Robert Seifert (short tracker)

Robert Seifert
nation	Germany
birthday	January 31, 1988
place of birth	Dresden
size	175 cm
Weight	60 kg
job	Notary assistant
Career
society	Ice skating club Dresden
Trainer	Michael Kooreman
National squad	since 2006
status	active
Medal table
JWM medals 1 × 0 × 0 × World Cup medals 0 × 1 × 0 × EM medals 0 × 0 × 1 × EYOF medals 0 × 2 × 0 ×
Short track junior world championships gold 2006 Miercurea Ciuc 500 meters  Short track world championships silver 2011 Sheffield Season  European Short Track Championships bronze 2012 Mladá Boleslav Season  European Youth Olympic Festival silver 2005 Monthey 1000 m silver 2005 Monthey Season
Placements in the Short Track World Cup
Debut in the World Cup October 20, 2006  World Cup victories 1  500 m world cup 8. ( 2011/12 )
Podium placements 1. 2. 3.  500 meters 1 0 0  Relay / team 1 0 2
last change: December 2nd, 2012

Robert Seifert (born January 31, 1988 in Dresden ) is a former German short tracker and junior world champion.

Seifert began his career as a figure skater and switched to the short track in 2000. He was junior world champion in this sport in 2006 and has been part of the German national team ever since. Due to several injuries in his ankle, the man from Dresden had to interrupt his career twice, but both times secured a place in the team after the comebacks. Seifert took part in the 2010 Winter Olympics as one of six German short trackers.

Career

Childhood and promotion to the national team (until 2006)

Seifert began at the age of four years with the competitive sport and practiced initially both figure skating and water jumping out. After a year, he decided to go figure skating, which he focused on from there. For seven years, all of his childhood, he competed in figure skating, during which time he secured several national titles in the junior division. In retrospect, the man from Dresden regards these years as the foundation stone for his later success as a short tracker, as he acquired the necessary physical and coordinative skills as a figure skater and developed a good feeling for ice skates and ice. Problems with the coaches led the then seventh grader to switch to the short track within his club ESC Dresden in 2000 (in 2001 the short trackers and speed skaters of the ESC started their own ice skating club Dresden , to which Seifert has belonged ever since). The first time in the new sport, which Seifert also chose because of its emphasis on strength, he describes today as follows:

"With the change of sport I found myself in a completely new sporting environment, which was bursting with things that should be discovered: a new circle of friends, different training times, exciting competitions and ... no more ballet lessons."

Even as a teenager, Seifert achieved various successes in the short track, for example when he was 15 years old he was German junior runner-up. After further good results at national and international level, he was accepted into the junior national team at the beginning of the 2004/05 season. At the European Youth Olympic Festival 2005 he reached second place twice - over 1000 meters and in the relay - and thus a silver medal. Seifert's greatest success up to then followed only a year later; At the Junior World Championships in Miercurea Ciuc , he was the first German to secure the title of Junior World Champion over 500 meters. In doing so, he benefited from the stumbling blocks of other athletes, from whom he almost fell too. Behind the South Korean medalists Lee Jung-su and Kim Jae-han as well as the French Maxime Chataigner , he also finished fourth in the all-around competition, where he missed the bronze medal by just three points. After these good results, the German national coach Jürgen Denhardt declared that Seifert would be the first to replace the Olympic Winter Games in February should one of the nominated athletes fail. Although it did not come to that, the athlete was used in the world championship , which was held a short time after the Olympics in Minneapolis , USA . There he was part of the German season, which reached sixth place.

Injuries and comebacks (2006–2009)

Robert Seifert was accepted into the senior national team at the age of 18. This also included his first appearances in the Short Track World Cup , which he contested in October 2006 in Changchun , China . In a well-manned 500 meter competition, the man from Dresden immediately reached twelfth place out of more than 30 participants, with the best German Tyson Heung only one place ahead of him . A week later, the German relay team won the B final with Seifert and thus finished fifth.

