Elisabeth Kirchler

Elisabeth Kirchler
nation	Austria
birthday	17th November 1963 (age 56)
place of birth	Schwaz , Austria
size	168 cm
Weight	65 kg
Career
discipline	Downhill , Super-G , giant slalom , slalom , combination
society	WSV Tux
status	resigned
End of career	1990
Medal table
World championships 0 × 1 × 0 ×
Alpine World Ski Championships silver Bormio 1985 Giant slalom
Placements in the Alpine Ski World Cup
Individual World Cup debut 1980/81  Individual world cup victories 4th  Overall World Cup 4. ( 1982/83 )  Downhill World Cup 3. (1982/83)  Super G World Cup 13. ( 1985/86 , 1986/87 )  Giant Slalom World Cup 6. ( 1984/85 )  Slalom World Cup 30. (1984/85)  Combination World Cup 2. (1982/83)
Podium placements 1. 2. 3.  Departure 3 4th 0  Super G 0 2 0  Giant slalom 0 1 0  combination 1 1 1

Elisabeth "Lisi" Kirchler (born November 17, 1963 in Schwaz , Tyrol ) is a former Austrian ski racer . In the 1980s she was one of the most successful female runners in the Austrian Ski Association . Kirchler achieved podium places in the World Cup in all disciplines, with the exception of slalom, and won four World Cup races. At the 1985 World Championships she won the silver medal in giant slalom, and in the same year she was voted Austria's Sportswoman of the Year .

biography

Kirchler comes from Lanersbach ( Tux municipality ), belonged to the Tux winter sports club and attended the Stams ski trade school . The then Tyrolean national team runner celebrated successes in the youth field with a victory in the giant slalom of the Trofeo Topolino on Monte Bondone in 1977 . At the end of the 1970s she was accepted into the squad of the Austrian Ski Association (ÖSV). In the 1979/80 season she took second place in the downhill and giant slalom classification of the European Cup . In addition, she was sixth in the departure of the European Junior Championship in 1980 in Madonna di Campiglio . Her acceptance into the Austrian national team was followed by her first starts in the World Cup in the winter of 1980/81 . After winning her first World Cup points in the downhill runs from Pfronten , Crans-Montana and Haus im Ennstal with a tenth place finish, the 17-year-old celebrated her first World Cup victory on March 6, 1981 when she descended from Aspen with a lead of five hundredths of a second on the German Regine Mösenlechner won. At that time, Kirchler was the youngest ever winner of a World Cup downhill run. She finished the Downhill World Cup in her first season in ninth place.

The Zillertal woman achieved four top 10 placements in her second World Cup winter in 1981/82 . In addition to the downhill, she was now able to score for the first time in the giant slalom and in the combination. Her best result of the season was fifth place in the combination of Pfronten. Kirchler also achieved top 10 results at her first major event, the 1982 World Cup in Schladming / Haus im Ennstal: She was sixth in the downhill and eighth in the giant slalom. The winter of 1982/83 turned out to be the most successful World Cup season for the then 19-year-old . On December 8, 1982, she celebrated her second World Cup victory in the combination of the criterion of the first snow in Val-d'Isère, followed by the third on January 22, 1983 in the downhill from Megève . With a further three podium places in two downhill runs and a combination, she reached fourth place in the overall World Cup as the best Austrian, third place in the Downhill World Cup, second place in the combination World Cup and ninth place in the Giant Slalom World Cup. In the same winter she also won her only Austrian championship title when she won the giant slalom of the national championships in Schwarzenberg .

Also in the 1983/84 season Kirchler was the most successful Austrian World Cup starter, although she did not quite match the results of the previous year. She was on the podium in one downhill, one combination and for the first time also in a Super-G, but remained without a win. It fell back to tenth place in the overall World Cup, eleventh place in the Downhill World Cup and sixth place in the Combination World Cup. Only in the Giant Slalom World Cup, which at that time also included the Super G races, was she able to improve to seventh place. At the highlight of the season, the 1984 Winter Olympics in Sarajevo , Kirchler, like almost the entire Austrian team, was unsuccessful. Her only result was ninth place in the downhill, in the giant slalom she was eliminated in the first round.

On December 21, 1984 Kirchler celebrated her fourth and final World Cup victory on the downhill from Santa Caterina . In addition, she managed only one more podium finish as second in the giant slalom in Saint-Gervais-les-Bains , but she finished fourth six times. This enabled her to improve slightly both in the overall World Cup and in the discipline ratings (7th overall, 5th downhill and 6th each in giant slalom and combined), making her again the most successful Austrian. This time Kirchler also achieved a top result at the season's highlight: She won the silver medal in the giant slalom behind the American Diann Roffe at the 1985 World Championship in Bormio - the women's races were held in Santa Caterina . However, the title fights for Kirchler did not start as desired: First she was eliminated in the combination in the first slalom run (after eighth place in the combination downhill), then she came in the special downhill, in which she was one of the favorites after her World Cup victory six weeks earlier had, only in twelfth place. At the end of winter, Kirchler had a bad fall on the downhill run from Sunshine Village ( Banff ), with injuries to her knee.

