Deufl, who lives in Göstling an der Ybbs , came to skiing at an early age through her uncle, who was the head of a ski school on the Hochkar , and at the age of eleven decided to attend the Lilienfeld main ski school . At the age of 14 she became Austrian youth champion in the downhill. The 15-year-old won the European Cup in the 1973/74 season with three victories at the Dachstein , in Saalbach-Hinterglemm and in Barèges in the Pyrenees, and with another victory in the giant slalom at Les Contamines, she achieved sixth place in the overall classification. In addition, she became Junior European Champion in the downhill in Jasná, Czechoslovakia . In the same winter she was accepted into the World Cup team of the Austrian Ski Association (ÖSV) and should have made her World Cup debut in Cortina d'Ampezzo , but this descent had to be canceled due to heavy snowfall.
At the beginning of next winter, the then 16-year-old Deufl came to her first appearance in the World Cup. In the descent from Val-d'Isère on December 4, 1974, she finished 24th. Two weeks later she won her first World Cup points with sixth place in Saalbach-Hinterglemm and after another point gain in Chamonix she finished the Downhill World Cup of the 1974/75 season in 14th place.
She celebrated her greatest successes in the 1975/76 season when she finished second behind her teammate Brigitte Totschnig on December 10, 1975 in the Aprica downhill and third in the Bad Gastein downhill on January 21, 1976 . With another four top 10 places (one of them in combination), she came in the 1975/76 season on the fifth place in the Downhill World Cup. She also won a European Cup run in Saalbach and came third at the European Junior Championships in Gällivare . After she succeeded in qualifying against Wiltrud Drexel within the team, she was also on the squad for the 1976 Winter Olympics in Innsbruck (her nomination was on January 25, 1976). - With good training performances, she had secured a fixed starting place for the Olympic Downhill, but fell ill two days before the race (stomach upset) and could not start ( Monika Kaserer was lined up instead ).
In the winter of 1976/77 she was at the start of the season, the descent on December 8, 1976 in Val-d'Isère , ahead of her teammate Brigitte Habersatter in the lead when the race was canceled due to heavy snowfall. In the further races Deufl did not quite come close to the previous year's results or this performance. Two eighth places in the downhill runs from Pfronten and Garmisch-Partenkirchen were her best results, making her 15th in the Downhill World Cup. Due to a vertebral injury that she had suffered the previous year, she had to end her career in 1978 at the age of only 19.
Private
Memorial plaque from Friedrich Danner
Elfi Deufl was married. On November 4, 2009, her 56-year-old husband Friedrich Danner, who was a forester at the Austrian Federal Forests, was killed in a traffic accident in the Steinbachtal near Göstling when he crashed his car into a pond in the dark and drowned.
Austria
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