At the third World Cup station in Chicoutimi , Canada , Seifert had a hard fall in the quarter-finals of the 500-meter race without outside interference and suffered a multiple fracture in his ankle . He was then flown to Dresden and operated on in the university clinic in his hometown. After this injury, which meant the end of the season for the athlete and led to a safety discussion within the DESG, some media feared the end of the career of the only 18-year-old. He himself said about it:

“Now everything is going in the right direction and I hope that maybe everything will be fine again, but not so quickly. Of course, it is incredibly bitter for me to suddenly find myself in good shape in such an important season. But that's fate. "

While Tyson Heung was the first German to win an overall World Cup in the 2006/07 season , Seifert was again in training that lasted several weeks. After the end of the season he was able to return to competitive sport, although the screws were only removed from the ankle after a year, in December 2007. Before that, in October 2007, he had made his comeback at the first World Cup races of the winter, after all, with the quarter-finals straight away. Overall, however, he did not build on the first successes of the pre-winter, so he ended the season before the national and international championships in February 2008.

In the summer of that year, Seifert again suffered an ankle sprain while jogging, because of which he had to take a one-week break from training. As a result, he again fell behind in training and did not qualify for the first World Cup of the new season . In the further course of the winter he did not make the jump into the five-man German squad, but instead competed in the continental Star Class , where he achieved good results. Since the last World Cup of the year was a home World Cup for the German team - it took place in Seifert's hometown Dresden - the team was allowed to nominate six athletes instead of the usual five athletes. This additional place was given to Robert Seifert, who returned to the World Cup in February 2009 after a break of more than a year. In Dresden he started exclusively over 500 meters, where he reached 14th place, in the relay that was third, he was only a substitute. Seifert described his performance at the first World Cup in Germany as a positive surprise, but he does not feel in good shape yet. The pre-Olympic season, which the athlete himself describes as "rather sobering", ended for him with the German runner-up title.

Qualification for Olympia (2009)

Before the 2009/10 Olympic season , for which the German team was training from April 2009, Robert Seifert set the goal of asserting himself as an integral part of the team and getting through injury-free. Because of the Olympic Games in Vancouver , the first competitions started quite early compared to the previous winters; the first World Cup in Beijing was already on the program in September. Both after this and the next World Cup in Seoul , the man from Dresden drew a negative conclusion for the individual races, he was unable to qualify for the quarter-finals in a single competition. With the relay, however, he managed a seventh and a sixth place, although he had not previously been used in the World Cup in a relay for two years. He saw this as a good sign for the upcoming Olympic qualification in the following two races.

The last two World Cup stations - also because of the Olympics, the number of World Cups had been reduced from six to four - in North America were also the only two opportunities to qualify for the Winter Olympics. In Montréal , Canada , Seifert retired over 500 meters in the third of seven laps and was 38th, with the relay in the B final for eighth place. These results were not yet sufficient to meet the Olympic standard. The man from Dresden managed this in the following competition in Marquette , where he reached the B final over 500 meters and set a new German record with a fifth place in addition to his best World Cup result to date. During the total of seven laps, Seifert improved steadily and set a new personal best four times and a new German record twice, which was finally 41.258 seconds. In the quarterfinals he benefited from the disqualification of the US Olympic champion Apolo Anton Ohno , who had previously hindered him. In the overall World Cup this season, he finished 14th with this fifth place. In the season too, he qualified for the Olympic Games with a fourth place, although Seifert was not used in the A-final for reasons of rotation. Immediately after the World Cup, the athlete thanked the trainer of the German selection, the Canadian Éric Bédard , who had brought new training methods to the team on his homepage .

On December 17, 2009, Seifert was nominated by the DOSB for the Winter Olympics in Vancouver , along with 43 other athletes and as one of six short trackers .

From 2010

In 2010 Seifert was one of four athletes who won the first ever World Championship medal for the German short track in the 5000 m relay competition at the World Championships in Sofia . In the 2011 season he was part of the season that scored the first World Cup victory of the season in Dresden and won silver at the World Cup in Sheffield .

