International Speed ​​Skating League

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Ard Schenk (foreground) and Willy Olsen at the first ISSL World Cup in The Hague in January 1973

The International Speed ​​Skating League (ISSL) was a commercial series of speed skating competitions for professional athletes , launched in 1972 , in which various prominent athletes took part. As the first professional series of competitions, the project competed with the competitions organized by the International Skating Union (ISU) for amateurs. A shortage of spectators and the resistance of the ISU let the project go bankrupt after a year. For the 1973/74 season, a successor series was started under the name World Ice Sport Organization (WISO) , but it also failed after a short time.

Despite its short life, the ISSL met with a lot of media coverage. In view of the later development, due to its organization, it can be regarded as an indirect forerunner of the speed skating World Cup introduced in 1985 and represents a step towards the later professionalization of the sport.

initial situation

In the 1970s, as for all Olympic sport, the amateur statute applied to speed skating : the athletes were not allowed to receive any cash benefits for their sporting appearances, nor were they allowed to conclude advertising contracts, otherwise they - like the alpine ski racer Karl Schranz - were threatened with exclusion from the Olympic Games and possibly also from other competitions that were under the patronage of the respective world association. In the case of speed skating this was the International Skating Union ( International Skating Union , ISU), which has existed since the late 19th century world championships conducted.

Despite the ban, organizers and athletes had found ways to circumvent the payment ban: The German Olympic champion Erhard Keller openly stated in later interviews that, for example, there was a "tulip bulb currency" at competitions in the Netherlands:

“Some sponsor donated for the win or the world record - I'll say it - ten quintals of the finest tulip bulbs, of course. At the end of the event, this sponsor introduced the record runner to a professional buyer of tulip bulbs and a cash price was negotiated. "

- Erhard Keller

These practices did not go unnoticed by the international associations, after the Olympic Games in 1972 both Keller and the three-time Olympic champion Ard Schenk from the Netherlands were threatened with a ban from future amateur competitions.

In the Federal Republic of Germany, the Sporthilfe had existed since 1967 to support athletes financially. Athletes from other countries - such as the Dutch - did not have this opportunity. The Dutch trainer Leen Pfrommer stated that his best speed skaters only received a daily allowance of fifteen marks, while the turnover of the big events from TV money was already in the millions.

development

Structure of the field of participants

Two ISSL board members, Neely on the right

In August 1972, the Swedish speed skater Jonny Nilsson , who had won Olympic gold in the 10,000 meter distance in 1964, presented the idea of ​​a professional league together with the American manager Edgar Neely. Behind it stood the financier William Moore from the United States, who contributed a share capital of the equivalent of 1.6 million German marks. The resulting International Speed ​​Skating League (ISSL) was based on the model of the North American professional leagues in other sports (such as NFL in American football and MLB in baseball ). To this end, the ISSL signed a total of 16 international athletes from six different countries, the majority of whom had celebrated successes at the Olympic Games and World Championships:

  • Roar Grønvold (Norway): two Olympic silver medals 1972 (1500 meters / 5000 meters)
  • Ivar Eriksen (Norway): an Olympic silver medal in 1968 (1500 meters)
  • Ard Schenk (Netherlands): three Olympic gold medals in 1972 (1500 meters / 5000 meters / 10,000 meters) + all around world champions in 1970, 1971 and 1972
  • Kees Verkerk (Netherlands): an Olympic gold medal in 1968 (1500 meters) + all-around world champion in 1966 and 1967
  • Johnny Höglin (Sweden): an Olympic gold medal in 1968 (10,000 meters)
  • Hasse Börjes (Sweden): an Olympic silver medal in 1972 (500 meters)
  • Ove König (Sweden): Vice World Champion in the sprint all-around in 1971
  • Erhard Keller (Federal Republic of Germany): two Olympic gold medals in 1968 and 1972 (500 meters) + sprint all-around world champion 1971
  • Neil Blatchford (United States): Vice world champion in all-around competitions in 1968 and 1969

With this field of participants all still active (male) Olympic champions and all-around world champions belonged to the International Speed ​​Skating League. They disqualified themselves for all other Olympic competitions and world championships organized by the ISU. Only the Russian Valeri Muratov , who had become sprint world champion in 1970 , was missing from the title winners who were still active at the time - the Eastern European speed skaters, who are known as state amateurs , stayed away from the US-influenced series.

