10. July 2025
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Flyctory.com Featured Athletes

With my posting on 10th July 2025, I introduced my first class of Featured Athletes. These sportspersons are special to me. I either admire their sports career, they are good friends, I simply enjoy watching them doing sports. Or it is a combination of both. In general I try to have an increased focus of these athletes on Flyctory.com. You can also find posts related to the athletes by the respective tags.

 

Flyctory.com – List of Featured Athletes

Here is my current list of Featured Athletes. They are listen in alphabetical order.

 

Allegra Hildebrand

Allegra Hildebrand is the “local lady” in this list. Starting for TSV Bayer Leverkusen (my residence), she is an athletics sprinter. She ran her personal best at the Under 23 Nationals 2025 (11.64 sec / 100m) and won national Under 23 and senior medals in relays. She is one of the first athletics competitive sportspersons I just happened to run into. I absolutely enjoy seeing how she is building her career, on and off the track.

 

Elina Kujala

Five time Floorball WFC silver medalist, a total of over 460 matches in the Finnish top division, 132 international matches – Elina Kujala is one of the most legendary – and iconic players the sports of floorball had in its history. And: she is still playing. In Finland, she never played for another team than SB-Pro Nurmijärvi and thus somehow made me crush into that team from the North of Helsinki. The 2024-25 season was twenty years after her debut for the club – and she is still in the squad for 2025-26.

 

Karoliina Kujala

If you name Ellu, you have to name her twin sister Kallu as well. In contrast to Elina, Karoliina Kujala retired after the 2021-22 season. 407 matches overall, over 650 points – an outstanding career. Like her twin sister, she is looking back for a long era in the Finnish National Team and three Finnish championships.

 

Lara Heini

Typically, the world of sports is focusing that much on strikers and forwards. The ones who score goals. Lara Heini is one of the most iconic people in the floorball rink. And she is a goalie. After she became a six time champion in the Swiss top division NLA, she grew to the best female floorball goalie in the world. The Swedish championship is still not her medal roll as well as a WFC title – but the love and respect of the whole world of floorball belongs to her. This became obvious when she beat Granit Xhaka in the public vote part of the Swiss Sports Awards in January 2026 for the MVP of Switzerland.

 

Leander Paes

Atlanta, Olympic Games 1996. A guy from Calcutta (or Kolkata nowadays) won my heart. And the Bronze Medal in singles. In the individual sports of tennis, Leander is one of the biggest team players of all times to me. His Davis Cup record is outstanding, 18 Grand Slam titles in Men’s and Mixed Doubles are a clear statement. I will always remember that day in Wimbledon in the Summer of ’99, when he won both titles in London. I just have to be emotional when I think back of all the memories I share with him. Leander became the first Indian player to be inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame. Another summer, the summer of ’24, 25 years later, I will simply never forget.

 

Rohan Bopanna

Another Indian tennis player on my list. While Rohan Bopanna was always a bit hidden behind the big names Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi initially, the 2020’s were the era of the 1980-born from Bangalore. In 2003, I saw Rohan the first time, playing an outstanding singles match in Davis Cup at Zwolle, Netherlands, against clear favorite Martin Verkerk. A match I will never forget. He became a tennis legend in 2024. He won the Australian Open in Men’s Doubles and became the oldest ever male Grand Slam winner as well as the oldest ever ATP World Ranking leader in the history of tennis. By adopting his training and his tour appearance to his age, Rohan became a true idol of sports.

 

Svenja Sommer

Svenja Sommer is another athletics sports person my list. She is a middle distance runner, but also represented Germany in Hyrox competitions. Being a former University of South Carolina athlete, she illustrates how you combine competitive sports with social media appearance and by that build a strong community. 65k people follow her on Instagram, despite the Eintracht Frankfurt runner is “just” German top class. It’s a huge pleasure to work with her and see her compete in the athletics oval.

 

Flyctory.com Featured Artists

Here are posts related to any of my Featured Artists: