Jeannette Altwegg

Jeannette Altwegg
Full name	Jeannette Eleanor Altwegg
nation	United Kingdom
birthday	September 8, 1930
place of birth	Bombay,  British India
Career
discipline	Single run
Medal table
Olympic medals 1 × 0 × 1 × World Cup medals 1 × 1 × 1 × EM medals 2 × 1 × 1 ×
winter Olympics bronze St. Moritz 1948 Ladies gold Oslo 1952 Ladies  World figure skating championships bronze Paris 1949 Ladies silver London 1950 Ladies gold Milan 1951 Ladies  European figure skating championships bronze Milan 1949 Ladies silver Oslo 1950 Ladies gold Zurich 1951 Ladies gold Vienna 1952 Ladies

Jeannette Eleanor Altwegg CBE (born September 8, 1930 in Bombay , British India ) is a former British figure skater who started in a single run . She is the Olympic champion of 1952 , the world champion of 1951 and the European Championships of 1951 and 1952 .

Jeannette Altwegg was born in India in 1930 to an Englishwoman and a Swiss father. Two years later the family moved to England . Altwegg began to skate at the age of six and received private lessons. Her father often went to Switzerland with her on vacation . There she was trained by Jacques Gerschwiler , the uncle of the 1947 world champion , Hans Gerschwiler .

However, Altwegg also had talent in tennis . When a junior tournament was held for the first time in Wimbledon in 1947 , she took part and reached the finals. In the same year she became British junior figure skating champion and finished the world championship in fifth place. After these successes, she gave up tennis and concentrated only on figure skating. In 1947 she moved to Switzerland with her family.

At the Olympic Winter Games in St. Moritz in 1948 , Altwegg won the bronze medal in figure skating. In 1951 she became world and European champion in this discipline and repeated her success at the European championship the following year . She achieved the greatest success of her career in 1952 when she won the gold medal at the Olympic Games in Oslo . After this success, she announced her retirement at the age of 21. She no longer took part in the upcoming World Cup in Paris , where she could have started as the defending champion.

Unlike her famous predecessor Sonja Henie , Altwegg did not give up her amateur status in order to then appear as a professional runner at exhibition runs and gala evenings. She turned down numerous very lucrative offers and instead took a job as a carer in the Pestalozzi Children's Village in Trogen to look after war orphans. In 1953 she received an Order of the British Empire (CBE) from Queen Elizabeth II . In 1993 she was inducted into the Figure Skating Hall of Fame .

She married Marc Wirz, the brother of the Swiss figure skater Suzanne Wirz . They have four children and divorced in 1973. Her daughter Cristina Wirz became world champion curling in 1983 and won bronze at the European championships.

Results

Competition / year	1947	1948	1949	1950	1951	1952
winter Olympics		3.				1.
World championships	5.	4th	3.	2.	1.
European championships	4th	5.	3.	2.	1.	1.
British Championships		1.	1.	1.	1.

Web links

• Jeannette Altwegg in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )
• Biography

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Article in The Sunday of March 29, 2009: The fairy tale of the princess who did not want to be
2. ↑ European Curling Federation: Winner of the European Championships ( Memento of the original from May 26, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.