On December 2, 2012, he won his second world cup race over 500 meters in Nagoya, Japan (and the first in an individual competition) ahead of the favorite Charles Hamelin from Canada. This was also the first individual victory of a German short tracker in the World Cup.

After the unsatisfactory sporting season 2013/14 Seifert announced his retirement from competitive sport.

Status in the German team

After Robert Seifert became the first German junior world champion over the 500-meter course in 2006, he was described as a “German short-track hope” and “greatest German short-track talent”, especially after the injury in November 2006. In The father of the short tracker commented on this article:

“What is particularly remarkable, however, is the fact that so many people tried to get Robert. My biggest worry at first was that it was celebrated as JWM in Dresden last season and this time it will be forgotten and dropped. But to my great joy it turned out differently than expected. "

- Steffen Seifert, December 11, 2006

Due to several compulsory breaks, Seifert was not used in the relay world cups between 2007 and 2009. When he returned to the permanent five-man World Cup team at the beginning of the 2009/10 season, Sebastian Praus , Paul Herrmann and Tyson Heung had established themselves as the “standard runner” in the relay. Seifert took turns in fourth position with Robert Becker and Torsten Kröger . In addition, the Dresdner, who describes himself as a sprinter, is now almost exclusively used in 500-meter races, i.e. the shortest distance.

Private

Seifert first attended a sport-promoting elementary school in Dresden and then switched to the Dresden sports high school . Because of the time-consuming training, he was able to extend the upper secondary level to three years, so that instead of twelve, he took his Abitur in July 2007 after 13 years . From August of this year he completed a two-year training as a notary assistant; he received the test certificates for this profession in June 2009. One month later he began the basic military service of the sports promotion group of the Bundeswehr in Frankenberg. In September 2014 he began training as a flight data processor at DFS Deutsche Flugsicherung GmbH .

Results in the World Cup

The placements are shown in the individual overall ratings. Since the all-round World Cup (a kind of overall World Cup) was abolished in the 2006/07 season, there have only been discipline World Cups for the individual courses.

• Races: number of races taken / number of races carried out
• Points: Points won in the races
• Place: Placement at the end of the World Cup season in the respective discipline ranking

season	500 meters			1000 meters			1500 meters
	run	Points	space	run	Points	space	run	Points	space
2006/07	4/8	340	21st	2/8	157	62.	-	-	-
2007/08	1/8	9	81.	3/8	52	66.	2/8	28	73.
2008/09	2/8	78	50.	-	-	-	-	-	-
2009/10	4/4	435	14th	-	-	-	-	-	-

World Cup victories

date	place	country	discipline
February 20, 2011	Dresden	Germany	5000 meter relay
December 2, 2012	Nagoya	Japan	500 meters

Web links

• Homepage of Robert Seifert
• Robert Seifert in the database of ShorttrackOnLine.info (English)
• Profile and interview ( Memento from August 16, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
• Video with Robert Seifert at the Olympic Games in Sochi

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Conversation with short tracker Robert Seifert
2. ↑ Page no longer available , search in web archives: result on cyberscoreboard
3. ↑ DESG news of December 13, 2006
4. ↑ Robert Seifert: Severe setback
5. ↑ Operation
6. ↑ Ankle sprain
7. ↑ ^{a b} First World Cup in Dresden
8. ↑ ^{a b} Olympic season begins
9. ↑ Men's relay: 6th in Seoul  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
10. ↑ An unusual trainer ( memento from July 17, 2012 in the web archive archive.today )
11. ↑ World Championship 2010
12. ↑ Relay wins and qualifies for World Cup
13. ↑ Sheffield 2011: Silver for the German men's relay!
14. ^ First World Cup victory for Seifert Bild.de, December 2, 2012, accessed on December 2, 2012
15. ↑ German short-track hope Robert Seifert with serious fall injury - career on the brink  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
16. ^ Comment by the injured party
17. ↑ World Cup Beijing 2009