Karla Kienzl

Karla Kienzl
nation	Austria
birthday	October 21, 1922
place of birth	Liezen
date of death	2nd September 2018
Career
society	SC Liezen
End of career	1955
Medal table
World Cup medals 1 × 0 × 0 × EM medals 1 × 2 × 0 ×
Luge World Championships gold 1955 Oslo  European Luge Championships gold 1951 Igls silver 1954 Davos silver 1955 Hahnenklee
last change: May 15, 2010

Karla Kienzl (born October 21, 1922 in Liezen ; † September 2, 2018 , also Karoline or Carla Kienzl , née Hauser ) was an Austrian luge athlete .

Life

Karla Hauser was the daughter of a mountain farmer and grew up on a remote farm. Since she went to school on the toboggan every winter, she quickly became familiar with the sports equipment and started some youth competitions in her early youth. At the age of 14, in 1937, the Liezenerin took part in the club championship for adults for the first time and won it. After she had triumphed in further internal races of the SC Liezen in the following years , she won the Styrian state championships in 1941 at her first major start. This victory surprised Hauser very much, according to his own statement, at the same time she got “really interested in bigger tasks” through this success. Only a short time later, in the same year, the 18-year-old competed in the Austrian championship, but fell there in a large middle curve and dropped to ninth place. In retrospect, the tobogganist said that this defeat was just another incentive to get even stronger. In order to achieve this goal, she received the first racing sled in 1942. At that time, most top athletes were already riding such professional sports equipment, so success without it was almost impossible.

In the early 1940s, Hauser's results steadily improved, although the multiple Austrian champion Hilde Lache initially won most of the competitions before her. In 1943, the Liezenerin took fourth position in the Tyrolean Championship, a year later she won the same event. In 1946 she defended this title on the completely icy track in Matrei am Brenner . Then she secured the Austrian championship title for the first time in Igls and held it for five years. Hauser achieved further success in the late 1940s; so she won the Italian championship in 1947 and 1948 and also won various other competitions, such as the Salzburg title race. In 1948 Hauser married Fritz Kienzl , who was two years his junior and who was also a tobogganist, and took his name.

During the Second World War and in the post-war years, international toboggan comparisons such as the European Championships failed, so that Karla Kienzl achieved most of her successes in competitions within the country. At that time, however, the Austrians also dominated internationally, so that the level of these national competitions was almost as high as that of the first post-war European Championship, which took place in Igls in 1951. There the Austrians won all nine possible medals on their home track; Kienzl led the women’s rankings and became the second Austrian European champion after Lotte Embacher . On her return to Liezen, the new title holder was received by hundreds of residents, and the town band played in her honor. In an acceptance speech, Kienzl stated that she would continue to work for her Styrian hometown, even if she had to move to Tyrol , since her husband worked there.

Private reasons prevented the 29-year-old from defending the title at the next European Championships in Garmisch-Partenkirchen , where Maria Isser , who was seven years younger , won. In 1953, Kienzl led at the European Championships in Cortina d'Ampezzo up to the third run, only in the final round she fell and so played no role in the medal award. Maria Isser had defended her title both at this and at the previous European championships. Another year later, the Liezen woman fell back from the top position due to a mishap in the last run and again took silver behind Isser. At the same European championships, her husband Fritz Kienzl won the men's singles competition. Regarding the series of failures, Karla Kienzl said in retrospect: "In my many years of racing experience I had not only learned to win, but also to lose, so I did not lose my courage and [...] went back to the racetrack with renewed vigor."

In fact, in the winter of 1955, Kienzl achieved bigger victories again: first, she won the German Grand Prix and then won the title at the first Luge World Championships in Oslo . At first, the Austrian was not on the track there, especially as there was little training possible due to the bad weather. Nevertheless, in the end, after four rounds, she had about six seconds ahead of second-placed Maria Isser. The Liezenerin saw the world championship victory as "the goal of a very long sporting path that led over heights, but also over obstacles". Therefore, at the age of 32, she ended her almost 20-year toboggan career, in which she won a total of five Austrian, two Italian and one Swiss championships as well as one European and one world championship. To this day she is one of the most successful Austrian tobogganers alongside Maria Isser.

Honors

• 2nd place in the " Sportswoman of the year 1955" election carried out by the Austrian sports journalists in mid-January 1956

literature

• Bert Isatitsch (Ed.): 100 Years of Rodelsport , self-published, Liezen 1983, pp. 288–289.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ https://www.trauerhilfe.at/todesangebote/detail/uid/2004/verstorbener/117507/
2. ↑ Hanappi and Eigel - Sportsman of the Year . In: Arbeiter-Zeitung . Vienna January 18, 1956, p. 8 ( berufer-zeitung.at - the open online archive - digitized).