Vico Merklein

Vico Merklein Paracycling
Personal information
Type of disability (class):	Paraplegia (H4)
Nationality:	Germany
Birthday:	August 12, 1977
Place of birth:	Berlin

Vico Merklein (born August 12, 1977 in Berlin ) is a German athlete in the Paracycling department . He is currently riding a handbike for GC Nendorf and training with Ralf Lindschulten. Since 2007 Vico Merklein has been part of the Sunrise Medical handbike team Team Sopur Quickie . The team is led by Errol Marklein.

Career

Beginnings

Vico Merklein has been paraplegic since a motorcycle accident the day before his 20th birthday. Three years after this accident, he started his career as a handbiker. Despite hard training, Merklein was unable to achieve any success in the early days due to insufficient sports equipment. This changes with the switch to a new handbike, a gift from his grandmother.

When he joined the handbike team of the wheelchair manufacturer Sunrise Medical Team Sopur Quickie in 2007, the athlete's successes began.

successes

After years of successful training, Vico Merklein won the 2009 marathons in Duisburg and Mannheim. At the marathon in Heidelberg he set a new world record over the marathon distance with a time of 1:00:03 h. He also drove with a team of four in the Race Across America , in which a distance of over 4,800 kilometers between Oceanside and Indianapolis has to be covered within nine days. Although his team finished last in eight days, nine hours and six minutes, the four were the only physically disabled participants in the race and thus set a new record.

A year later Vico Merklein won the marathons in Berlin and Hamburg and became a member of the A-squad of the German national team. In the following years he drove further first places in the marathons in Hamburg (2012, 2013), Mannheim (2011, 2013), Duisburg (2011, 2013), Cologne (2011, 2012), Heidelberg (2011), Berlin (2011, 2012, 2013), Görlitz (2012) and Düsseldorf (2013). In 2013 he broke the world record he had set in the Heidelberg Marathon again in the marathon distance with a new best time of 00:58:56 h. Since 2010, the handbiker has also defended his position as the overall winner in the Handbike Trophy racing series.

As a member of the national handbike team / A-team, Vico Merklein is the world record holder for the marathon distance and a silver medalist at the 2012 Paralympic Games in London .

For winning the silver medal at the 2012 Paralympics, he received the silver laurel leaf on November 7, 2012.

Since 2013, he has always won the gold medal in the individual time trial as well as in the road race of the German championships and the silver medal at the world championships. After intensive winter training, Merklein achieved a podium finish in all World Cups in the 2015 competition season. His successes made him one of the most successful German athletes in paracycling .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Vico Merklein www.sunrisemedical.de
2. ↑ Team Sopur Quickie www.sunrisemedical.de
3. ↑ Portrait: Vico Merklein www.myheimat.de
4. ↑ Driven by hand from coast to coast www.op-online.de
5. ↑ Christiane Reppe and Vico Merklein are overall winners of the Handbike Trophy 2015 ( memento of the original from December 22, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. www.rollstuhl-news.de 
6. ↑ Press release of the Federal President's Office of November 7, 2012: ... On November 7, 2012, Federal President Joachim Gauck awarded the German medal winners of the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games ... with the silver laurel leaf. ...