Steve Locher
Steve Locher 
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| nation |
 Switzerland
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| birthday | 19th September 1967 (age 52) | ||||||||||||||||
| place of birth | Salins , Switzerland | ||||||||||||||||
| size | 172 cm | ||||||||||||||||
| Weight | 78 kg | ||||||||||||||||
| Career | |||||||||||||||||
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| discipline |
Downhill , super-G , slalom , giant slalom , combination |
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| status | resigned | ||||||||||||||||
| End of career | April 3, 2002 | ||||||||||||||||
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| Placements in the Alpine Ski World Cup | |||||||||||||||||
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Steve Locher (born September 19, 1967 in Salins ) is a former Swiss ski racer . Locher was a member of the Swiss national ski team for 17 years. He is an Olympic medalist and was one of the best giant slalom runners in the world in the 1990s .
biography
Locher was born one of four children to an electrician. He stood on skis for the first time at the age of four. From 1975 he competed in his first race for his hometown club SC Salins. In 1985, Locher made the leap into the Swiss national ski team and since the 1989/90 season he has competed as a professional in the World Cup races. In his very first season he won the first World Cup of his career in the Super-G in Val-d'Isère .
With talent in both the technical and the speed disciplines, Locher quickly developed into one of the best all-round runners in the World Cup. He then celebrated his greatest successes in combination ratings . In 1991 he finished fifth at the World Ski Championships in Saalbach-Hinterglemm , the following year he won the bronze medal in combination at the Winter Olympics in Albertville , the only alpine medal of the Swiss Olympic team. At the 1993 World Cup he was fifth again.
After his furious start to his career, Locher's achievements stagnated in the mid-1990s. The training effort seemed too high to reach the top in all disciplines. Locher decided to forego combination scores and in future to concentrate only on his strongest disciplines, giant slalom and super-G. From 1996 he also only trained with the top runners Michael von Grünigen and Urs Kälin . His success proved him right: in the 1993/94 season he came fifth in the overall ranking of the Giant Slalom World Cup, and in the 1996/97 season he even achieved the best position of his career with fourth place.
A series of top placings followed at World Championships and Olympic Games: in 1996 fifth in the giant slalom in the Sierra Nevada , fourth in 1997 in Sestriere , sixth in 1998 in Nagano and finally the bronze medal in 1999 in Vail . He also became Swiss champion in giant slalom in 1998 . After the 2001/02 season Locher resigned from active ski racing. In total, he competed in 230 World Cup races in his career, placing in the top ten 53 times.
From 2005, Locher worked as a trainer for the Valais Ski Association and at the Brig performance center. In spring 2010, he switched to Swiss-Ski as a trainer for the newly created World Cup Group 4 . On December 1, 2010, he suffered a pelvic and a cervical vertebra fracture in a traffic accident near Åre, Sweden . Together with three other Swiss ski trainers, he was on the way to a European Cup race.
World Cup victories
| date | place | country | discipline |
|---|---|---|---|
| January 29, 1990 | Val d'Isère | France | Super G |
| December 19, 1993 | Alta Badia | Italy | Giant slalom |
| October 27, 1996 | Soelden | Austria | Giant slalom |
Web links
- Steve Locher in the database of Ski-DB (English)
- Steve Locher in the database of the International Ski Federation (English)
- Steve Locher in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )
Individual evidence
- ↑ Update: Traffic accident in Sweden ( Memento from March 10, 2011 in the Internet Archive ). Swiss-Ski , December 1, 2010, accessed on December 2, 2010
- ↑ Steve Locher and Curdin Fasser most seriously injured - both are operated on . www.skionline.ch, December 1, 2010, accessed on December 2, 2010
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Hole punch, Steve |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Swiss ski racer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | September 19, 1967 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Salins VS , Switzerland |