Bach, Björn

Björn Bach was born on June 21, 1976 in Magdeburg , federal state Saxony-Anhalt . He began to actively engage in kayaking at the age of thirteen, he was trained at the local Magdeburg Sports Club under the guidance of coach Gunter Beling ^[1] .

The first serious success at the adult international level was in the 1997 season, when he joined the German national team and went to the World Championships in Dartmouth, Canada, from where he immediately brought three awards of different denominations: in four won bronze at two hundred meters, silver at five hundred and gold on a thousand. A year later, at the world championship in Hungarian Szeged, he made a gold double, won at once in two kayak-four distances - at 500 and 1000 m. A year later at the similar competitions in Milan he defended the championship title in four at five hundred meters, but was forced to go on at a thousand to be content with silver, in the decisive race he lost to the Hungarian team.

In 2000, Bach made his European Championship standings; at a tournament in Polish Poznan, he won two gold medals in races per kilometer and half a kilometer. As one of the leaders of the German national team, he successfully qualified for the Summer Olympic Games in Sydney , where, as part of the crew of Jan Schäfer , Mark Zabel and Stefan Ulm , the fours won the silver medal in the kilometer program - in the final they were again ahead of the Hungarians.

At the 2001 European Championships in Milan, Bach took silver at four thousand meters, and later won gold in the same discipline at the World Championships in Poznan. The following season he received a silver medal at the world championship in Spanish Seville, overtook all crews except the Slovak national team in fours at a distance of 1000 meters. Then at the 2003 World Championships in American Gainesville he showed the third result in the same discipline, the first and second were Slovakia and Hungary, respectively. At the end of the Olympic cycle, he went to the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens , where in fours with the participation of Andreas Ile , Mark Zabel and Stefan Ulm, he added another silver kilometer of the kilometer distance to the track record ^[2] .

After the Athens Olympics, Bach remained in the main team of Germany for several years and continued to take part in major international regattas. So, at the 2005 World Championships in Croatian Zagreb in four, he won a silver medal at two hundred meters and a gold medal at a thousand, thus becoming a six-time world champion. The last time showed a significant result in 2006 at the European Championship in Czech Rachitsa, when he received bronze in the four-kilometer standings. Also this season he participated in the world championship in Szeged, but could not be among the winners in any of the disciplines, as a result of which he soon decided to end his career as a professional athlete, giving way to young German rowers in the national team ^[3] .

• Björn Bach - Olympic statistics at Sports-Reference.com
• Björn Bach - medals at major international competitions
• Lists of kayaking and canoeing champions and prize winners (1936-2007 )