Thijmen Kupers

Thijmen Kupers

Thijmen Kupers (2014)

Full name

Thijmen Kupers

nation

Netherlands

birthday

4th October 1991 (age 28)

place of birth

Lengel , Netherlands

size

180 cm

Weight

65 kg

Career

discipline

800 m

Best performance

1: 44.99 min

society

Groningen Atletiek

status

active

Medal table

European Indoor Championships

0 ×

1 ×

European Indoor Championships
bronze	Prague 2015	800 m

last change: August 10, 2020

Thijmen Kupers (born October 4, 1991 in Lengel , Gelderland ) is a Dutch athlete who specializes in the 800-meter run . In 2015 he won the bronze medal at the European Indoor Championships in Prague .

Life

Thijmen Kupers comes from the municipality of Lengel in the province of Gelderland. At the age of 15 he joined the Achterboek running team and henceforth focused on running competitions in athletics. Kupers started a master’s degree in Human Machine Communication at the University of Groningen . He also works for TimeSeries, a software manufacturer for intelligent business applications. One of his passions, besides running, is playing the bass .

Athletic career

In 2009 Kupers took part in competitions over 800 meters for the first time on a national level. In the following two years he started over 800 meters in the Netherlands, including the national championships, in which he finished sixth in 2011. In 2012 he was able to increase his best time early in the outdoor season to 1: 46.46 min. After improvements during the indoor season, there were signs of this increase since the beginning of the year. So he met the requirements to take part in the European Championships in Helsinki. Before he started in Finland, he was runner-up in the Netherlands. In Helsinki he made it to the semi-finals, in which he was eliminated as the last of his run. In 2013 he first took part in the European Indoor Championships in Gothenburg in the spring . There he also made it into the semi-finals. In it he got a quick run and finished sixth and last of his run. Overall, he took tenth place. In July Kupers then took part in the U23 European Championships in Tampere. There he started in the individual over 800 meters and was able to move into the final. In the final, he finished sixth with a season best of 1: 47.15 minutes. Just one day later, he qualified with the Dutch 4 x 400 meter relay for the final, in which the quartet finished in seventh and penultimate place.

In 2014 Kupers competed at the World Indoor Championships in Sopot. With a personal best time, he made it into the final, in which he landed in fifth place with 1: 47.74 minutes. After staying below the 1: 46.00 mark for the first time in June, he finally took part in the European Championships in Zurich in August . There, however, he already retired in the run-up, in which he was more than four seconds behind his best performance. Things went better for him in 2015 at the European Indoor Championships in Prague. This time he made it into the final, in which he won the bronze medal with a personal best of 1: 47.25 minutes. He was able to run good times for the entire outdoor season and improved to 1: 45.28 min in the national championships. At the end of the same month, he started in Beijing for the first time at world championships . There he reached the semi-finals, in which he was eliminated as seventh of his run. Overall, he came in 15th place at his World Cup premiere. In 2016, Kupers ran in Apeldoorn with an indoor performance of 1: 46.21. In the summer he took part in the European Championships in his home country. He moved into the final, in which he finished sixth with 1: 46.67 minutes. He missed the qualification standard for the Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro by just three hundredths of a second.

In 2017, Kupers initially took part in the European Indoor Championships in Belgrade. He finished fifth in the final. In June he set his personal best in Hengelo with 1: 44.99 minutes, which has been in place ever since. With this he also fulfilled the requirements to take part in the World Championships in London. After he won his preliminary run, he was unable to start the next day and thus missed the chance to reach the final. He then almost completely missed the 2018 season after only being able to take part in a few indoor competitions in January and February. A similar picture emerged for the 2019 season after he missed almost the entire outdoor season due to renewed Achilles tendon irritation. In March he was still able to start at the European Indoor Championships in Glasgow, where he narrowly missed the next round as third in his heat. Overall he finished 13th. Due to his injury he was unable to qualify for the World Championships in Doha. Instead, he put a greater focus on training with the aim of qualifying for the 2020 Summer Olympics .

In addition to the international level, Kupers has so far won a total of twelve national titles over 800 meters, seven times indoors (2012–2017, 2019) and five times in the open air (2013–2017).

Major competitions

year	event	place	space	discipline	time
Starts for the NetherlandsNetherlands
2012	European championships	Finland Helsinki	22nd	800 m	1: 50.37 min
2013	European Indoor Championships	Sweden Gothenburg	10.	800 m	1: 50.29 min
	U23 European Championships	Finland Tampere	6th	800 m	1: 47.15 min
	U23 European Championships	Finland Tampere	7th	4 × 400 m	3: 07.47 min
2014	Indoor world championships	Poland Sopot	5.	800 m	1: 47.74 min
2014	European championships	Switzerland Zurich	25th	800 m	1: 49.69 min
2015	European Indoor Championships	Czech Republic Prague	3.	800 m	1: 47.25 min
2015	World championships	China People's Republic Beijing	15th	800 m	1: 47.74 min
2016	European championships	Netherlands Amsterdam	6th	800 m	1: 46.67 min
2017	European Indoor Championships	Serbia Serbia	5.	800 m	1: 50.47 min
2017	World championships	United Kingdom London	24.	800 m	DNS
2019	European Indoor Championships	Scotland Glasgow	13.	800 m	1: 48.72 min