Sascha Benecken

Sascha Benecken
nation	Germany
birthday	14th February 1990 (age 30)
place of birth	Suhl ,  GDR
size	178 cm
Weight	74 kg
job	Police chief
Career
discipline	Two-seater
society	RT Suhl, BRC 1924 Ilsenburg
Trainer	Norbert Hahn Jan Eichhorn Astrid Müller Raimund Bethge
National squad	since March 2012, A
status	active
Medal table
Olympic medals 0 × 0 × 1 × World Cup medals 7 × 3 × 2 × EM medals 5 × 2 × 1 × JWM medals 0 × 1 × 1 ×
winter Olympics bronze 2018 Pyeongchang Two-seater  Luge World Championships silver 2012 Altenberg Two-seater gold 2012 Altenberg team silver 2013 Whistler Two-seater silver 2016 Königssee Two-seater gold 2017 Innsbruck-Igls Two-seater gold 2017 Innsbruck-Igls Team relay bronze 2017 Innsbruck-Igls Double-seater sprint gold 2019 Winterberg Two-seater gold 2019 Winterberg Double-seater sprint bronze 2019 Winterberg Team relay gold 2020 Sochi Two-seater gold 2020 Sochi Team relay  European Luge Championships bronze 2012 Paramonowo Two-seater gold 2013 Oberhof Two-seater gold 2013 Oberhof Team relay gold 2016 Altenberg Two-seater gold 2016 Altenberg Team relay silver 2017 Königssee Two-seater gold 2018 Sigulda Two-seater silver 2019 Oberhof Two-seater Luge U23WM bronze 2011 Cesana Two-seater  Junior Luge World Championships silver 2009 Nagano Single seater bronze 2010 Innsbruck / Igls Single seater
Placements in the Luge World Cup
World Cup victories 39 (without relay)  Overall World Cup DS 1. ( 2014/15 , 2016/17 , 2017/18 , 2018/19 , 2019/20 )
Podium placements 1. 2. 3.  Two-seater 34 26th 10  Sprint two-seater 9 6th 1  Team relay 14th 2 3
last change: end of season 2019/20

Sascha Benecken (born February 14, 1990 in Suhl ) is a German luge athlete who also works as a musician. With his doubles partner Toni Eggert , he has been world champion seven times and won the overall world cup five times.

Origin and childhood

Both his father and his brother were already members of the junior national team in the Nordic Combined of the GDR . As a result, he already took part in a play and sports group in kindergarten, from which he then switched to handball and in 1999, after an inspection in sports lessons, to luge.

School and education

In February 2003 Sascha Benecken moved to the Oberhof sports high school and the boarding school there . In June 2009 he passed his Abitur and successfully applied to the Federal Police , where he completed his training as a police master at the Federal Police Sports School in Bad Endorf until October 2013.

Competitive sports career

Beginnings

Benecken has been a member of the Suhl toboggan team since 1999. Since childhood he went through the path from the general sports group to the support group of the club. Back then, child-friendly athletics were trained three times a week after school, and there was also toboggan all year round.

In 2003, Benecken was delegated to the sports high school as a double rear man (Gutberlet / Benecken) and left the home trainers Theisinger, Graefner and Lösch to continue training at the sports high school. In the following years he was trained by the coaches Lehmann, Münchmeyer, Frielinghaus and the junior national team coach Witter. During his youth, Benecken initially drove both singles and doubles.

Junior period

In autumn 2005 Benecken qualified himself for three youth A-World Cups, all of which he was able to win. From then on he only started singles. He qualified for the Junior World Cup in 2006, although he was still eligible to compete for Youth A, and with his first Junior World Cup victory on January 13, 2007, he made it to the Junior World Championships, where he was sixth on the Olympic track in Cesana .

Benecken became part of the junior national team and won the overall junior world cup in 2008 and again achieved 6th place at the junior world championships in Lake Placid . In 2009 he was both junior vice world champion and overall world cup second. On January 31, 2010 he won bronze at his fourth and last Junior World Championships in Innsbruck-Igls and was therefore recommended as a B squad qualifier for the German national luge team.

Further career

The German coaching team around Norbert Loch decided together with Toni Eggert and Sascha Benecken that these two start as doubles from the 2010/11 season . In their first joint effort in the World Cup , the duo took sixth place on November 27, 2010. At their home World Cup in Oberhof they achieved a podium place in the World Cup for the first time. In the overall World Cup 2010/11 they finished 4th. When they made their World Cup debut in 2011 , they finished 10th.

