Johannes Motschmann
Johannes Motschmann
Johannes Motschmann was the surprise among the German elite athletes at the GENERALI BERLIN HALF MARATHON two years ago. With an improvement to 61:45 minutes, he was the best national runner in tenth place. This puts him in eleventh place on the list of the fastest Germans of all time over the 21.0975 km.
Last year, Johannes Motschmann first managed to improve his time to 2:11:30 (33rd place) at the very competitive Tokyo Marathon. This meant he beat the standard for the World Championships and then competed in the global championships for the first time in August. Johannes Motschmann put in a decent performance in a hot race in Budapest, finishing 26th, but failed to qualify for the Olympic Marathon in Paris in the summer. In this respect, the European Championship half marathon in Rome could now be a goal.
Johannes Motschmann came to Berlin in 2019 and now competes for Marathon Team Berlin. Motschmann comes from Magdeburg and went to the USA for five years after graduating from high school. He received a sports scholarship to Iona College north of New York, where he studied psychology. On his return, he wanted to train under the guidance of Dieter Hogen, the head coach of the Berlin team at the time, and so came to the city. He initially focussed on the 3,000 m steeplechase (best time: 8:33.12). As he then got a place to study medicine at the University of Bochum, he moved again.
When the planned cross-country races were cancelled in autumn 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic, Johannes Motschmann ran his marathon debut at the Austrian Open Championships in Vienna in December instead. He achieved a decent time of 2:14:38 and stayed with the long-distance road races. He improved his time to 2:12:18 at the Rotterdam Marathon in the 2021 autumn season, which was enough to qualify him for the European Championships in Munich in 2022. Johannes Motschmann finished in 16th place as the third-best German runner. He won the silver medal with the German team in the Marathon Europe Cup classification.