A great Nordic Combined athlete: Eric Frenzel

Three Olympic gold medals, seven world championships, five overall World Cup victories, 43 individual victories… when we talk about the history of Nordic Combined, the name Eric Frenzel is at its heart. The man from Annaberg-Buchholz in Saxony has left an indelible mark on the sport in the 21st century. So successful was Frenzel that it is almost impossible to find a specific moment that illustrates his career.

10 years lie between his first and last individual World Cup victories, starting on 20 January 2008 in Klingenthal and ending on 13 March 2018 in Trondheim: what a career! This period includes Olympic victories in 2014 (individual) and 2018 (individual and team), as well as World Championship titles in 2011, 2013, 2015, 2017 and 2019. In total, Frenzel has won 25 medals at the most important events in Nordic Combined.

Outstanding talent and hard, daily training work explain Frenzel's successes, but only to a certain extent. Frenzel is the spearhead of a dominant German team that wins everything there is to win - in Pyeongchang at the 2018 Winter Olympics, for example, they scooped all three gold medals and the entire set of medals in one of the three competitions.

In Frenzel, everything that his country has to offer in Nordic combined comes together: decades of history, meticulous work and the drive to succeed. It is personalities like Eric Frenzel who have provided so many goosebump moments in the hundred-year history of the FIS. For that, so many ski fans are grateful.