After this injury, Kirchler, who was voted Austria's Sportswoman of the Year in 1985 , no longer showed the consistency of previous years. Although she repeatedly achieved top placings, podiums remained the exception. She only managed to do this twice, as second in the Super-G from Megève on January 25, 1986 and again as second in the downhill from Vail on March 13, 1987. In the 1986/87 season she reached one for the last time as eighth of the Downhill World Cup Top 10 place in a discipline ranking. The 1987 World Championships in Crans-Montana were disappointing , where they failed in both the giant slalom and the Super-G. It was not used in the World Cup downhill.

Towards the end of her career, Kirchler concentrated primarily on the downhill and super-G disciplines, in which she continued to place in the top ten. At the beginning of the 1987/88 season she was fourth on the descent from Leukerbad, missing a new podium place by just three hundredths of a second. At the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary - the venue for the ski competitions was Nakiska - she finished eighth in the downhill as the second best Austrian, while she was 15th in the Super-G when Sigrid Wolf won . Thanks to three top 10 placements in the first months of the 1988/89 season , she was also able to qualify for the 1989 World Cup in Vail in the downhill . There she did not get past 22nd place. In the World Cup, Kirchler then remained without points, on December 21, 1990, at the age of 27, she announced her retirement.

After the end of her career, Kirchler worked for some time as a newspaper columnist and also acted as a co-commentator for ski races on ORF Sport .

Today she lives with her husband, the restaurateur Armin Riml, in Sölden . The couple has three children.

successes

Olympic games

• Sarajevo 1984 : 9th departure
• Calgary 1988 : 8th Downhill, 15th Super-G

World championships

• Schladming / Haus 1982 : 6th descent, 8th giant slalom
• Bormio / Santa Caterina 1985 : 2nd giant slalom, 12th descent
• Vail 1989 : 22nd departure

World cup

• 2nd place in the combined World Cup 1982/83
• 3rd place in the Downhill World Cup 1982/83
• 4th place in the overall World Cup 1982/83
• 5th place in the Downhill World Cup 1984/85
• 13 podium places in World Cup races, including 4 victories:

date	place	country	discipline
March 6, 1981	Aspen	United States	Departure
December 8, 1982	Val d'Isère	France	combination
January 22, 1983	Megève	France	Departure
December 21, 1984	Santa Caterina	Italy	Departure

More Achievements

• Austrian champion in giant slalom 1983
• 2nd place in the downhill and giant slalom evaluation of the European Cup 1979/80
• 6th place in the Downhill European Junior Championship in 1980

Awards

• 1985: Austria's Sportswoman of the Year (elected on December 20, 1985)

literature

• Austrian Ski Association (Ed.): Austrian Ski Stars from A – Z. Ablinger & Garber, Hall in Tirol 2008, ISBN 978-3-9502285-7-1 , pp. 191-192.

Web links

• Elisabeth Kirchler in the database of the International Ski Federation (English)
• Elisabeth Kirchler in the database of Ski-DB (English)
• Elisabeth Kirchler in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )

Individual evidence

1. ^ Women's World Cup, Youngest on the Podium. www.skidb.com, accessed November 14, 2012.
2. ^ Hank McKee: How Ski Racers Have Changed. In: Skiing Heritage. Vol. 21, No. 2, June 2009, ISSN  1082-2895 , p. 10.
3. ↑ Consolation for the downhill team . In: Arbeiter-Zeitung . Vienna March 11, 1985, p. 10 ( berufer-zeitung.at - the open online archive - digitized).
4. ↑ Finale for cooked foxes . In: Arbeiter-Zeitung . Vienna March 14, 1985, p. 11 ( berufer-zeitung.at - the open online archive - digitized).
5. ^ Glossary "On the way with the ski circus" with the title "Lisi Kirchler is at the end" in "Kronenzeitung" of December 22, 1990, page 4 from the back; POS .: below
6. ^ "Lisi said goodbye in cowboy boots" in "Kronenzeitung" of December 23, 1990, page 6 from the back
7. ^ Armin Assinger , Robert Seeger : Gold. Austria's biggest ski stars. Ueberreuter, Vienna 2004, ISBN 3-8000-7041-3 , p. 101.
8. ↑ "Don't have to go anywhere where the smoke rises" . Porträ, Benno Zelsacher on derStandard.at, January 20, 2013.
9. ^ Armin Assinger , Claus Schönhofer: 40 years of the Ski World Cup. Ueberreuter, Vienna 2007, ISBN 978-3-8000-7292-7 , p. 57.
10. ↑ Lisi and Peter: "Huge Joy" . In: Arbeiter-Zeitung . Vienna December 21, 1985, p. 21 ( arbeiter-zeitung.at - the open online archive - digitized).