Kristina Vogel

Kristina Vogel

Vogel in 2022
Personal information
Born	(1990-11-10) 10 November 1990 (age 34) Leninskoye, Bishkek, Kirghiz SSR
Height	1.60 m (5 ft 3 in)
Team information
Discipline	Track
Role	Rider
Rider type	Sprinter
Medal record Olympic Games 2012 London Team Sprint 2016 Rio de Janeiro Sprint 2016 Rio de Janeiro Team Sprint World Championships 2012 Melbourne Team sprint 2013 Minsk Team sprint 2014 Cali Sprint 2014 Cali Team sprint 2014 Cali Keirin 2015 Yvelines Sprint 2016 London Keirin 2017 Hong Kong Keirin 2017 Hong Kong Sprint 2018 Apeldoorn Sprint 2018 Apeldoorn Team sprint 2013 Minsk Sprint 2012 Melbourne Keirin 2016 London Team sprint 2016 London Sprint 2017 Hong Kong Team sprint European Championships 2013 Apeldoorn Sprint 2014 Baie-Mahault Keirin 2017 Berlin Keirin 2017 Berlin Sprint 2010 Pruszków Sprint 2013 Apeldoorn Keirin 2013 Apeldoorn Team sprint 2014 Baie-Mahault Team sprint 2015 Grenchen Team sprint 2017 Berlin Team sprint 2010 Pruszków Team Sprint 2011 Apeldoorn Team sprint 2014 Baie-Mahault Sprint 2015 Grenchen Sprint

Kristina Vogel (born 10 November 1990) is a former German track cyclist. During her career, she won two gold medals and a bronze at the Olympic Games,^[1] and became an eleven-time UCI World Champion.^[2] She was paralysed following a crash in June 2018.^[3]

Vogel was born in Leninskoye, a district of Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan, and moved to Germany with her parents when she was six months old.^[4] In 2007 and 2008 she competed at the Junior European and World Championships and became a six-time junior world champion and two-time junior European champion.

In April 2009, Vogel was seriously injured after a collision with a minibus when riding on the roads near her home in Erfurt. She was in an artificial coma for two days. She recovered to compete at the 2010 UCI Track Cycling World Championships, where she finished fifth in the individual sprint and sixth in the team sprint alongside Miriam Welte.^[5] She also competed at the 2011 UCI Track Cycling World Championships.

At the 2012 UCI Track Cycling World Championships in Melbourne, Vogel and Welte won the gold medal in the team sprint. They set a world record in qualifying which they broke again in the final.^[6] Vogel and Welte went on to win the first ever Olympic gold medal in the women's team sprint later that year in London, benefiting from competitors being relegated in both the semifinal and final. At the 2016 Summer Olympics, she won another gold, in the women's sprint, and a bronze medal in the women's team sprint again with Miriam Welte.^[1]

On 26 June 2018, in the Cottbus velodrome, Vogel collided at high speed with a Dutch junior cyclist who was practising a standing start.^[7] The heavy impact on the concrete floor caused several fractures, severing her spinal cord at the seventh thoracic vertebrae and consequently caused paraplegia. Vogel's teammate Maximilian Levy was the first to come to her aid,^[8] and following the accident, he and fellow cyclist Max Dörnbach, using the hashtag #staystrongkristina, went on to raise €119,752 for her recovery.^[9] The Dutch cyclist was uninjured,^[10] but Vogel was left paralysed.^[11][12]

In addition to her track cycling career, Vogel was a part-time police officer before her accident.^[4][5][11] In 2019, she entered politics, standing for election as a candidate for the Christian Democratic Union of Germany in Erfurt city council elections.^[13]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Kristina Vogel.

• Official website
• Kristina Vogel at Cycling Archives (archived)