Eberhard Kneisl

Eberhard Kneisl
nation	Austria
birthday	May 12, 1916
place of birth	Soelden
size	169 cm
Weight	70 kg
date of death	December 26, 2008
Career
discipline	Slalom , giant slalom , downhill , combination
society	SC Innerötztal
End of career	1951
Medal table
World championships 0 × 1 × 1 ×
Alpine World Ski Championships silver Innsbruck 1936 slalom bronze Innsbruck 1936 combination

Eberhard Kneisl (born May 12, 1916 in Sölden ; † December 26, 2008 ) was an Austrian ski racer . He won several international races in the second half of the 1930s and won two medals at the 1936 World Ski Championships .

Career

Kneisl started skiing as a child; he made his first attempts on barrel staves . He also performed well in the Nordic competitions , but increasingly focused on alpine skiing. As a 12-year-old, he won the combined team classification at the 7th Austrian Ski Day in 1929 with his youth group, and two years later he was able to repeat this success. In 1934 he became the Tyrolean young man's champion in cross-country skiing.

In 1935, Kneisl was accepted into the national team of the Austrian Ski Association , and in the following year the then 19-year-old celebrated his greatest successes. Because he was already working as a ski instructor, the Tyrolean was not allowed to take part in the 1936 Winter Olympics due to the strict amateur rules . At the World Championships in Innsbruck two weeks later , Kneisl won the silver medal in slalom just behind his compatriot Rudolph Matt and with fifth place in the downhill he also took the bronze medal in the combination. In the further course of the season, the "Tiger from Ötztal", as he was called because of his crouched and supple posture while skiing, won the King's Cup in Sestriere , the giant slalom on the Marmolada and the combination of the Austrian championships in Bad Gastein .

In the winter of 1937 he took third place in the downhill runs of the Hahnenkamm race in Kitzbühel and the Parsenn derby in Davos, as well as in the Seefeld slalom . A year later, he achieved second and third place in downhill and combined from Garmisch-Partenkirchen and won the giant slalom of the traditional Glockner race . In 1939, due to the Anschluss , he celebrated his last success for the time being in the descent on the Stilfserjoch . During the past few years he has also worked as a coach and looked after the Italian, Hungarian and Swedish teams.

The Second World War interrupted Kneisl's athletic career. As a member of the mountain troops he should have fought in Russia, but because of two stomach ulcers, part of his stomach had to be removed and he was considered unfit. Therefore he taught for three years at the winter combat schools in Pettnau and Obergurgl.

After the end of the war, Kneisl took part in ski races again, but could no longer fully match his earlier form. In the first post-war winter, the Austrian runners were still excluded from international competitions, but next year he achieved numerous podium places, including in two slaloms and the combination of Kitzbühel, in the descents from Seefeld and on the Marmolada and at the West Cup in Lech . He won the "Large downhill run around the Ötztaler Edelweiss" organized by the Sölden- Hochsölden sports club .

In the winter of 1948, the now 31-year-old achieved two third places in the slaloms of Lech and Auron and took part in the 1948 Winter Olympics in St. Moritz . But there he did not come close to the medal ranks and took eleventh place in the combination and 15th place in the downhill. In the next few years he achieved only a few good results and finally he ended his career in 1951. He then worked as a ski and mountain guide in the entire Alpine region for several decades.

In 2008, Kneisl still worked in the documentary Ski Heil - The Two Boards That Mean the World, alongside his former racing colleagues Gustav Lantschner , Karl Koller and Richard Rossmann . He was buried in Sölden .

Sporting successes

winter Olympics

• St. Moritz 1948 : 11th combination, 15th descent

World championships

• Innsbruck 1936 : 2nd slalom, 3rd combination, 5th descent
• St. Moritz 1948 : 11th combination, 15th descent

Austrian championships

• Austrian champion in combination in 1936

literature

• Austrian Ski (ed.): Austrian ski stars of A-Z . Ablinger & Garber, Hall in Tirol 2008, ISBN 978-3-9502285-7-1 , pp. 199f

Web links

• Eberhard Kneisl in the database of the International Ski Association (English)
• Eberhard Kneisl in the database of Ski-DB (English)
• Eberhard Kneisl in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )
• Eberhard Kneisl in the Internet Movie Database (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Mr. Kneisl Eberhard. In: skiingpenguin.at. December 27, 2008, accessed August 27, 2020 .