Elvira Osirnig

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Elvira Osirnig Alpine skiing
Elvira Osirnig at the 1939 World Cup in Zakopane
nation SwitzerlandSwitzerland Switzerland
birthday March 14, 1908
place of birth Graubünden , Switzerland
Weight 43 kg
job Ski racer, trainer
date of death February 7, 2000
Place of death Baar ZG , Switzerland
Career
discipline Slalom , downhill , combination
society Ski club Alpina St. Moritz
Trainer Hellmut Lantschner et al
National squad since 1933
End of career 1945
Medal table
World championships 0 × gold 2 × silver 0 × bronze
FIS Alpine World Ski Championships
silver Innsbruck 1936 Departure
silver Innsbruck 1936 combination
 

Elvira Osirnig (born March 14, 1908 in the canton of Graubünden ; † February 7, 2000 in Baar ZG ) was a Swiss ski racer . She was a member of the Swiss national team between 1933 and 1945 and won two silver medals at the 1936 World Championships in Innsbruck . During her twelve-year career, she achieved around 200 race wins and podiums.

biography

Childhood and youth

Elvira Osirnig was born in Silvaplana in the Upper Engadin in 1908 . She grew up together with two sisters in a middle-class house in the village. Her father was an engineer and ran an electricity company that supplied the valley up to Maloja . After the early death of his mother, he employed private tutors who imparted various knowledge to his daughters in addition to the education in the village school. The girls learned English and French and received piano lessons. One of the girls was aiming for a career as a musician. In addition, encouraged by their sporty father, they were active in swimming, tennis, ice skating and horse riding. Skiing was strictly forbidden to girls from an early age after a head of house broke her leg during the first lesson. Elvira was also a girl scout .

After she had only been taught in Romansh dialect at the village school in Silvaplana , Osirnig came to the secondary school in Basel for two years to prepare for the Matura . It was only there that she learned Swiss German and, after graduating, trained as an interpreter . She has degrees in German, French, Italian , Spanish and English.

Sports career

The death of her father brought her life to a turning point. Instead of devoting herself to a professional career as an interpreter, she began skiing at the age of 20 - possibly because she had always been forbidden until then, as she announced in a conversation 60 years later. She began to practice the sport excessively and use every little bit of snow to flag slaloms . Hellmut Lantschner and the student world champion Dr. Robert Vetter became aware of her talent and began to promote her. With the Austrian and the German, she perfected the parallel turn and established herself among the world's best within a few years.

At the 1939 World Cup in Zakopane

Osirnig was first Graubünden champion in 1931 and was accepted into the Swiss national team two years later. From then on she competed in numerous races, often several times a week, and competed with compatriots like Anny Rüegg or Rösli Streiff , the Dutch Baroness von Schimmelpenninck or the German all-time great Christl Cranz . In July 1934 she won both the slalom and the combination of downhill and slalom on the Jungfraujoch . At the Arlberg-Kandahar races in Mürren in March 1935, despite a fall in the second run, she was still third in the slalom (she lost 25.8 seconds to her teammate Rüegg) and in the combination. She reached the shape of her life in the winter of 1936. At the World Championships in Innsbruck , she won the silver medal in downhill and combined, behind the Briton Evelyn Pinching . In the slalom, according to a report, she drove "too fearfully" and ultimately finished fourth, 3.7 seconds behind the bronze. In addition, as in the following year, she secured victory in her home race in St. Moritz , for which she received the award “White Ribbon from St. Moritz with Sun in Gold”. For the downhill stretch from Fuorcla Grischa to Salet, which consists of just three mandatory gates, she needed a time of 13: 22.0 minutes in both years. On the Marmolada , she won one of the first giant slaloms ever.

Only a start at the 1936 Winter Olympics in Garmisch-Partenkirchen was denied her. Despite being nominated by the Swiss Ski Association, the International Olympic Committee refused to take part in the games because she had acquired the Graubünden ski instructor's license in 1932 and thus violated her amateur status. However, Osirnig, who was the first woman in Switzerland to obtain this patent, had not practiced the profession until then. The editor of the mountain hare , Walter Amstutz , was not very pleased about the exclusion and the controversial professional rule:

“In the Swiss team, Miss Elvira Osirnig dropped out of the women's team for exaggerated reasons of conscience. She certainly doesn't look like a professional like various Olympic winners (…) We would have welcomed it if the Swiss Ski Association had brought up the guts, the games at all not to load. Without wanting to acknowledge the achievements of the winners, it has to be said that the unfair professional regulations, at least as far as downhill and slalom are concerned, greatly reduced the sporting importance of the competitions. "

- Walter Amstutz (1936)

Elvira Osirnig was also successful at national championships. She won a total of four Swiss championship titles , including 1937 downhill, slalom and a combination of both. She had already achieved the same feat a year earlier at the Austrian championships in Bad Gastein . At the World Championships in Chamonix in 1937 , she was unable to fully match her previous top results and lost a lot of time in both special disciplines to the superior winner Christl Cranz. In the combination she was fourth but only just behind the medal ranks. At the SDS races , after four third places in 1938, she entered the winners' lists with a slalom victory.

Around 1942 she was a member of the women's welfare service (FHD) and, like Rudolf Rominger, worked as a ski trainer in St. Moritz. Until 1945 she was a member of the Swiss national team.

