Christoph Kopp passed away in Berlin

A former sprinter and decathlete he worked as a coach and later became head of athletics at the renowned Sports Club Charlottenburg. When big-city marathons started up in Europe the early 1980s Christoph Kopp became the voluntary Sporting Director and general manager of the Berlin-Marathon. He helped to develop the event into a high-class international race.

He was the President of the Berlin Athletics Federation from 1999-2004 and deeply involved in Berlin’s bids for the World Championships, which the city staged in 2009.

As an elite field coordinator he was the one who developed the Berlin Marathon into one of the world’s leading races. He did the same with the Frankfurt Marathon and the Berlin 25K race. Christoph Kopp organised the Berlin 25K race for several years. In 2010 he put together men’s and women’s fields which both produced world records in the one event. Recently he also worked for marathons in Hannover, Linz and Munich as well as road races in Paderborn, Berlin, Würzburg and Dresden.

In 2020 Christoph Kopp and his International SportService (ISS) Team organised the first elite races to be held in Germany during the Corona Pandemic and one of the first worldwide. He was then involved in most other German races during the lockdown. Christoph Kopp always had the courage to try something that did not seem possible.

Christoph Kopp managed many of Germany’s top marathon and road runners through his team International SportService which will now be continued by his son Philipp Kopp and his long-term employee Sandra Wolter.