athletic career

René Wolff started cycling in 1987 at the age of eight. In 1995 and 1996 he was junior sprint world champion, and in 1999 European champion. In 2001 he won the German Keirin Championship . In 2003 he became three-time German champion in sprint, keirin and Olympic sprint and took sprint bronze at the track cycling world championships in Stuttgart . At the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens , Wolff won gold in the team sprint and bronze in the sprint. In 2005 he became the fifth German ever to win the gold medal in the sprint at the World Track Championships in Los Angeles .

In May 2007 Wolff ended his career as a cyclist due to a lack of prospects and disagreements with the Association of German Cyclists .

Professional and private

René Wolff (nickname "Heintje") studied literature and philosophy. On September 1, 2008, he became a short-term trainer at the Thuringia regional base in Erfurt, succeeding his long-time trainer Jochen Wilhelm . At the beginning of 2010 he moved to the Netherlands as national coach, and in November 2016 his contract there was extended by four years. In March 2017, it was announced that Wolff was stepping down from his post after the UCI Track World Championships 2017 in Hong Kong in April. From June 2017, Wolff was the prestatiemanager (roughly: competitive sports director) of the Dutch sports and Olympic association NOC * NSF .

In August 2018 it was announced that René Wolff will be the new short-term national trainer in New Zealand as the successor to Anthony Peden from the beginning of the 2018/19 track cycling season .

Private

Wolff has two children from a previous marriage. During his activity in the Netherlands he lived and worked in Apeldoorn . He is in a relationship with the former Dutch track sprinter Willy Kanis ; the couple has had a son since 2014.