Tschannen became a member of the Swiss national ski jumping team in 1945, won the title of Swiss champion in this discipline in 1948 and took part in the 1948 Winter Olympics in St. Moritz , where he finished ninth and placed just ahead of his compatriot Hans Zurbriggen as the best Central European ( before him, only Finns and Norwegians and the American Gordon Wren were classified). In the same year Tschannen improved the world best of the German Rudi Gehring on the Bloudkova Velikanka in Planica by two meters when he landed at the 120-meter mark. This ski flying record lasted two years until the Austrian Willi Gantschnigg jumped 124 meters on the newly built Oberstdorf ski jumping hill . A podium place, namely 3rd place, was for him on January 7, 1951 on the Bergiselschanze in Innsbruck (behind Josef Bradl and Kjell Knarvik ).
After his active ski jumping career, the Swiss should take over the training of the US national team, but in the United States he was not given a work permit due to the Korean War .
Instead, Tschannen moved to Canada, where he worked as a musician, including teaching the accordion and hosting the television program La Suisse qui chante (German: The Singing Switzerland ). Even after returning to his home country in 1964, Tschannen continued to work as a musician; Among other things, he founded a music school in Bex and directed the wind orchestra there. He also worked for a short time as a sports secretary in Arosa , where he set up a ski jumping center with the support of Hans Danuser . At the age of almost 80, he retired to Fleurier in 1999 , where he continued to occasionally teach music. Tschannen died on March 23, 2011 in Val-de-Travers .
Switzerland
Slovenia