This is an interview for Sven's employer Fiege  (April 2002)    

Olympic silver medal because of superb tactics
Interview with Sven Fischer 

Firstly congratulations from your collegues of Fiege Group on your great achievements in this olympic season, especially at the Olympic Winter Games in Salt Lake City and the World Championships at Oslo's Holmenkollen. We all kept our fingers crossed for you! It's not at least because of you, that the attrativness of biathlon as a sport increased in the last years. More and more people are fascinated of the combination of these two different sports cross-country skiing and shooting. How did you become a biathlete?
Sven Fischer: My former trainer in cross-country skiing, Stefan Luck, got me interested in biathlon. I have been doing it since I was twelve years old.

It must be difficult to find enough calmness for a clean shooting after skiing up and down a hard track in high speed.
Sven Fischer: It is very difficult and enduring training is required to be able to do it.

After you won the silver medal in the olympic sprint competition, the papers wrote about a superb feat concerning your tactics. How do tactics work in such a competition? Don't you "just" have to ski as fast as possible and hit all the targets?
Sven Fischer: I decided to start my race in the first group of starters. This were the tactics. I tested my skis the day before and noticed I had more and more difficulties with my best pair of skies in this snow conditions. My teammates didn't have these problems. So I hoped for steady weather conditions, which I thought to have only in the beginning of the competition. And when you look at the result - the tactics worked.

Did you have moral support in Salt Lake City? We think it must be as important as support concerning sports.
Sven Fischer: Yes, my father. He gave me support after everything went wrong in my first competitions, the individual. That was very important for me. If you win a medal, everybody is around you, but if you don't...

Whom do you realize as your most important competitor and who of  your mates impressed you most?
Sven Fischer: Ole Einar Bjørndalen was the most important competitor for me and our team. But because he was in such a brilliant shape, the three silver and one bronze medals of our men's team got even more valuable, for both Frank Luck and me and our relay team were always right behind Ole Einar Bjørndalen.

Did you do special training for the Olympic Games? Did you train twice as often and hard as usual or did you, in the contrary, train with a bit of caution?
Sven Fischer: Twice as often and hard isn't possible. But we started a bit earlier in special techniques and in training on snow.

How does your training look like in summer?
Sven Fischer: We regulary do sports such as swimming, paddling, running and special biathlon training on roller ski plus shooting or running plus shooting.

And how many bullets are you firering on targets during the summer?
Sven Fischer: Must be approximately 12.000 - 14.000 small-bore bullets.

Do you know how many kilometers you covered on skis yet? Maybe you ran around the world a few times by now?
Sven Fischer: I didn't check that, but definately it's thousands.

Your sport is in spectator's good favour, but the bonus' and advertising revenues are rather small. What enables you to live as a professional sportsman?
Sven Fischer: Meanwhile biathlon became a sport which has commercial appeal, that makes it a bit easier for high-performance sportsmen. Nevertheless it wouldn't be possible without the support of the German Ski Federation, German Sporthilfe and sponsors from trade and industry to do this sport in international standings. Concerning me, this is my generous employer Fiege Group.

What would you call your greatest sucess yet?
Sven Fischer: There is not one single achievement I'd call my greatest sucess, there are many I keep in mind. But of course I consider the competitions at Olympic Games as something special.

We wish you even more sucess for the future than in the former season and hope for your participation in the Olympic Wintergames in four years time!

Sven with the managers of his employer Fiege Group, Heinz Fiege and Dr. Hugo Fiege, after the Olympic Games of 2002.