Martina Kocher to step down from sport

Martina Kocher

Bern (RWH) Switzerland’s Martina Kocher has announced her retirement; with three World Championship medals, she is her country's most successful female luge athlete of all time. After 20 years in the sport and 20 years of “tough competition, emotional highs and lows, triumphs and tears” it is “time for a new life”, as the 33-year-old told the Berner Zeitung newspaper.

Martina Kocher went down in the International Luge Federation's (FIL) history books as the first ever female Sprint World Champion. At the 2016 title race on the artificial track in Königssee, the Swiss athlete also won silver in the Olympic discipline, before winning yet another silver medal at the Sprint World Championships in Innsbruck a year later. “That was a really precious experience,” said Martina Kocher looking back over her career, which also included four Winter Olympic Games.