Hippolyt Kempf

Hippolyt Kempf
Full name	Hippolyte Marcel Kempf
nation	Switzerland
birthday	December 10, 1965
place of birth	Lucerne ,  Switzerland
size	180 cm
Weight	68 kg
Career
society	SC Horw
National squad	since 1986
status	resigned
End of career	1994
Medal table
Olympic medals 1 × 1 × 1 × World Cup medals 0 × 1 × 0 × National medals 2 × 0 × 0 ×
winter Olympics gold 1988 Calgary singles silver 1988 Calgary 3 × 10 km team (NH) bronze 1994 Lillehammer 3 × 10 km team (NH)  Nordic World Ski Championships silver 1989 Lahti 3 × 10 km team (NH)  Swiss championships gold 1987 singles gold 1990 singles
Placements in the World Cup
Debut in the World Cup	4th January 1986
World Cup victories (individual)	5 ( details )
Overall World Cup	3. ( 1986/87 , 1988/89 )
Podium placements 1. 2. 3.  singles 5 4th 2

Hippolyt Marcel Kempf (born December 10, 1965 in Lucerne ) is a former Swiss Nordic combined athlete .

Career

Beginnings in the World Cup

Since 1983, Kempf has increasingly competed in Nordic combined races . Kempf made his international debut on January 4, 1986 as part of the Nordic Combined World Cup in Schonach in the Black Forest . With rank 15 he immediately won his first World Cup points. In February in Lahti , he finished eighth in the top ten for the first time.

In the 1986/87 season he started sixth in Canmore . A good two weeks later, he won his first World Cup race, the so-called Passamentenpokal, in Oberwiesenthal . The competition had to be completed in one day. In January he reached his second podium with third place in Schonach. At the Nordic World Ski Championships in 1987 in Oberstdorf , Lucerne's Kempf came in seventh after a weak jump through fifth place in the 15 km cross-country skiing. In the team competition, the Swiss team with Kempf, Andreas Schaad and Fredy Glanzmann achieved fifth place with the best cross-country skiing time in the competition. At the end of the season he achieved third place in the overall World Cup after taking the lead.

Breakthrough and Olympic victory

At the beginning of the 1987/88 season , Kempf began to prepare for the Winter Olympics. On January 23, 1988 in Seefeld in Tirol , he was again on a podium after the individual competition in second place. At the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary , he achieved the first Swiss Olympic victory in this discipline in the Nordic Combined. After he was still in third place after ski jumping , he finished the running competition 19 seconds ahead. It was a "déjà-vu" to the World Cup victory on December 30, 1986 in Oberwiesenthal, because again both jumping and cross-country skiing were carried out on one day (February 28). In the team competition, together with Schaad and Glanzmann, he had secured the silver medal a few days earlier. After the games, he finished fourth again in his last World Cup of the season in Oslo and also finished the season on this place.

He started the 1988/89 season on December 29, 1988 with sixth place in Oberwiesenthal, before he won the Black Forest Cup in Schonach in January . Since the entire world elite took part in this competition, the race was counted as a dress rehearsal for the Nordic World Ski Championships in Lahti in 1989 . As an Olympic champion, he traveled to the world championship as a favorite, but in fourth just barely missed a medal and thus did not live up to his role as a favorite. He already missed the chance of a better placement with rank 14 in ski jumping. In the team competition he secured a silver medal with the team. In the overall World Cup standings, Kempf was again in third place at the end of the season after another victory in Thunder Bay.

Coach fight and comeback

For the 1989/90 season , which he started with a victory in the Gundersen singles in St. Moritz , there was an open dispute between Kempf and the Swiss national coach Ezio Damolin . In the course of this, he was temporarily excluded from the squad. Kempf made his international comeback in March 1990 with seventh place at the Holmenkollen Games. He closed the season in April 1990 by winning the second Swiss championship title after 1987.

