Mark Kirchner (born April 4, 1970 in Neuhaus am Rennweg, Thuringia) is a German former biathlete. He won gold in the 10 km sprint at the Albertville Olympics in 1992 and followed that up by taking silver in the 20 km individual and gold in the relay. Therefore the only race he could not claim a gold medal in was the 20 km individual where the out-of-the-blue win by Eugeni Redkine of Russia prevented him from becoming an absolute champion of these Games.
In 1994 in Lillehammer, he was his country's flag bearer and was part of the gold-medal winning relay team. He made the youngest triple Olympic Champion in biathlon ever as by February 1994 he was just 23 years and 10 months old.
Kirchner came second in the overall World Cup standings twice which happened in the two consecutive seasons of 1990\1991 and 1991\1992 the former behind Sergey Tchepikov of the USSR and the latter behind Mikael Lofgren of Sweden.
In addition Kirchner became World Champion multiple times.
He reritred relatively early in 1998 at the age of 28.
At present Kirchner is employed as an assistant of Frank Ulrich, the German biathlon male team Head coach and his responsibilities include the youth sector.
Famous quotes containing the word mark:
“The mark of our time is its revulsion against imposed patterns.”
—Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980)