Gillis Grafström

Gillis Grafström
Full name	Gillis Emanuel Grafström
nation	Sweden
birthday	June 7, 1893
place of birth	Stockholm
job	architect
date of death	April 14, 1938
Place of death	Potsdam, Germany
Career
discipline	Single run
society	Stockholm's Allmänna Skridskoklubb
Medal table
Olympic medals 3 × 1 × 0 × World Cup medals 3 × 0 × 0 ×
Olympic games gold Antwerp 1920 Men's  winter Olympics gold Chamonix 1924 Men's gold St. Moritz 1928 Men's silver Lake Placid 1932 Men's  World figure skating championships gold Stockholm 1922 Men's gold Manchester 1924 Men's gold London 1929 Men's

Gillis Emanuel Grafström (born June 7, 1893 in Stockholm , † April 14, 1938 in Potsdam ) was a Swedish figure skater who started in a single run . He is the Olympic champion of 1920 , 1924 and 1928 and the world champion of 1922 , 1924 and 1929 .

Career

At his first Olympic Games in Antwerp , he broke a skate blade. These could not be replaced on site. Then he had to go into town and buy a pair of old-fashioned ice skates. He won anyway. Four years later he defended his title in Chamonix just ahead of his toughest competitor Willy Böckl . He won the duty , but lost to Böckl in the freestyle. In 1928 in St. Moritz he won Olympic gold for the third time in a row. Again there was a clash with Böckl. Despite a knee injury, he was able to beat Böckl in both duty and freestyle, albeit very tightly. To date, Grafström is the record holder in the men's figure skating competition with three Olympic victories . At his last Olympic Games in Lake Placid in 1932, he collided with a photographer on the ice and finished second behind Karl Schäfer . This makes Grafström the most successful figure skater in Olympic history and the only figure skater who was able to win four medals in the individual discipline at the Olympic Games.

In 1914 Grafström had taken part in a world championship for the first time and finished in seventh place. From 1915 to 1921 there were no world championships due to the First World War . At the first world championship after this break, Grafström was world champion in Stockholm ahead of Fritz Kachler . Because of his professional activity as an architect in Berlin, he only took part in world championships twice: in 1924 in Manchester and in 1929 in London . Both times he was world champion, first before Willy Böckl and then before Karl Schäfer. Grafström never took part in a European championship .

Grafström was one of the best compulsory runners ever. He also created the Grafström pirouette (rotated on the rear outer edge of the runner), the jumped-in sitting pirouette and was the first to jump the Axel-Paulsen (jump in figure skating) really safely. He was considered an extremely elegant runner with an enormous feeling for music. He also trained Sonja Henie .

Gillis Grafström lived in Potsdam from 1925 until his death . He trained here on the Bornstedter See when it was frozen, or in Berlin on the artificial ice rink in the Volkspark Friedrichshain . In 1929 he was honored with the Svenska Dagbladet gold medal.

Grafström studied architecture at the Technical University of Berlin and then worked as an architect . He collected graphics, paintings and sculptures on the subject of ice skating and also worked as a writer, painter and graphic artist.

On February 9, 1938, Gillis Grafström married Cécile, b. von Mendelssohn Bartholdy, divorced Oppenheim (1898–1995), daughter of the banker Otto von Mendelssohn Bartholdy . A good two months later, at the age of 44, he died of blood poisoning and was buried in the Bornstedt cemetery in Potsdam. His widow continued his ice skating collection. Today this collection is in the World Figure Skating Museum in Colorado Springs , USA .

A street in Potsdam is named after Grafström. In 1976 he was inducted into the Figure Skating Hall of Fame .

Gillis Grafström at the 1924 Olympic Games in Chamonix

Results

Competition / year	1914	1917	1918	1919	1920	1922	1924	1928	1929	1932
Olympic games					1.		1.	1.		2.
World championships	7th					1.	1.		1.
Swedish championships		1.	1.	1.

Web links

Commons : Gillis Grafström  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Gillis Grafström in the database of Sports-Reference (English; archived from the original )