Robert Kunkel

Robert Kunkel (born 28 April 1999) is a German pair skater. With his skating partner, Annika Hocke, he is the 2023 European bronze medalist, the 2023 Skate America champion, 2022 Grand Prix de France bronze medalist, and has won five medals on the ISU Challenger Series, including gold at the 2022 CS Finlandia Trophy. Domestically they are the 2023 German national champions.

With his former skating partner, Talisa Thomalla, he is a two-time two German junior national champion (2017, 2019).

Kunkel began figure skating in 2004. He originally competed as a singles skater before teaming up with Talisa Thomalla in 2014 to compete in the pairs discipline. The duo trained in Berlin, where they were coached by Romy Oesterreich and Rico Rex. Together, they won two German junior national titles and competed at three World Junior Championships, finishing as high as seventh. Their partnership would dissolve following the 2018–19 figure skating season.

It summer 2019, it was announced that Kunkel had teamed up with fellow German pair skater, Annika Hocke and that they would be coached in Berlin by Rico Rex, Dmitri Savin, Alexander Koenig, and Romy Oesterreich. Despite Hocke having previously competed at the Olympics, the pair were still age-eligible for international junior competitions, and so began on the Junior Grand Prix, where they won two bronze medals at JGP Croatia and JGP Poland, and were the only non-Russian team to qualify to the Junior Grand Prix Final, where they placed sixth. On the senior level, Hocke/Kunkel debuted at the 2019 CS Warsaw Cup, placing sixth, and then won silver medals at the German nationals championships and the 2020 Bavarian Open. They were seventh at the 2020 European Championships.

Hocke/Kunkel concluded the season at the 2020 World Junior Championships, where they placed fourth and won a small bronze medal for a third-place finish in the free skate; only Kunkel invalidating their pair spin element by putting both feet down kept them from winning the overall bronze medal. Despite this, Hocke remarked, "our first and last Junior World Championships — it was amazing!" They had been scheduled to make their senior World Championship debut in Montreal, but the Championships were cancelled as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.

With the pandemic continuing to affect events, Hocke/Kunkel made their season debut at the 2020 CS Nebelhorn Trophy, which featured only pairs training in Europe. They were second in the short program, behind countrymen Hase/Seegert, who subsequently had to withdraw because of injury. They were overtaken in the free skate by Italian team Ghilardi/Ambrosini and won the silver medal.

Hocke/Kunkel were scheduled to make their Grand Prix debut at the 2020 Internationaux de France, but the event was cancelled due to the pandemic.

Initially, both Hocke/Kunkel and Hase/Seegert were assigned to represent Germany at the 2021 World Championships in Stockholm, but Hase/Seegert were forced to withdraw after Hase sustained a leg injury, leaving Hocke/Kunkel as the lone representative. They placed thirteenth in their Worlds debut.