He was a three-time Olympic athlete and winner of the Olympic silver medal with the German team in 2004, and he won the He is currently the sporting director at Füchse Berlin[2] and a handball expert on the streaming service Dyn Media.

[3] Kretzschmar is considered part of the Lemgo 'golden generation' together with Daniel Stephan, Christian Schwarzer, Florian Kehrmann and Volker Zerbe, who won the European Championship together.

[4] He started playing handball at the age of 6, and at the age of 12 he joined a training program in Berlin, which led to him joining the youth team at SC Dynamo Berlin, where he came to play as a left wing.

At the 2002 European Championship in Sweden he won silver medals with the German team, losing to the hosts in the final.

He ended his active career on 14 July 2007[6] and became the sporting director at SC Magdeburg.

[8] In 2020 he became the sporting director at Füchse Berlin[2] From September 2009 to June 2017 he worked as a handball expert on the German tv-channel Sport1.

[9] He is the son of Peter Kretzschmar, a legendary handball player and coach in the former GDR (East Germany) and Waltraud Kretzschmar, a former handball player for the East German team and winner of Olympic team medals in silver (1976) and bronze (1980), His daughter Lucie-Marie Kretzschmar is a professional handball player too and member of the German national team.