In the 1990/91 season , Kempf quickly caught up with the world's best. After seventh place in Trondheim , he was back on the podium in Oberwiesenthal, Schonach and Bad Goisern. However, the last World Cup podiums remained for more than two years. At the 1992 Winter Olympics in Albertville , he clearly missed defending his 1988 medals. So he only reached rank 26 in the individual and was tenth with the team.

End of career

Although he only contested five World Cup races between 1992 and 1994, which failed to be a great success, Kempf was also part of the squad for the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer . Surprisingly, he and the team won the bronze medal. In the individual, he was able to demonstrate his strength again with sixth place. After he announced his end of career for the end of the season after the games, he ended the 1993/94 with a win in Thunder Bay .

After his sporting career, Kempf began studying economics at the University of Freiburg . He completed his studies with a doctorate in economics and social sciences. In 2001 he became honorary head of disciplines for the Swiss Nordic Combined.

In August 2004, Kempf became Deputy Head of Competitive Sports at Swiss-Ski behind Gian Gilli . In this position he represented all Nordic disciplines and athletes at the Nordic World Ski Championships 2005 in Oberstdorf. In July 2005 he left the Swiss Ski Association and on August 1st took a position as a sports economist at the Federal Office for Sports .

In 2009 he became a cross-country trainer for the Swiss combined athletes. Subsequently he was a trainer for all cross-country skiers at "swiss ski". In March 2020 he took over the post of Swiss director for Nordic skiing.

Fonts (selection)

• Hippolyt Kempf: Sport: between fall and euphoria. A comparative analysis of the institutional arrangements for sport as a game and that as a commodity. (= Dissertation, University of Freiburg). Freiburg in Switzerland 2004, OCLC 718730607 .
• Helmut Dietl , Egon Franck , Hippolyt Kempf: Football - the economy of a passion . 1st edition. Hofmann, Schorndorf 2009, ISBN 3-7780-8370-8 .
• Hippolyt Kempf, Janine Balter: In the shadow of sports science. In: Sports Economics. 15. Hofmann, Schorndorf 2013, ISBN 978-3-7780-8375-8 .

successes

World Cup victories

date	place	country	discipline
December 30, 1986	Oberwiesenthal	GDR	singles
January 7, 1989	Schonach	Germany	singles
March 25, 1989	Thunder Bay	Canada	singles
December 16, 1989	St. Moritz	Switzerland	singles
March 19, 1994	Thunder Bay	Canada	singles

World Cup Statistics

The table shows the placements achieved in detail.

• 1st – 3rd place: Number of podium placements
• Top 10: Number of places in the top ten
• Points ranks: Number of placements within the point ranks
• Starts: Number of races run in the respective discipline

placement	Single a	sprint	Mass start	team		total
				sprint	Season
1st place	5					5
2nd place	4th					4th
3rd place	2					2
Top 10	32					32
Scoring	39					39
Starts	39					39
Status: end of career

^a including individual races and Gundersen individual starts

Private

Kempf comes from an old knight family, which has its origins in Alsace . His father, grandfather and great-grandfather also had the first name Hippolyt, which means the person who fell from the horse . During the early days of his sports career, he worked in his parents' sports shop. On Skigymnasium Stams in Austria Kempf graduated from high school.

Web links

• Hippolyt Kempf in the database of the International Ski Federation (English)
• Hippolyt Kempf in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )
• Hippolyt Kempf in the Munzinger Archive ( International Sports Archive 25/1990 of June 11, 1990)

Individual evidence

1. ^ "Kempfs medal hunt", Sport Zürich, No. 25 of February 29, 1988, page 14.
2. ↑ Kempf and Grünenfelder also successful at work . In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung , February 28, 2013. Retrieved November 24, 2013. 
3. ↑ Hippolyt Kempf new SwissSki Director Nordic. fis-ski.com, March 16, 2020, accessed on March 18, 2020 (English).