In the 2011/12 season , Eggert and Benecken started in the World Cup in Innsbruck with 5th place, fourth in Whistler and third in Calgary . After the turn of the year they started with third place in Königssee and were then able to win their first World Cup victory in Oberhof. In the other races, for example, they came second behind Linger / Linger in St. Moritz . Overall, they were able to secure bronze in the overall World Cup in 2011/12.

At the home world championships in Altenberg in the Ore Mountains , the two vice world champions behind Linger / Linger and in the team relay together with Felix Loch and Tatjana Hüfner became world champions. For this he and his teammate Toni Eggert were awarded the Silver Laurel Leaf .

At the home track in Oberhof, Eggert / Benecken won the doubles and team titles at the 2013 European Championships . At the 2013 World Championships in Whistler, Wendl / Arlt were ahead of them.

In the 2013/14 season they took part in eight out of nine World Cup races and won two of them, came second four times and third once. At the World Cup in Winterberg, they fell in second place just before the finish. The highlight of the season was the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi , where they achieved an Olympic diploma with eighth place .

In 2014/15 the duo won the overall ranking of the World Cup for the first time with four first and four second places. At the world championships and at the European championships , Eggert / Benecken missed the medal ranks with ranks four and seven.

In the winters of 2016/17 , 2017/18 , 2018/19 and 2019/20 they won the overall World Cup ranking several times.

After ten victories in the world cup races, he started with Toni Eggert at the 2018 Olympic Winter Games in Pyeongchang as the favorite, but had to be content with the bronze medal behind his team-mates Wendl / Arlt and the Austrians Penz / Fischler.

successes

Overall World Cup

season	space	Points
2010/11	04th	0516
2011/12	03.	0630
2012/13	02.	0628
2013/14	02.	0630
2014/15	01.	1071
2015/16	02.	0962
2016/17	01.	1140
2017/18	01.	1170
2018/19	01.	1050
2019/20	01.	0872

World Cup victories

Two-seater

Team relay

No. date place train 01. Jan. 14, 2012  Oberhof Oberhof luge track 02. Jan. 12, 2013  Oberhof Oberhof luge track 03. Nov 24, 2013  innsbruck Igls artificial ice rink bobsleigh 04th Jan. 11, 2014  Oberhof Oberhof luge track 05. Nov 29, 2014  innsbruck Igls artificial ice rink bobsleigh 06th Nov 30, 2014  Innsbruck (sprint) Igls artificial ice rink bobsleigh 07th 0Dec 5, 2014  Lake Placid Olympic bobsleigh track Lake Placid 08th. Dec 12, 2014  Calgary Bobsleigh and sled run in Canada Olympic Park 09. Jan. 24, 2015  Winterberg Winterberg bobsleigh run 10. Feb 22, 2015  Altenberg (sprint) DKB ice channel 11. Nov 28, 2015  innsbruck Igls artificial ice rink bobsleigh 12. 0Dec 4, 2015  Lake Placid Olympic bobsleigh track Lake Placid 13. Dec 18, 2015  Calgary Bobsleigh and sled run in Canada Olympic Park 14th Feb 13, 2016  Altenberg DKB ice channel 15th Feb 21, 2016  Winterberg Winterberg bobsleigh run 16. Nov 26, 2016  Winterberg Winterberg bobsleigh run 17th Nov 27, 2016  Winterberg (Sprint) Winterberg bobsleigh run 18th 0Dec 2, 2016  Lake Placid Olympic bobsleigh track Lake Placid 19th Dec 10, 2016  Whistler Whistler Sliding Center 20th 17th Dec 2016  Park City (Sprint) Park City bobsleigh 21st Jan. 14, 2017  Sigulda Sigulda luge and bobsleigh track 22nd Jan 15, 2017  Sigulda (Sprint) Sigulda luge and bobsleigh track 23. Feb. 18, 2017  Pyeongchang Alpensia Sliding Center 24. 25 Feb 2017  Altenberg DKB ice channel 25th Nov 18, 2017  innsbruck Igls artificial ice rink bobsleigh 26th Nov 25, 2017  Winterberg Winterberg bobsleigh run 27. 0Dec 2, 2017  Altenberg DKB ice channel 28. 0Dec 8, 2017  Calgary Bobsleigh and sled run in Canada Olympic Park 29 Dec 15, 2017  Lake Placid Olympic bobsleigh track Lake Placid 30th 16 Dec 2017  Lake Placid (Sprint) Olympic bobsleigh track Lake Placid 31. Jan. 13, 2018  Oberhof Oberhof luge track 32. Jan. 20, 2018  Lillehammer Hunderfossen bobsleigh and sled run 33. Jan. 27, 2018  Sigulda Sigulda luge and bobsleigh track 34. Jan. 28, 2018  Sigulda (Sprint) Sigulda luge and bobsleigh track 35. Nov 30, 2018  Whistler Whistler Sliding Center 36. Dec 15, 2018  Lake Placid Olympic bobsleigh track Lake Placid 37. 16 Dec 2018  Lake Placid (Sprint) Olympic bobsleigh track Lake Placid 38. 0Jan. 5, 2019  Koenigssee Koenigssee artificial ice rink 39. Jan. 13, 2019  Sigulda Sigulda luge and bobsleigh track 40. 23 Nov 2019  innsbruck Igls artificial ice rink bobsleigh 41. Dec 14, 2019  Whistler Whistler Sliding Center 42. Dec 14, 2019  Whistler (sprint) Whistler Sliding Center 43. Feb 29, 2020  Koenigssee Koenigssee artificial ice rink

