Francisco Fernández Ochoa

Francisco Fernández Ochoa
nation	Spain
birthday	February 25, 1950
place of birth	Madrid , Spain
date of death	November 6, 2006
Place of death	Cercedilla
Career
discipline	Slalom , combination
End of career	1980
Medal table
Olympic games 1 × 0 × 0 × World championships 1 × 0 × 1 ×
winter Olympics gold Sapporo 1972 slalom  Alpine World Ski Championships gold Sapporo 1972 slalom bronze St. Moritz 1974 slalom
Placements in the Alpine Ski World Cup
Individual world cup victories 1  Overall World Cup 9. ( 1974/75 )  Giant Slalom World Cup 27. ( 1972/73 )  Slalom World Cup 7th (1974/75)  Combination World Cup 5. ( 1979/80 )
Podium placements 1. 2. 3.  slalom 1 0 1  combination 0 2 0

Francisco ("Paquito") Fernández Ochoa (born February 25, 1950 in Madrid , † November 6, 2006 in Cercedilla , Madrid region ) was a Spanish ski racer . He was the first athlete in his country to advance to the top of the world in alpine skiing. In 1972 he was Olympic champion in slalom at the Winter Olympics in Sapporo . This success has remained the only Spanish Olympic win at the Winter Games to this day (the gold medals for the German Johann Mühlegg , who competed for Spain in Salt Lake City in 2002, were canceled).

biography

Fernández Ochoa was born in Madrid as the first of eight children and grew up in the village of Cercedilla at the foot of the Sierra de Guadarrama . His family is considered to be the most successful ski family in Spain. His sister Blanca won an Olympic bronze medal in 1992. Eight years earlier, three family members - Blanca, Luis and Dolores - had taken part in the Winter Olympics.

His first international competition was the Andorra Grand Prix in 1963 , where he finished fourth in slalom and won the youth competition. He left school to devote himself to skiing and was accepted into the Spanish youth team in 1964. In the same year he won a competition in the Val d'Aran in which he defeated the reigning Spanish champion Luis Viu for the first time . In November 1966, Fernández Ochoa had a serious crash and was unable to ski for two months. In the following year he became Spanish champion in slalom, giant slalom and combined.

He made his Olympic debut at the 1968 Winter Olympics and was 23rd in slalom and 38th in downhill. In January 1969 he first attracted international attention when he finished sixth in the Megève World Cup slalom at the age of 18. This was the first time a Spanish racer had placed in the top ten since the World Cup was launched. Although he only won one World Cup slalom in the course of his career (on March 6, 1974 in Zakopane ), Ochoa was one of the most successful and consistent riders in the 1970s. Between 1969 and 1980 he was among the top ten a total of 30 times, almost without exception in slaloms and combinations .

But he celebrated the greatest successes of his career in the international championships. After finishing two ninth places in slalom and combination at the 1970 World Championships in Val Gardena , he managed one of the biggest surprises in the history of alpine skiing two years later at the Winter Olympics in Sapporo. On the Teine , with starting number 2, he set the best mark in the first run of the Olympic slalom and relegated the Frenchman Jean-Noël Augert , who was leading in the World Cup, to second place. However, the favored Augert missed his second run. Ochoa, on the other hand, defended first place with the second-best running time and became the first and to date only Spanish Olympic champion in the history of the Winter Games with a lead of over a second over the two Italian cousins Gustav Thöni and Roland Thöni . This Olympic victory was also rated as a world championship title.

Two years later he confirmed his success with a bronze medal in slalom at the World Championships in St. Moritz . Before the 1975/76 Olympic season, he switched from a French to an Austrian ski brand. At the 1976 Winter Olympics in Innsbruck he was ninth in the slalom. In 1980 he went back to the Olympic Winter Games in Lake Placid , but only finished 22nd in his favorite discipline. Then he ended his active career.

Fernández Ochoa monument in Cercedilla (2007)

Ochoa remained one of the most respected sports personalities in Spain. In 1995 and 1996 he was instrumental in organizing the World Ski Championships in the Sierra Nevada . King Juan Carlos , to whom he had also given training lessons, awarded him a Medal of Honor in 2006 for his services. On October 28, 2006 he was honored in his place of birth in the presence of the Infanta Cristina and Elena as well as the Spanish Sports Minister Jaime Lissavetzky with the erection of a memorial for the winter sports enthusiasts from Cercedilla. Nine days later, on November 6, 2006, Francisco Fernández Ochoa died of lymph gland cancer at the age of 56 .

Web links

Commons : Francisco Fernández Ochoa  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Francisco Fernández Ochoa in the database of the International Ski Federation (English)
• Francisco Fernández Ochoa in the database of Ski-DB (English)
• Francisco Fernández Ochoa in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Sport-Bild & Audi present the World Ski Championships '93 - Everything about the exciting races from February 3rd to 14th in Morioka (Japan). In: Sport-Bild , February 3, 1993, p. 31ff, 34.
2. ^ "Allegations to the ski association"; last paragraph . In: Arbeiter-Zeitung . Vienna October 14, 1975, p. 8 ( berufer-zeitung.at - the open online archive - digitized).