Luge World Championships 1955

I. Luge World Championships 1955
	Number of athletes	Medalist
Single seater women	12 from 6 nations	Gold: Karla Kienzl ( AUT ) Silver: Maria Isser (AUT) Bronze: Marianne Bauer ( GER )
Single seater men	40 from 8 nations	Gold: Anton Salvesen ( NOR ) Silver: Josef Thaler (AUT) Bronze: Josef Isser (AUT)
Two-seater	28 from 5 nations	Gold: Krausner / Thaler (AUT) Silver: J. Isser / M. Isser (AUT) Bronze: Strillinger / Nachmann (GER)

The 1st Luge World Championships took place on February 5th and 6th, 1955 in Oslo, Norway .

A total of three competitions were held, two single-seater races - one for women and one for men - and a two-seater competition. While the individual competitions were decided in four rounds, there were two runs for the doubles. This program has changed only slightly to this day (as of 2010) with the introduction of the team competition in 1989. The first world champions were the Norwegian Anton Salvesen , the Austrian Karla Kienzl and the Austrian double Hans Krausner / Josef Thaler . Apart from the two winning nations Norway and Austria, who together won seven of the nine medals, only the German athletes were able to secure two bronze medals.

The races were held on the Korketrekkeren (German "corkscrew track") and watched by around 30,000 spectators. The track was judged to be difficult because it had partly artificial and partly natural curves, which made it a real "world championship track" from the point of view of world champion Karla Kienzl. In addition, due to the cloudy weather, the athletes could only train a little on the track. While the Central Europeans from the "tobogganing nations" Germany, Austria and Italy steered their racing sleds by shifting their bodies, the Norwegians used rod steering until 1958. This had its advantages in curves with large radii and small gradients, as was characteristic of the Scandinavian railways in the 1950s. In contrast, the toboggan runs in Central Europe already had tighter and steeper curves at that time.

Competitions

Women's singles

space	Athlete	country	total time
1	Karla Kienzl	AUT	8: 27.98 min
2	Maria Isser	AUT	8: 34.12 min
3	Marianne Bauer	GER	8: 43.85 min
4th	Lotte Scheimpflug	ITA	8: 53.33 min
5	Gerda opponent	AUT	8: 56.71 min
6th	Barbara Gorgon	POLE	9:00, 10 min
7th	May Torriani	SUI	9: 02.43 min
8th	Wilhelmine Schmidtbauer	GER	9:06:12 min
9	Gertrud Engelke	GER	9: 07.98 min
10	Erika Schiller	GER	9: 11.94 min
11	Erika Leitner	ITA	9: 20.50 min
12	Liv Janner Storhaug	NOR	9: 23.93 min

Date: February 5 (first to third run), February 6 (fourth run)

At the five post-war European championships from 1951 to 1955, all titles and 12 of 15 medals went to Austrian athletes. Maria Isser and Karla Kienzl were particularly successful . These two athletes also dominated the first world championships: Kienzl set the fastest time in all three rounds on the first day of the race and only had to defend her clear lead of several seconds over Maria Isser in the last run. In fact, the competition ended with a victory for Kienzl, who triumphed six seconds ahead of Isser and was more than 15 seconds ahead of third-placed German Marianne Bauer . After the World Championships, the 32-year-old Kienzl resigned because she saw Oslo as the “goal of a very long sporting path”.

Overall, the gaps in the twelve-man field were very large. Sixth, Barbara Gorgon from Poland , was already more than half a minute behind the winner. The only Norwegian Liv Janner Storhaug fell far behind after a fall and finally finished last, almost a minute behind Karla Kienzl.

Men's single seaters

space	athlete	country	total time
1	Anton Salvesen	NOR	8: 08.59 min
2	Josef Thaler	AUT	8: 10.53 min
3	Josef Isser	AUT	8: 15.21 min
4th	Paul Aste	AUT	8: 16.24 min
5	Alf Large	NOR	8: 17.60 min
6th	Henri Isser	AUT	8: 17.68 min
7th	Erhard Grundmann	GER	8: 19.76 min
8th	Gunnar Böhn Jr.	NOR	8: 20.10 min
9	Willi laugh	AUT	8: 20.85 min
10	Mogans Christensen	NOR	8: 21.90 min

Similar to their teammates, the Austrian men had taken the leading position in luge since 1951, when regular European championships were held again. With one exception they had won the continental title every year, only in 1952 the German Rudolf Maschke was faster. Nevertheless, the men's competition developed into a much closer race than it had been the case in the women's competition. This was mainly due to the fact that the rod steering, which was only practiced by the Norwegians, worked particularly well on their home track, which allowed them to keep up with the previously dominant Austrians. Accordingly, these two teams also provided nine of the ten best tobogganers; only the German Erhard Grundmann placed seventh in between.

