Fred Roessner

Alfred "Fred" Rößner (born August 16, 1911 in Sankt Johann am Tauern , Styria , † December 25, 2005 in Salzburg ) was an Austrian athlete , trainer and sports pioneer.

Rößner was a trained high school professor. At the Olympic Games in Garmisch-Partenkirchen in 1936, he took eighth place with the ÖSV cross-country relay.

Together with Friedl Wolfgang , he managed the first ascent on the Eiskögele north face in the Glockner group . In 1937, together with his brother Hugo, he was the first person to cross the Caucasus on skis .

At the (unofficial) Nordic World Ski Championships in Cortina d'Ampezzo , he reached second place with the relay in the ski patrol race .

He was considered to be one of the pioneers of skiing and achieved fourth place at the 1948 Olympic Games with a cross-country team trained by him. In Oslo 1952 the fifth place followed already as ÖSV boss. The men won five out of nine possible medals and the women two more medals in Oslo.

The summer training introduced by Rößner, the altitude training and its systematic training methods were considered innovations . He trained the three-time Olympic champion Toni Sailer using these methods and was the father of the “white wonder team”. In Vienna he introduced a new training course for trainers and managed it until his retirement in 1976. He was on the board of the Fédération Internationale de Ski and was made an honorary member in 1985.

Web links

• "Ski and trainer legend Rößner dead" (ORF)
• Fred Rößner in the database of Sports-Reference (English; archived from the original )