Thank God Walz

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Gottlob Walz (born June 29, 1881 , † 1943 in Stuttgart ) was a German water diver who won the water jumping at the Olympic Intermediate Games in 1906 .

Career

Gottlob Walz started for the Schwaben Stuttgart swimmer association . From 1900 to 1903 he won the German championship in jumping four times, in 1899 he won the combined. From 1901 to 1903 Walz was three times European champion.

After diving for the first time at the Olympic Games in St. Louis in 1904 , it was also part of the program for the Intermediate Olympic Games in Athens. With the German runner-up in St. Louis Georg Hoffmann , a starter from 1904 was there again. On a Greek warship, diving boards were mounted at heights of four meters, eight meters and twelve meters, of which three jumps each had to be completed. Gottlob Walz won the competition ahead of Hoffmann, who, like two years earlier, took second place and the Austrian Otto Satzinger .

Two years later, at the Olympic Games in London in 1908 , two water jumping competitions were on the Olympic program for the first time. The Swedish jumpers dominated diving, while the Germans were superior in artificial diving. The winner was Albert Zürner before Kurt Behrens and Gottlob Walz, the third place with the Americans George Gaidzik said.

In 1912 Walz published his book The Art of Water Jumping in Word and Image in Stuttgart . After the First World War, he ran a paper mill in Switzerland . In 1988, Walz was inducted into the Fort Lauderdale International Swimming Hall of Fame as a diving pioneer .

literature

  • Volker Kluge : Summer Olympic Games. The Chronicle I. Athens 1896 - Berlin 1936. Sportverlag Berlin, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-328-00715-6 , (especially page 211).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ German champions in diving on Sport-komplett.de
  2. ↑ European champion in diving on Sport-komplett.de
  3. ↑ Gottlob Walz in the International Swimming Hall of Fame (English)
personal data
SURNAME Walz, thank God
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German diver
DATE OF BIRTH June 29, 1881
DATE OF DEATH 1943
Place of death Stuttgart