Bio95-97

Sven never won any international title as a junior biathlete which his teammates did. His career really started after 1993. In his first world chamiponship he won the gold medal with his team in Borowetz, Bulgaria. Only one month later, in March 1993, he won his first world cuprace, in sprint, in Kontiolahti, Finland. When it was time to sum up his first world cup season Sven had won the sprint cup and was number six in the overall world cup. – Sven who was the newest in the team had been the best of the season.
The start of the1993/94 season was also successful. In the eleven world cup races previous to the Olympic Games Sven ended better than 10 every time, except twice. Five times he was on the rostrum and this obviously made him one of the favourites to achieve a medal in the Olympic Games. The German teamtrainer, Norbert Baier, described Sven as the most stable wintersport performer.

Actually Sven won a bronze medal in 20 km in the Olympic Games. When he was asked if the two misses that could have given him an even better result annoyed him, he just said: “A medal in my first Olympic race – My God, what more can you demand!” Frank Luck, married to Sven's sister Andrea, finished second in the same competition which gave the Fischer family double reason to celebrate. For Sven's father it was even “the happiest day of my life after the birth of my children”. In the Olympic sprint Sven ended seven, he could still feel the “bronzemedalrace” in his feet. Even if the Russians were favourites to win the Olympic relay, the Germans with Sven skiing the home leg won the fastest of all Olympic relays ever.

Olympischer Sprint in Lillehammer 1994: Silber für Frank Luck, Bronze für Sven Fischer

In addition to Sven's medals Frank Luck (20km) and Ricco Gross (sprint) won silver medals. A great result for the German men team achieved in spite of disturbing critisism in the team towards their skitechnicians. Sven's comments to all this was just: “So what? You'll have to manage without optimal skis”. Up till today Sven has never blamed his equipment if he hasn`t succeeded. By the end of his second world cup season Sven had again won the sprint world cup and was even number two in the overall world cup. Despite this great success we`re tempted to say “only” number two. He only missed two points to win the overall world cup. He had even really gathered the most world cup points but the complicated way of summing up where you can subtract deleted results, after discussions about the ambiguous rules for awarding points and because of the facts that results from the Olympic Games in those days didn`t count in the world cup, Sven was only second.

The next world cup season was Sven's till then weakest ever because of the Pfeiffer glandfever which prevented Sven from ordinary seasonpreparations. A fifth place in Bad Gastein, two German championship titles, in sprint and relay, and a second place in Lahti were, apart from good results in relay, the only sport highlights of the season. In 1995 World Championship in Antholz in February Sven won a gold medal in relay but the other events were no success for Sven because of his illness previous to the World Championship. Much worse was the fact that one member of the German national biathlonteam, Holger Schönthier, accused Sven of using dope. For months Schönthier occupied the court with groundless accusations and made big headlines. Even the performancecontrol in Oberhof in September 1995 was cancelled by the DSV (German skifederation) because the biathletes wanted to show their solidarity with Sven. They threatened to boycott the arrangement if Schönthier took part in the event. The teamtrainers Norbert Baier and Frank Ullrich made it clear to everybody that they would resign if Schönthier was back on the team. Luckily things didn`t turn out like this. Sven benefitted from enormous support in his local environment which made him able to cope with this difficult situation. He ended 18^th in that season's overall world cup with this admission: “I have trained too hard at the wrong time”.

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