Franz Kapus

Franz Kapus (born April 12, 1909 in Zurich ; † March 4, 1981 there ) was a Swiss bobsleigh pilot . In the 1950s he was one of the world's best bobsledders and was once Olympic and world champion.

Kapus was a versatile athlete who competed in gymnastics , swimming , swinging, and amateur boxing . He joined his most successful sport, bobsleigh, relatively late in the 1940s. At the World Championships in Cortina d'Ampezzo in 1950 and in L'Alpe d'Huez in 1951 , he won the bronze medal in the four-man bobsleigh. In St. Moritz he won the 1955 World Cup in the four-man bobsleigh, while he took third place in the two-man bobsleigh. His greatest success was winning the four-man gold medal at the Winter Olympics in Cortina.

Kapus was a mechanic by profession , which benefited him in the further development of the bobsled. He had his designs extensively tested by physicists and aerodynamicists and implemented their suggestions accordingly. Kapus was also the world's first bobsleigh pilot who did not allow his companions to push him at the start, but pushed him himself. For dry training, he introduced a self-made roll bob on rails. At the beginning of the 1970s he worked for the Japanese Association as a consultant for the construction of the Olympic bobsleigh track in Sapporo .

source

• International Sports Archive ( Munzinger Archive ), 1981

Web links

• Franz Kapus in the database of Sports-Reference (English; archived from the original )