Sandra Flunger

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Sandra Flunger biathlon
Association AustriaAustria Austria
birthday March 31, 1982
Career
job Biathlon trainer
status resigned
Medal table
ÖM medals 2 × gold 2 × silver 1 × bronze
Logo ÖSV Austrian championships
gold 2002 Season
silver 2002 singles
gold 2003 Season
silver 2002 sprint
bronze 2004 Season
World Cup balance
 

Sandra Flunger (born March 31, 1982 ) is an Austrian biathlon trainer and former biathlete. After her active career, she initially worked longer with the Austrian athletes, and since 2018 she has been the head coach of the Swiss women's team.

Career

Active time

As the niece of the multiple Olympian and World Cup medalist Alfred Eder , Flunger came into contact with biathlon at an early age. She attended the Nordic Ski School and the Higher Boarding School in Saalfelden and was a member of the national biathlon team during her school days. She placed in the top ten in several races of the European Junior Cup and competed in the Junior World Championships in 2002 and 2003 . In her second participation, she achieved her best result as 28th of the 12.5 kilometer individual race.

Flunger achieved her greatest successes nationally. At the Austrian Championships in 2002 , she won the relay race title with Selina Spitz and Andrea Grossegger as the first representative of the state of Salzburg . In the individual, she was also runner-up behind Nicole Pfluger . In 2003 she repeated the title win in the relay race alongside Selina Spitz and Daniela Biechl , in the sprint she was second behind Anna Sprung . In 2004 she won bronze in the relay race with Spitz and Sarah Stanonik.

At the age of 21, Flunger ended her active career and later justified this by saying that it was foreseeable "that it will not work." After her resignation, she studied sport and German for teaching in Salzburg.

trainer

Flunger taught as a trainer at the Nordic Skimittelschule Saalfelden during her studies and after a few years took over the position of head trainer at the ski school. In this role, she was already in charge of a large part of the later Austrian national team, including Lisa Hauser , who switched from special cross-country skiing to biathlon in 2011 - also on Flunger's advice - and won six medals at youth and junior world championships in the following years. In 2013 the Austrian Ski Association (ÖSV) hired Flunger as a trainer for the women's national team. In the following year, Hauser and Katharina Innerhofer were the first Austrian biathletes to take part in the Olympic Games , Innerhofer became the first biathlete in the country to win a World Cup race and Julia Schwaiger became the individual junior world champion. Overall, the Austrian women's team improved from 21st place in the 2012/13 season to 10th place in the winter of 2014/15 (or 15th place in the following season) in the national ranking.

In the spring of 2016, the ÖSV signed the Norwegian Vegard Bitnes as the new trainer for the women's biathlon team. Bitnes should work together with Flunger and - with a view to the home world championships 2017 in Hochfilzen - especially advance the running development of the athletes. Flunger separated from the association shortly afterwards, citing the reason that she and Bitnes (who opted for lower intensity) pursued different training philosophies. She could not "credibly tell something [...] that [she] does not stand behind". Together with Alfred Eder, Flunger built up the training group "Biathlonschmiede", which is independent of the ÖSV and which was joined by a total of five athletes, including Lisa Hauser, Julia Schwaiger and Flunger's cousin and Alfred Eder's son Simon Eder . Hauser achieved several top ten results in the World Cup at the beginning of the season (which she could not confirm at the World Championships in Hochfilzen), Simon Eder won a World Championship bronze medal in the mass start and another with the relay. Eder and Hauser also celebrated two World Cup victories in the single mixed relay in March and November 2017. During the two years in which the biathlon forge existed as an independent training group, there were several disagreements with the ÖSV, Flunger himself spoke of it afterwards "Hardened fronts".

In 2018, Flunger took over from Armin Auchentaller in the management of the biathlon women's team in the Swiss ski association Swiss-Ski . The team around the three sisters Selina , Elisa and Aita Gasparin as well as Lena Häcki reached the podium of a World Cup for the first time as a relay in December 2019 and was able to repeat this success twice in winter 2019/20 . The Neue Zürcher Zeitung awarded Flunger in January 2020 that she had “succeeded in forming a powerful team from individualists with very different strengths and needs,” Selina Gasparin particularly praised the progress that the team had made at the shooting range thanks to Flunger.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Silke Burgsteiner: A life for biathlon sport. In: Platzhirsch. March 2018, pp. 10–12.
  2. ↑ a b c d Jochen Willner: Historical double. In: Biathlonworld. No. 53/2020, pp. 84-87. Available as PDF .
  3. ↑ Lisa Hauser's profile on skikitz.org. Retrieved May 18, 2020.
  4. ↑ Nation ratings for 2012/13 , 2014/15 and 2015/16 in the IBU database
  5. ↑ New trainers for Austria's downhill skiers. In: Small newspaper. April 28, 2016.
  6. ↑ The revolutionaries as self-payers. In: Kronen Zeitung. October 14, 2016.
  7. ↑ Gerhard Öhlinger: Life is like a boomerang. In: Salzburger Nachrichten. February 17, 2017, p. 19. Retrieved via PressReader .
  8. ^ A b c Philipp Bärtsch: The fact that Sandra Flunger trains Swiss biathletes is also a story of emancipation. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung. 5th December 2018.
  9. ↑ Christoph Schmid: The Swiss biathletes are suddenly world class as a team. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung. January 8, 2020.
personal data
SURNAME Flunger, Sandra
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian biathlon trainer and biathlete
DATE OF BIRTH March 31, 1982