In 1992, the talented swimmer born in Coburg, Upper Franconia, made his first international appearance. At a meeting in Stockholm, he made his breakthrough on his paradise distance, the 1,500m freestyle, with a time of under 16:00 minutes on the 50m track. Many national and international titles follow on the crawl distances from 200 - 1500m. In total, Jan swam for 10 years in the German national team, even though he was drawn to the USA in the meantime to study economics in Miami and Harvard.

After finishing his active swimming career, he gained two years of professional experience as an investment banker for Goldman Sachs in New York and Frankfurt. Then he was drawn back to his true passion, the arena of sport.

Gripped by the flair and the dynamics of triathlon and driven by the will to enter the history books of triathlon with a new world best time on the swim distance of the IRONMAN triathlon, Jan starts his second sports career as a professional triathlete.

With regular "first out of water" titles at the best long-distance competitions in the world, he quickly makes a name for himself in the triathlon scene. For four years he trains specifically towards his big goal. In the decisive year, Jan works harder than ever on his swimming form. Not a day goes by that he doesn't train in the pool or in the open water and the effort finally pays off: he covers the swim part of the IRONMAN Germany in Frankfurt in 42:17 minutes and clearly breaks the world best time of 44:36 minutes that existed until then.

In addition to the world best time in swimming at an IRONMAN, he also won four "first out of water" titles at the IRONMAN World Championships in Hawaii.

With the end of his triathlon career, Jan founded the sailfish brand and dedicated himself to developing the fastest and most flexible wetsuits.
Since then he has been "made to make you faster".

In 2018, almost 13 years after the end of his active professional career, Jan once again puts all his eggs in one basket and actually manages to break the Hawaii swim distance record, which had been held by Lars Jorgensen until then, since 1995. Since then, Jan holds the record for the fastest time ever swum at IRONMAN Hawaii with 46:29 minutes.