Hannes Schroll

Hannes Schroll
Schroll on board the Saturnia during the crossing from Trieste to the USA .
nation	Austria
birthday	June 13, 1909
place of birth	Wörgl ,  Austria-Hungary
date of death	April 5th 1985
Place of death	Redwood City ,  United States
Career
discipline	Alpine skiing ski jumping

Hannes Schroll (born June 13, 1909 in Wörgl , † April 5, 1985 in Redwood City , California ) was an Austrian alpine and Nordic skier. From the late 1920s onwards, he celebrated numerous victories in national and international competitions, initially in ski jumping and later in downhill and slalom . In 1935 he emigrated to the USA , where he worked as a ski instructor and built the Sugar Bowl Ski Resort .

Career

Hannes Schroll at the 1935 US Championships on Mount Rainier .

Schroll was born in Wörgl in Tyrol and came to Bischofshofen in the province of Salzburg at an early age , where he grew up. He started skiing at the age of eight and developed into an all-rounder who achieved good results in both alpine ( downhill , slalom ) and Nordic disciplines (especially jumping ). In his youth he worked as a fitter , truck driver and track keeper for the railway. He used the often long free time during the winter months to improve his skiing skills.

Schroll was initially a member of the Bischofshofen Ski Association and competed in his first youth class as a 15-year-old. At the age of 16 he won the ski jumping competition at the Austrian Youth Skiing Day in Bad Mitterndorf and in 1927, at the age of 17, he became the Salzburg youth ski jumping champion. After the Bischofshofen ski association was dissolved, Schroll joined the ski club in Radstadt in 1929 , where he jumped a hill record of 45 meters in the same year. He also celebrated his first victories in the general class in 1929 at two competitions in Bad Hofgastein and Johanngeorgenstadt . In 1930 he won a jumping in Klosters as well as a slalom in Mitterberg . In the winter of 1931, Schroll became the Austrian ski jumping champion . He also won descents in Schwaz and on the Schneeberg , a slalom in Zell am See , the Nordic combined in Innsbruck and again the jumping in Klosters. At the FIS races in Mürren he was 12th in the slalom and 14th in the downhill. He finished the unofficial "long" descent in 11th position.

In the winter of 1932 Schroll won a jumping competition in Bad Gastein , but focused primarily on his work as a ski instructor , both in his own ski school on the Kanzelhöhe and elsewhere in Germany and abroad. He therefore remained without a major victory in the winter of 1933, but achieved second places in the downhill run of the Austrian championships in Kitzbühel and in a jumping in the same place. At the FIS races in Innsbruck in 1933 he was 38th in combination and 41st in jumping in the Nordic disciplines , while he was 14th in the alpine disciplines in the unofficial special descent ("long descent"), in the actual World Championship Race but not used. Schroll now increasingly concentrated on alpine skiing and celebrated important victories in the giant slalom on the Marmolada and in slalom and combination of Abetone in the winter of 1934 . He also won the slalom of the Austrian championships on Schneeberg , which brought him third place in the championship standings with a seventh place in the downhill.

In the winter of 1935, Chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg appointed Schroll as Austria's representative at the United States' open alpine championships at Mount Rainier in Washington , where slalom and combined competitions were held for the first time in addition to a descent in which there were US title fights as early as 1933 and 1934 were. Schroll was one of the first European top runners in the USA, winning downhill and slalom in a superior manner and thus also securing the championship title in the combination ahead of the American Dick Durrance . One of the observers of the competition was Donald Tresidder , President of Yosemite Park & ​​Curry Co., who hired Schroll on the spot as the new head of the ski school at Badger Pass in Yosemite National Park .

Schroll enjoyed great popularity in the US and was awarded the Silver Skis after winning the US championships . In addition to his work as a ski instructor, he took part in individual races for several years and headed the ski school in Yosemite until 1938 before he devoted himself to a new project, the construction of a ski station on Mount Lincoln in California . The Sugar Bowl Ski Resort opened on December 15, 1939 and remained under Schroll's management until 1945. He organized the Silver Belt there for the first time in 1940 , which became one of the most famous ski races in the USA at the time.

Schroll achieved considerable financial prosperity and in 1943 married Maud Hill, daughter of the President of the Great Northern Railway Louis W. Hill and granddaughter of railroad magnate James J. Hill . The couple had two children and lived in California, first on a small farm in Palo Alto and later on a larger ranch in Hollister , where Schroll successfully bred racehorses . He died in Redwood City in 1985 at the age of 75 , twelve years before his wife. For his contributions to skiing in the United States, Schroll was inducted into the US Ski Hall of Fame in 1966.

literature

• Austrian Ski Association (Ed.): Austrian Ski Stars from A – Z. Ablinger & Garber, Hall in Tirol 2008, ISBN 978-3-9502285-7-1 , pp. 397-398.
• Joachim Glaser: Goldsmiths in the Snow. 100 years of the Salzburg State Ski Association. Böhlau, Vienna-Cologne-Weimar 2011, ISBN 978-3-205-78560-6 , pp. 203-204.
• Morten Lund: The Short, Sweet Ski Life of Hannes Schroll in America. In: International Skiing History Association (Ed.): Skiing Heritage. Vol. 21, No. 4, December 2009, ISSN  1082-2895 , pp. 9-13.

Web links

Commons : Hannes Schroll  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Hannes Schroll in the US Ski and Snowboard Hall of Fame