Next life

After finishing her skiing career, Osirnig married, but the marriage did not last. She retired to Ticino and lived for many years in a house in Lugano - Castagnola . On the advice of a doctor she went to work and was inspired by a friend at the Hotel Carlton in St. Moritz convey where it the following year as a Bridge - Hostess spent. In addition, she organized ski races and excursions for hotel guests and their children. In her free time, she continued to do sports, ski and play tennis. At the beginning of the 1970s she was seriously injured in a traffic accident in Lugano and had to struggle back to normal. Even in old age she still exercised her function as a bridge hostess and in 1988 worked for one summer at the Parkhotel Kurhaus in St. Moritz-Bad.

She died on February 7, 2000, one month before her 92nd birthday in Baar ZG .

reception

Due to her petite appearance - according to her own statements, she only weighed 43 kilos - she could not criticize stately runners like Christl Cranz in flat pieces and was one of the best , especially in the technically demanding slalom . In the newspaper L'Impartial she was once described as "la petite représentante de l'Engadine" ("the little representative of the Engadine"). Another paper called her "la plus blonde et la plus douce" ("the blondest and cutest") and other visual features such as her red crochet hat and the first wedge pants ever worn by a racer attracted attention.

Above all, however, the Grisons woman was a stylistically excellent skier. One commentator said, for example, that there is probably no other female racing driver who "dashes away from the starter as quickly as lightning, scurrying through the gates as elegantly and nimbly as Elvira Osirnig, no other lady who participates in as many races and wins as she does". During the 1935 World Cup in Mürren, Othmar Gurtner described it as “very good, absolutely even” and “the Näll in the game for Switzerland ”. Her performance in the descent is said to have been "particularly perfect" along with other athletes and an image of "absolute ski control and excellent stability". As can be seen from a later report, she owed many of her successes to the credo “Scha tü hest prescha, vo plaun” (Engadin Romansh for “If you want to be down quickly, drive slowly”), which meant in particular the avoidance of falls, which were common at the time . The "light, fluid style of Miss Osirnig" was also used in a report on the Arlberg-Kandahar races in the same year as an example of an individual, well-trained driving technique.

successes

World championships

National championships

Further successes (selection)

  • a total of around 200 victories and podiums in competition races

Web links

Commons : Elvira Osirnig  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k Eva Michaelis: A life for sport . In: Slow Motion - For people with life experience. Volume 66, Issue 6 (December 1988 / January 1989), pp. 82-86. PDF download , accessed March 28, 2019.
  2. ^ Rudolf Gomperz: 9th Arlberg-Kandahar race - St. Anton 1936. In: Der Schneehase. Yearbook of the Swiss Academic Ski Club, No. 10 (1936), pp. 378–382. Online , accessed March 28, 2019.
  3. ↑ Les Sports - Ski. In: Journal et Feuille d'Avis du Valais et de Sion. , Edition of July 17, 1934. Online , accessed March 28, 2019 (French).
  4. ^ Fritz Ringgenberg: 8th Arlberg-Kandahar race in Mürren. 9/10 March 1935. In: The mountain hare. Yearbook of the Swiss Academic Ski Club, No. 9 (1935), pp. 242–244. Online , accessed March 28, 2019.
  5. ^ Heinrich Fueter: The 1936 World Championships in Innsbruck February 21-22. In: The mountain hare. Yearbook of the Swiss Academic Ski Club, No. 10 (1936), pp. 366–373. Online , accessed March 28, 2019.
  6. ↑ Heinz Schiller: The white ribbon of St. Moritz March 3 and 5, 1936. In: Der Schneehase. Yearbook of the Swiss Academic Ski Club, No. 10 (1936), pp. 374–377. Online , accessed March 28, 2019.
  7. ^ Heinz Schiller: The white ribbon of St. Moritz February 25 and 26, 1937. In: The snow hare. Yearbook of the Swiss Academic Ski Club, No. 11 (1937), pp. 521–522. Online , accessed March 28, 2019.
  8. ↑ How Giant Slalom Was Invented. International Skiing History Association, July 7, 2012, accessed March 29, 2019 .
  9. ^ Walter Amstutz : The Olympic Winter Games in Garmisch-Partenkirchen February 7 to February 16, 1936. In: The snow hare. Yearbook of the Swiss Academic Ski Club, No. 10 (1936), p. 357. Online , accessed on March 28, 2019.
  10. ^ Austrian Ladies Championships. alpineskiworld.net, accessed March 28, 2019 .
  11. ^ The 1937 World Ski Championships Chamonix February 11th - 18th. In: The mountain hare. Yearbook of the Swiss Academic Ski Club, No. 11 (1937), pp. 378–382. Online , accessed March 28, 2019.
  12. ↑ a b Hptm. Gut: FHD class 10 - ski training. In: The Red Cross: official organ of the Swiss Central Association of the Red Cross , Switzerland. Military Medical Association and the Samaritan Association. Volume 50 (1942), p. 589.
  13. ↑ Ski - Les championnats du monde d'Innsbruck. In: L'Impartial , February 24, 1936 edition, online , accessed March 28, 2019.
  14. ↑ Othmar Gurtner: FIS report from Mürren, February 22-25, 1935. In: Der Schneehase. Yearbook of the Swiss Academic Ski Club, No. 9 (1935), pp. 230–241. Online , accessed March 28, 2019.
  15. ^ Fritz Ringgenberg: 8th Arlberg-Kandahar race in Mürren. 9/10 March 1935. In: The mountain hare. Yearbook of the Swiss Academic Ski Club, No. 9 (1935), pp. 242–244. Online , accessed March 28, 2019.
  16. ↑ Parsenn Derby winners. Ski Club Davos, January 5, 2017, accessed on March 31, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Osirnig, Elvira
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss ski racer
DATE OF BIRTH March 14, 1908
PLACE OF BIRTH canton of Grisons
DATE OF DEATH February 7, 2000
Place of death Baar ZG