Frank Luck's farewell-race

"Good bye Lucki!"
About Frank Luck's farewell-race

In the beginning we were afraid the event would eventually fall through. 90 minutes before the start we had a downpour of rain and hail, we thought the stadium might be flooded in that cloudburst. It wasn't! It stopped raining after almost an hour's time, but the 13.000 fans, who had been in the stadium since 9 a.m. were soaking wet.
After a youth race in the morning, the start number presentation of the 12 relay teams started at 1 p.m.. Each relay team should be made up of 1 ex-biathlete, 1 female, 1 international biathlete and 1 active member of the squad. That idea couldn't be realized completely, because the Norwegian atheletes had cancelled, so some team's line-up had to be improvised. Here's the line-up of the teams:

1. Die Schlumpschützen (The Lousy Marksmen):
Fritz Fischer, Sabrina Buchholz, Jean-Marc Chabloz, Frank Luck
2. Die Fantastischen 4 (The Phantastic 4):
Frank-Peter Roetsch, Martina Glagow, Viktor Maigurov, Ricco Groß

3. Sportfreunde Luck (Luck's Sports Enthousiasts):
Petra Behle, Janet Klein, Torsten Thrän, Christoph Stephan

4. Roadrunner:
Marko Danz, Andrea Henkel, Petr Garabik, Andreas Birnbacher

5. Rotkäppchen & die bösen Wölfe (Little Red Riding Hood & The Wicked Wolves):
Steffen Hoos, Kati Wilhelm, Jens Filbrich, Michael Rösch

6. Ullers Hoffnung (Uller's Hope):
Frank Ullrich, Hanna Möller, Ludwig Gredler, Alexander Wolf

7. Alter Schwede (Old Mate):
René König, Jenny Adler, Henrik Forsberg, Peter Sendel

8. Die Schwarzen mit der blonden Seele (The Black With The Blonde Soul):
Lars Kreuzer, Katrin Apel, Willi Pallhuber, Michael Greis

9. Spaßquattro (Funquattro):
Manfred Geyer, Simone Denkinger, Alexander Popov, Sven Fischer

10. Vier gewinnt (Four Will Win):
Jens Steinigen, Carina Palme, Oleg Ryzhenkov, Fabian Mund

11. Die Ehemaligen (The Ex-Athletes):
Jan Wüstenfeld, Magdalena Forsberg, Mark Kirchner, Robert Wick

12. Prachtkerle - Molodzi (The Great Chaps)
Matthias Jacob, Romy Beer, Vladimir Dratchev, Jörn Wollschläger

The winners were - of course! - the Lousy Marksmen. The other teams waited in front of the finishing line and formed a double line, through which Frank Luck passed the finishing line. Alexander Wolf and Sven "fighted hard" in the final sprint, but no one could tell, who the winner was at last... ;-)

Manfred Geyer and Sven scored by making everybody laugh right from the beginning. Manfred Geyer wore his original racing gear from 1978, when he won the Olympic bronze medal as a member of the biathlon relay team of the GDR. Sven took out his old racing suit of the times of the ASK (his sportsclub in the GDR in the 1980's), he had found fitting sunglasses (not his own, I suppose...) - and: he wore gloves!

And here are some marginal notes:

13.000 Menschen people came to see the event

the skating legs were only 1.3 km , so the visitors could follow most of the race (there were no video walls)

Pavel Rostovtsev came from Russia to say goodbye to Frank, despite of his broken leg. Of course he couldn't take part in the race.

Magdalena and Henrik Forsberg had come with their little son Olle.

Cross-country skier Jens Filbrich cut a very good figure in shooting. He didn't have a miss standing whilst some wellknown biathletes span rounds in the (tiny) penalty loop). So: if the biathlete squad should run out of talented athletes, I'd know a good one...

But unfortunately it wasn't only fun: Romy Beer had a bad accident: she fell hard on the roller track and broke her leg seriously. Gell well soon, Romy!

And here are the photos.

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