Sonja Sperl

Sonja Sperl
nation	Germany
birthday	3rd December 1936 (age 83)
place of birth	Bayerisch Eisenstein ,  German Empire
Career
discipline	Slalom , giant slalom , downhill , combination
society	SV Bayerisch Eisenstein
status	resigned
End of career	1960
Medal table
World championships 0 × 1 × 0 ×
Alpine World Ski Championships silver Squaw Valley 1960 combination

Sonja Sperl (born December 3, 1936 in Bayerisch Eisenstein ) is a former German ski racer . In the 1950s she was the first female skier from the Bavarian Forest to permanently belong to the alpine team of the German Ski Association (DSV). She is a three-time German champion and took part in the Winter Olympics twice. In 1960 she won silver in combination at the World Ski Championships.

Career

Sperl was born in the small Lower Bavarian border town of Eisenstein. Her parents ran the Hohenzollersche Gasthaus on the Great Arbersee as tenants . She started skiing as a student. In order to better cope with the difficult way to school down into the valley, especially in winter, she took her skis, initially without her parents' knowledge, and drove away on the often icy wooden pulling track on the Arber. After the death of their father, the family moved to Eisenstein in 1945. From there, she and a schoolmate climbed up the Großer Arber almost every day to ski in winter . Their exercises were made easier when the first chairlift was built on the Arber in September 1949.

Her talent was noticed in the Bayerisch Eisenstein sports club and so she was registered in 1951 via the Bayerwald ski region for the first German youth championship after the Second World War, which took place in Ruhpolding in Upper Bavaria . There she prevailed against the usually dominant female riders from the foothills of the Alps and won her first German youth championship in slalom at the age of 14. Until 1955 Sperl remained German youth champion in all alpine disciplines. In total, she won 13 championship titles.

International career

She caught up with the international top at the beginning of 1956 when, completely surprisingly, despite the high starting number 43, she won the downhill race at the 16th International Hahnenkamm Race in Kitzbühel on January 14th . Their victory against the world's ski elite came so unexpectedly that the race jury checked the electrical measuring devices twice. She was not even nominated for the German Olympic team, but with this result she qualified for the 1956 Winter Olympics in Cortina d'Ampezzo , Italy , but could not confirm her performance there with a 32nd place in the downhill.
In the following years Sperl remained the most consistent driver in the German squad. In 1957 she became German slalom champion in Oberammergau , and two years later she won the slalom and combined titles in Oberstaufen .

World Championship silver 1960

Together with Heidi Biebl from Allgäu , she was set for the 1960 Winter Olympics in Squaw Valley, USA. She contributed to the very good result of the German women's team at the Olympic competitions with a seventh, eighth and ninth place in downhill, giant slalom and slalom. In the non-Olympic combined ranking , which is part of the world championship , she finished second behind Canadian Anne Heggtveit . When she returned from the United States, the residents of her hometown gave her a great celebration of victory. She was received at the border of the district and accompanied by a long column of cars to Bayerisch Eisenstein, where gunfire was fired in her honor.

Marriage and resignation

In 1960 Sperl married and she had a daughter. Her financial resources no longer allowed the amateur athlete to travel far to the competition site. She resigned from competitive sports after seven years in the German national ski team. She passed the state ski instructor examination and after some time opened her own ski school. In later years she ran a pension in Bayerisch Eisenstein.

Sporting successes

Olympic games

• Cortina d'Ampezzo 1956 : 32nd departure
• Squaw Valley 1960 : 7th downhill, 9th giant slalom, 8th slalom

World championships

• Squaw Valley 1960 : 2nd combination

German championships

Sonja Sperl is three-time German champion :

• 2 × slalom (1957 and 1959)
• 1 × combination (1959)

literature

• Marita Haller: Sonja Sperl. Ski pioneer and vice world champion from the Bavarian Forest. in: Beautiful Bavarian Forest - magazine for culture, leisure, recreation and entertainment, No. 132, January / February 2000, p. 26f.

Web links

• Sonja Sperl in the database of the International Ski Association (English)
• Sonja Sperl in the database of Ski-DB (English)
• Sonja Sperl in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Toni Sailer wins the downhill race . In: Arbeiter-Zeitung . Vienna January 15, 1956, p. 28 ( berufer-zeitung.at - the open online archive - digitized).