Swiss women's ski club

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The Swiss Women's Ski Club , or SDS for short , was a ski club in Switzerland that was founded in Mürren in 1929 . He was significantly involved in the development of women's alpine ski racing in Switzerland in particular and counted a large number of the strongest Swiss skiers among his members. The club also gained international fame by hosting the SDS races in Grindelwald . The SDS disbanded after 55 years of existence in 1984 due to a drop in membership and a lack of new talent.

founding

The founding of the Swiss Women's Ski Club was preceded by two competitions with the British Ladies' Ski Club , which was founded in Mürren in 1923 and initiated by Arnold Lunn . In the winter of 1927, he submitted the proposal to hold a British-Swiss team race ("Anglo-Swiss Race") in downhill and slalom for women. There has been such a team race for men since 1924, in which members of the Swiss Academic Ski Club took part on the Swiss side . In the 1920s there were already Swiss ski clubs specifically for women, such as the Swiss Women's Alpine Club founded in 1918 or the Skiclub de Dames founded in Geneva in 1923, and women were also represented in most of the other ski clubs, but these were active primarily in touring skiing and hardly in ski racing. Therefore, it was difficult to find participants for the first Swiss-British women's ski race, which took place on February 5, 1928 in Mürren. The competition was then clearly lost by the largely untrained Swiss women - some of them had only skied a slalom the day before the competition - clearly. Even the second race on January 21, 1929 brought no change in the balance of power between the British women, who had tried out alpine skiing, and the Swiss women who were again competing without any special preparation.

This second clear defeat led to the decision in Switzerland to found their own women's ski club in order to enable the female skiers to have organized training and, subsequently, to be able to compete internationally. For example, just six days after the second competition, on January 27, 1929, the Swiss Women's Ski Club was founded in Mürren with the aim of "spreading and improving women's skiing in Switzerland and gaining public recognition". The club had 15 members when it was founded. Among them were Gertrud Hodler, the mother of the later FIS President Marc Hodler , who was the first President of the SDS, Elsa Roth , who presided over the club from 1934 to 1938 and a second time from 1948, and Helene Zingg , who presided over the club from 1939 until 1947 board member.

The Swiss women's ski club

The primary task of the SDS was initially the training of the members and for this purpose the holding of ski courses. One of these was held for the first time with seven participants under the direction of Walter Amstutz shortly after it was founded. The first club races were also held soon after it was founded. The SDS's immediate application for admission to the Swiss Ski Association (SSV) was granted in October 1929 at the SSV delegates' meeting in Basel, although there was also resistance within the ranks of the SSV to a women's club and women's skiing in general. The third and last meeting of Swiss and British skiers in 1930 was won again by the English, but the performance of the Swiss women had already improved noticeably. The SDS also campaigned for women's races to be held at the Swiss Ski Championships, which was the case for the first time in 1931. There were initially no championship titles for women , until in June 1935 the SSV's assembly of deputies decided, at the request of the SDS, to award championship titles for women from now on.

In order to enable direct comparisons of the SDS drivers with each other and with foreign athletes, the "Combined downhill and slalom races of the SDS for women drivers from all countries" were held for the first time in Grindelwald in 1932 and later became known worldwide as the SDS race . In the first edition, the female drivers of the SDS were largely among themselves, but this race soon developed into the most important international ski race for women. From 1933 to 1935, the SDS championship title was also awarded on this occasion, before the women received Swiss championship titles from 1936. Due to regular training and competitions, the individual sections of the SDS made up the majority of internationally successful female skiers in Switzerland, especially in the 1930s and to a lesser extent in the following decades. Among them were the world champions Rösli Streiff and Anny Rüegg and the Olympic champion Renée Colliard , as well as the world championship and Olympic medalists Nini von Arx-Zogg , Antoinette Meyer , Erna Steuri and Helene Zingg . Members of the SDS also won numerous Swiss championship titles and the SSV club championship several times. Until 1934, the SDS was also responsible for the preparation, selection and financing of Swiss women participating in the Alpine World Ski Championships, before this took over in 1935, as was the case with the men of the SSV.

The number of members of the SDS passed the 200 mark for the first time in 1935 and reached its maximum with around 500 members in the early 1950s. In the following decades, however, the number of members steadily decreased, as most of the women joined other ski clubs and saw no need for their own women’s club. The remaining members dissolved the Swiss Women's Ski Club in 1984 - 55 years after it was founded - due to a lack of young talent.

literature

  • Karl Erb : Fascination downhill. SV Internationale / Schweizer Verlagshaus, Zurich 1985, ISBN 3-7263-6389-0 , pp. 131-136.
  • Rudolf Rubi : The summer and winter health resort: roads and railways, winter sports. (= In the valley of Grindelwald. Volume III). Verlag Sutter Druck, Grindelwald 1987, pp. 193-195.
  • Helene M. Zingg : Women's skiing in Switzerland. In: Yearbook of the Swiss Ski Association, Volume XXXVII, 1941. pp. 74–84.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The mountain hare. Yearbook of the Swiss Academic Ski Club. No. 1, 1924-27, pp. 11-17.
  2. ↑ Helene M. Zingg : Women's skiing in Switzerland. In: Yearbook of the Swiss Ski Association, Volume XXXVII, 1941. P. 81, quoted from: Happy hours in the snow. Published by the Swiss Women's Ski Club, 1938.
  3. ↑ a b See the lists of the clubs belonging to the SSV in the yearbooks of the Swiss Ski Association.