[3] Vogel was born in Leninskoye, a district of Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan, and moved to Germany with her parents when she was six months old.

At the 2012 UCI Track Cycling World Championships in Melbourne, Vogel and Welte won the gold medal in the team sprint.

[6] Vogel and Welte went on to win the first ever Olympic gold medal in the women's team sprint later that year in London, benefiting from competitors being relegated in both the semifinal and final.

[1] On 26 June 2018, in the Cottbus velodrome, Vogel collided at high speed with a Dutch junior cyclist who was practising a standing start.

Vogel's teammate Maximilian Levy was the first to come to her aid,[8] and following the accident, he and fellow cyclist Max Dörnbach, using the hashtag #staystrongkristina, went on to raise €119,752 for her recovery.