No. date place train 01. Jan 15, 2012  Oberhof Oberhof luge track 02. Nov 24, 2013  innsbruck Igls artificial ice rink bobsleigh 03. 0Dec 6, 2014  Lake Placid Olympic bobsleigh track Lake Placid 04th Jan. 25, 2015  Winterberg Winterberg bobsleigh run 05. Nov 29, 2015  innsbruck Igls artificial ice rink bobsleigh 06th Feb 14, 2016  Altenberg DKB ice channel 07th 19th Feb 2017  Pyeongchang Alpensia Sliding Center 08th. Feb. 26, 2017  Altenberg DKB ice channel 09. 19 Nov 2017  innsbruck Igls artificial ice rink bobsleigh 10. 03rd Dec 2017  Altenberg DKB ice channel 11. 0Dec 9, 2017  Calgary Bobsleigh and sled run in Canada Olympic Park 12. Jan. 14, 2018  Oberhof Oberhof luge track 13. 0Jan. 6, 2019  Koenigssee Koenigssee artificial ice rink 14th 01st Mar 2020  Koenigssee Koenigssee artificial ice rink

Awards

• 2017: Thuringia's Sportsman of the Year (Team)

music

Benecken learned the recorder in kindergarten at the age of four. At the age of 13 he taught himself to play the guitar and founded the band "Unkreativ".

Plexic

In the following years he and friends gained first experience on stage with performances of his own German-language music under the name "Plexic". In spring 2007 he was given the opportunity to make demo recordings in a studio, which were then released as a 5-track album. In the summer of 2007 he and his band at the time took part in a Thuringian band contest, in which they became the fourth best student band in Thuringia.

adrenaline

In the summer of 2007, Benecken and his band applied for the official title song for the 2008 Luge World Championships in Oberhof. To do this, he took an existing melody from his own song, rewrote the lyrics with a band member and recorded a demo tape. With this tape they prevailed against five other applicant bands and were awarded the contract. In late summer 2007, the official title song Adrenalin was recorded in the X-Studios Friedrichroda and produced by Eric Jeitner. A music video followed. In February 2008 Adrenalin reached number 36 in the German lay-up charts. This was the high point and at the same time the end of the “Plexic” project, as the members then parted ways for professional and school reasons.

social commitment

In the summer of 2007, Benecken played with his band at a benefit concert, at which the entire proceeds went to the children's hospice in Central Germany.

Together with Eggert, he has been the godfather of the White Ring since 2010 and supports the campaign "Athletes set standards"

In addition, Benecken supports the board of directors of the Suhl toboggan team in the areas of "Marketing" and "Contact Top Sports - Club". As a trained C-trainer and referee, he is repeatedly used in competitions in children's and youth sports.

In the summer of 2012, Benecken organized a charity volleyball game in Suhl, where his training group around David Möller , Andi Langenhan , Ludwig and Co. played against VfB 91 Suhl for the youngsters.

In 2013, Benecken supported the nationwide event Großer Stern des Sports as patron as well as the school competition of the IHK South Thuringia “Our Best Ninth”.

Web links

Commons : Sascha Benecken  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Official website of the toboggan duo Toni Eggert and Sascha Benecken
• Portrait at rennrodeln.info
• Statistics and profile on fil-luge
• Portrait at the Federal Police