The battle between Norwegians and Austrians led to significantly smaller gaps at the top than in the women's race: Tenth- placed Mogans Christensen from Norway was just 13 seconds behind his victorious team-mate Anton Salvesen . The then 28-year-old Salvesen was little noticed until the World Championships at international level, although he had won the Norwegian championship title several times. Like Karla Kienzl, he ended his career after the World Championships. Three Austrians were placed behind the Norwegian, of which Josef Thaler was the best. Like his sister Maria, Josef Isser won a medal in third place, beating four-time European champion Paul Aste , who finished fourth.

Two-seater

space	athlete	country	total time
1	Hans Krausner Josef Thaler	AUT	4:00, 10 min
2	Josef Isser Maria Isser	AUT	4: 01.92 min
3	Josef Strillinger Fritz Nachmann	GER	4: 11.08 min
4th	Gunnar Böhn Jr. Sverre Thuve	NOR	4: 14.50 min
5	Arne Holst Sverre Lorentzen	NOR	4: 15.43 min
6th	Anton Salvesen Alf Large	NOR	4: 17.83 min
7th	Paul Aste Heinrich Isser	AUT	4: 25.63 min
8th	Orhulf Hodne Johannes Brennhovd	NOR	4: 27.96 min
9	Sepp Mayr Erhard Grundmann	GER	4: 27.98 min
10	Walter Hofer Erika Leitner	ITA	4: 30.13 min

In the doubles category, too, the Austrian athletes had dominated the European Championships in the years before the first world championships: duos from the Alpine republic had secured all four possible titles and eleven of twelve medals. The double Josef Isser / Maria Isser, which was the first mixed gender duo to win an international title, had already provided something special at the European championship in 1954. A year later, at the first world championships, Maria Isser started again in the doubles competition with her brother.

In contrast to the men's single-seater race, in which the Norwegians performed as well as the Austrians, they were clearly the strongest in the double-seater. After two runs, two Austrian doubles, almost two seconds apart, led the final ranking, while the third-placed German duo was already eleven seconds behind. The winners were Hans Krausner and Josef Thaler front of the two-Isser siblings what the medals five and six meant for the Austrian team. In third place, Josef Strillinger and Fritz Nachmann won the second bronze medal for Germany; Behind them, in positions four to six, three Norwegian doubles missed another medal for the host country.

Most of the starters in the doubles had already started in the singles, including all medal winners with the exception of Hans Krausner. Josef Thaler and Josef and Maria Isser each won their second medal and thus became the most successful athletes at the first world championships. The individual world champion Anton Salvesen and his partner Alf Large , the fifth in the single-seater race, only came in sixth.

Medal table

space	country	gold	silver	bronze	total
1	Austria	2	3	1	6th
2	Norway	1	0	0	1
3	BR Germany	0	0	2	2

meaning

Norway, which until then had become particularly well-known in winter sports for the events on Holmenkollen , only hosted a major event of this sport for the second time with the Luge World Championships. It was also the only world championship where a Norwegian could win a medal. The event was also of social importance for the country, for example the Norwegian King Olav V was personally present as a guest of honor.

After 1955, the Austrians lost their supremacy in luge sport. Instead, the two German states continued to emerge and were ultimately the most successful nation at the discipline's Olympic premiere in 1964. The four world champions from 1955 were invited as guests of honor 24 years later on the occasion of the 20th world championships at Königssee in order to present the prizes to the new world champions. In an edition of the Berchtesgadener Anzeiger from 1979 it says about it:

"The first world champions: [...] names that today mostly only mean something to old sports comrades or some experts. Unfortunately, because these luge pioneers really don't deserve to be “forgotten”. [...] It is difficult to describe the joy that Karla Kienzl, Anton Salvesen, Hans Krausner and Sepp Thaler were happy with when they were invited to Berchtesgaden. And proof of how right it was to show these first tobogganists that they have not been forgotten. "

- Berchtesgadener Anzeiger, January 27, 1979

literature

• 1st Luge World Championship, 5th – 6th February 1955, Oslo. In: Bert Isatitsch (Ed.): 100 years of tobogganing. Self-published, Liezen 1983, pp. 280–288. With several documents including newspaper articles and full lists of results.