Heini Klopfer

Heini Klopfer
Full name	Heinrich Klopfer
nation	BR Germany
birthday	April 3, 1918
place of birth	Immenstadt ,  German Empire
date of death	18th November 1968
Place of death	Oberstdorf ,  FR Germany
Career
End of career	1955
Ski jumping world cup / A class jumping
Four Hills Tournament	24. ( 1953 )

Heinrich "Heini" Klopfer (born April 3, 1918 in Immenstadt , † November 18, 1968 in Oberstdorf ) was a German architect and ski jumper .

Career

After graduating from high school in Oberstdorf (then Oberrealschule) and serving in the war in Russia, Klopfer completed a degree in architecture at the Technical University of Darmstadt . Afterwards Heini Klopfer worked in particular on ski jump structures all over the world and was also a ski jumping expert for the International Ski Federation (FIS). He designed around 250 ski jumping hills worldwide, including the first ski jumping hill in Oberstdorf , together with Willi Huber , which bears his name and on which he was the first athlete to jump at 90 meters on February 2nd, 1950. He was also responsible for the construction of the Papoose Peak Jumps in Squaw Valley for the 1960 Winter Olympics and Le Claret in Autrans for the 1968 Winter Olympics in Grenoble. The reason for this specialization was Klopfer's enthusiasm for ski jumping since his youth. At the end of the 1940s and the beginning of the 1950s, Klopfer was part of the “Oberstdorfer Trio” (Klopfer, Brutscher and Weiler ) among the world's best in ski jumping. He was denied major sporting successes, among other things, because German athletes were not allowed to take part in the 1948 Winter Olympics in St. Moritz and other international competitions shortly after the Second World War .

At the first Four Hills Tournament in 1953 , Klopfer finished ninth in Oberstdorf and placed 24th overall. In the Four Hills Tournament 1953/54 he could not compete due to injury, 1954/55 he no longer made the qualification. After the end of his career in 1955, Klopfer devoted himself increasingly to building hills. The cosmopolitan, for whom his beloved homeland was sometimes too small, planned himself and, as chairman of the FIS ski jumping hill construction committee, examined many ski jumps all over the world. Having just returned to his home town of Oberstdorf from a strenuous trip to the Planica ski jumping hill , he suffered a sudden death from a heart attack on the night of November 18, 1968.

successes

Four Hills Tournament placements

season	space	Points
1953	24.	182.0

literature

• Weddige, Klaus: Ski jumping hill specialist Klopfer H. died 15 years ago. In: Unser Oberstdorf, Blätter zur Oberstdorfer Heimatgeschichte. Issue 3/1983, p. 170.

Web links

• Heini Klopfer in the database of the International Ski Association (English)
• Heini Klopfer on The-Sports.org

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Heinrich "Heini" Klopfer . Who's who. Retrieved October 18, 2013.
2. ↑ ^{a b c} The idea to build the ski flying hill 1949-1950 . sepp-weiler.com. Archived from the original on October 19, 2013. Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved October 18, 2013.