Tatjana Hüfner biography
Tatjana Hüfner, (born April 30, 1983, Neuruppin, East Germany), German luger who received a gold medal within the girls’s singles occasion on the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver.
Hüfner, certainly one of three siblings, spent her early childhood in Fehrbellin, East Germany, and in 1988 her household moved to Blankenburg. Four years later she joined an area tobogganing membership and started lugeing after her youthful brother took up the pastime. Hüfner was quickly drawn to the aggressive facet of the game. She participated in junior luge competitions and received the regional championship in Saxony-Anhalt 4 years in a row (1994–97). In 1997 she enrolled on the Eliteschule des Wintersports (Elite School of Winter Sports) in Oberwiesenthal, a college for winter athletes partially organized by the Deutscher Olympischer Sportbund (German Olympic Sports Association). During that point Hüfner continued to take part in quite a few luge competitions, annually putting excessive within the general Junior World Cup rankings: sixth in 1999–2000, third in 2000–01, second in 2001–02, and third in 2002–03. After graduating from the Eliteschule in 2002, she enlisted on the Sportschule der Bundeswehr (a college for athletes run by the German federal armed forces), the place she attained the rank of grasp sergeant.
In 2002 Hüfner competed in her first German nationwide championship and completed in eighth place. In 2004 she positioned second within the European championship in Oberhof, Germany, and eighth on the planet championship in Nagano, Japan. She steadily accrued additional noteworthy performances, together with a fourth-place end within the World Cup at Oberhof (2005) and a victory within the World Cup at Altenberg, Germany (2005). In 2006 she certified to compete in that yr’s Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy. She and teammates Sylke Otto and Silke Kraushaar-Pielach swept the ladies’s singles bracket, with Otto taking the gold medal, Kraushaar-Pielach the silver, and Hüfner the bronze.
Hüfner racked up a collection of serious wins over the next seasons, together with the International Luge Federation (Fédération Internationale de Luge de Course [FIL]) World Championships in 2007 and 2008. Her relay group additionally positioned first within the FIL competitors in 2008. Though she edged out her rivals to take first place throughout many of the 2008–09 season, she dropped to sixth place on the FIL World Championships (2009). A spate of additional wins throughout the 2009–10 season culminated in a gold medal on the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver. Though in third place after her first run, Hüfner rallied together with her second run and coasted by way of the remaining two runs to take the gold. In 2011 she received her third FIL World Championship within the girls’s singles occasion.
Hüfner captured a fourth girls’s singles FIL World Championship in 2012, when she additionally received one other group title. At the 2014 Olympic Winter Games in Sochi, Russia, she took the silver medal within the girls’s singles occasion. Three years later Hüfner claimed her fifth girls’s singles FIL World Championship; she additionally was a member of the successful relay group. She competed on the 2018 Olympics in P’yongch’ang, South Korea, however didn't win a medal. Hüfner retired after the 2018–19 season.