The 1972/73 season ended and the first bankruptcy

Racing scene at the ISSL World Cup in The Hague with Jan Bols

A series of individual events, the so-called World Cups, was organized as a competition program, which took place over a period of two months on various tracks in the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden, and ended with a competition in Gothenburg, which was declared a world championship. At each of these World Cups there was a separate grand four-way competition, in which the athletes ran 500 meters, 1500 meters, 5000 meters and 10000 meters as well as a sprint four-way competition over two times 500 meters and two times 1000 meters. Each athlete received a guaranteed premium for each competition, which was scaled upwards. The winner of the great four-way battle was entitled to the equivalent of 34,000 marks per event, and the last placed 4700 marks.

In the great four-way battle, Ard Schenk showed himself to be the dominant athlete: He won both the opening event in The Hague and later the European championship in Skien, Norway, and the world championship in Gothenburg. In the sprinters, Hasse Börjes secured the title of professional world and European champion, and Erhard Keller also made a successful start.

From a financial point of view, the competitions were a losing business: at the opening in The Hague, only 15,500 came instead of the expected 50,000 visitors, and at the European Championships in Skien it was only 2000. An aggravating problem was that the ISU tried to close the competition series by threatening organizers who opened their tracks for professional competitions not to host international championships on these tracks in the future. The railway operator of the only German artificial ice rink in Inzell agreed : "We have to be considerate of the amateurs, otherwise we might deprive them of the base." With Inzell, Davos and Alma-Ata , professionals were not allowed to start on the three routes on which a large part of the world records that were particularly attractive for viewers were set in previous years. At the end of the season, the ISSL could no longer meet its contractual obligations towards the athletes and filed for bankruptcy in July 1973.

Re-establishment as WISO and failure again

In response to the ISSL bankruptcy, a group around the director of the Hague artificial ice rink Jan Klok decided to re-establish a similar series under the name World Ice Sport Organization (WISO): They are still convinced that there is “a gap for an organization of Speed ​​skating professionals ”and will tackle the second attempt with more modest plans and significantly reduced prize money. Almost all participants in the ISSL also started in the WISO, whose calendar should consist of four grand prizes and seven smaller events. In order to make the runs more attractive for sponsors, the racing suits were printed with advertising. However, the WISO also encountered the same difficulties as the ISSL, hardly attracted any spectators and was unable to pay out promised rewards. Both Ard Schenk and Erhard Keller withdrew before the end of the season, the WISO was dissolved before the announced final competitions in February 1974 after Bjørn Tveter (in the big four-way fight) and again Hasse Börjes (in the sprint four-way fight) had become the second European champions . The project of a professional series in speed skating had failed for the time being.

Assessments

Jonny Nilsson (picture from 1962), co-founder of the ISSL

As a motivation for founding the ISSL, Jonny Nilsson later stated that he wanted to react to the "hypocrisy" in amateur sports, because one secretly got a thousand dollars while he was active. In retrospect, IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch - under whose presidency the amateur regulation was abolished in 1981 - thanked him for having initiated reform in this regard. Initially, Nilsson hoped to conclude a deal with the ISU: Since the world federation had invested large sums in the amateurs, they wanted to pay him if athletes switched to the professional league in return.

From the beginning there was great criticism of the professional league from the amateur camp, especially from the national associations that were subordinate to the ISU: The Norwegian association ( Norges Skøyteforbund , NSF) fought to maintain its monopoly position on the one hand, but was also concerned on the other honest about the value base of sport. The West German functionary Ludwig Schwabl was concerned that “professional ice skating throws everything back by years” - almost the entire world elite had turned their backs on amateurism - but wanted above all to “limit” the conflict between ISU and the professionals The professional competitions were rated higher overall than the amateurs, but the audience was more strongly represented in the races organized by the world association. The reason for this, the Dutch amateur trainer Leen Pfrommer suspected, was that the field of professionals was too small “to give color to big events”. In addition, the local speed skating fans are very keen on the support of their compatriots: "They still prefer second class Dutch people and are more attractive than foreign world class sprinters."

The response from the professionals was divided. The reigning 500 meter Olympic champion Erhard Keller stated in February 1973, immediately after the opening event, that the participation in the ISSL had already paid off for him: “In The Hague [...] I earned as much in one weekend as I did myself Sporthilfe used to give in four years. ”Ard Schenk was particularly frustrated by the small number of spectators and said that everything went well from the point of view of the actual competition, but not organizationally. In retrospect, Keller's review was also more negative, in a later interview he stated that participation in the professional league was “ultimately a flop”. He later tried to re-amateurize in order to be allowed to participate in the Olympic Games again in 1976, but this was denied to him by the ISU. Finally, Kees Verkerk complained that the managers had little sporting expertise. He was also convinced that the ISSL had cheated the athletes out of a large part of the income, saying that someone “must have gotten quite rich on our backs”.

Looking back at the ISSL, historical strands were sometimes drawn to newer developments: About a decade after the failure of the first league competition in speed skating, the ISU itself founded the Speed ​​Skating World Cup in 1985 , in which the athletes competed in races in seven countries and collected World Cup points at the end were added to a total result. In the 1990s, Rintje Ritsma was the first prominent Dutch speed skater to receive a sponsorship contract. In view of these developments, one can conclude that the ISSL and the WISO were a “courageous and innovative idea”, whose time in the 1970s had not yet come.

literature

  • Steinar Nyborg (1972). Skøyter til tusen: Hvordan ISSL ble til . Oslo: Aschehoug. ISBN 8203053114 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Olympic champion Erhard Keller: about cheating on the ice . In: Die Welt (07.02.2000).
  2. ↑ a b BR-alpha: “Alpha-Forum”: Christian Materna in conversation with Erhard Keller . Broadcast on July 26, 2002. Available online as a PDF download at https://www.br.de/fernsehen/ard-alpha/sendung/alpha-forum/erhard-keller-gespraech100.html .
  3. ↑ a b Karl Morgenstern: Don't be afraid of the professionals . In: German Olympic Society (Hrsg.): Olympic fire . Issue 12, December 1972. pp. 10-11.
  4. ^ Norwegian Information Service: Winter Sportsmen Go Professional . In: News of Norway , Volume 29 (1972). Available online as a Google Book
  5. ↑ a b c d e f Karl Morgenstern: Adventure on narrow runners . In: Die Zeit (February 16, 1973).
  6. ↑ Originally 14 athletes were traded (see AP : Speed ​​Skaters Sign Contracts In Pro League . In: San Bernardino Sun (05.08.1972). Available online ), until the start of the season the field of participants had changed slightly. The Swede Göran Claeson was also registered for the ISSL, but withdrew shortly before the start of the series. Instead, he won - in a strongly weakened field of participants - the all-around world championships among amateurs , cf. Makten and æren - and tidenes Første norske profflag på skøyter? on skoytesport.no.
  7. ↑ The results for the following ISSL / WISO competitions can be found on SpeedSkatingNews : EM 1973 ( Sprint , Grand Four Fighting ); WM 1973 ( sprint , big four-way fight ); EM 1974 ( sprint , big four-way fight )
  8. ↑ Keller later stated in several interviews (for example: What is ... Erhard Keller actually doing? On ospbayern.de. Accessed March 25, 2020) that he had won “all 10 races in the series”. The results of the World Cups apart from the World and European Championships are not available, so this statement cannot be fully classified.
  9. ↑ a b Bernd Dassel: Inzell initially acts according to higher orders . In: Die Zeit (03/23/1973).
  10. ↑ a b c Dirk Maas: De voorlopers van de ISU Wereldbeker schaatsen on sportgeschiedenis.nl. Released November 22, 2015. Accessed March 25, 2020.
  11. ↑ "We zijn er van overtuigd dat er ruimte is voor een organisatie van schaatsprofs [...] Onze plan zijn wat more modestly than the van de ISSL, the prijzengeld is drastically published [...]" Prijzengeld drastically published in nieuwe proforganistie WISO . In: Leidse Courant (08/20/1973).
  12. ↑ Daniel Meuren: When was the amateur paragraph abolished? on faz.net. Released August 12, 2008. Accessed March 25, 2020.
  13. ↑ Lars Hjertberg: 55 år efter OS-guldet går Jonny sitt tuffaste lopp . In: Göteborgs Posten (06.02.2019).
  14. ↑ Joop Holthausen: Rijdersraad nog adviesorgaan . In: Nieuwe Leidsche Courant (05.01.1973).
  15. ↑ a b c Odd Gunnar Skagestad: Makten and æren - and tidenes første norske profflag på skøyter? on skoytesport.no. Released February 17, 2010. Accessed March 25, 2020.
  16. ↑ Soaring seagull . In: Der Spiegel . No. 52 , 1972, p. 93 ( online ).
  17. ↑ Hans Knot: Profschaatsen sloeg niet aan on freewave-media-magazine.nl. Retrieved March 25, 2020.
  18. ↑ Huub Snoep: Verkerk zoekt nog steeds naar 2 miljoen on schaatsen.nl. Retrieved March 25, 2020.