Toni Mark

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Toni Mark Alpine skiing
nation AustriaAustria Austria
birthday October 29, 1934
place of birth Vienna
date of death March 10, 1959
Place of death Tegernsee, Germany
Career
discipline Slalom , giant slalom ,
downhill , combination
society SK Saalfelden
End of career 1959
 

Toni Mark (born October 29, 1934 in Vienna ; † March 10, 1959 in Tegernsee ) was an Austrian ski racer . He celebrated several victories in international races, was Austrian combined champion in 1959 and had a fatal accident shortly afterwards in a downhill race in Rottach-Egern .

biography

Mark was born in 1934 as the oldest of nine siblings in a working-class family in Vienna . He grew up in Saalfelden in the province of Salzburg , started skiing as a child and, after the end of the Second World War , competitive ski racing. Mark completed an apprenticeship as a carpenter , worked for several years in the construction of material ropeways and worked in the Mittersiller ski factory ( Blizzard ) until his death .

The first successes in ski racing came at the beginning of the 1950s, when Mark was part of the Salzburg regional squad. From 1953 to 1955 he won eight medals at the Austrian Junior Championships and in 1954 all disciplines at the Salzburg State Championships. Mark was included in the Austrian national team in the 1954/1955 season and scored his first podium positions in FIS races that same winter. After further podium finishes in the 1955/1956 season, he celebrated several victories in the winter of 1956/1957: He won the downhill and combination of the 3-tre races in Madonna di Campiglio , also the downhill and combination in Crans-Montana , the slalom of the Arlberg-Kandahar -Races in Chamonix and downhill, slalom and combination in Tatranská Lomnica . A low form at the beginning of the next winter prevented participation in the 1958 World Cup in Bad Gastein , it was only used there as a forerunner. At the end of the season he had two more victories in the slalom and in the downhill of the Gornergrat derby in Zermatt .

Toni Mark's grave at the Saalfelden cemetery

In the winter of 1958/1959, Mark initially remained without a podium place until he finished second in slalom at the Austrian Championships in Kitzbühel as in the previous year and thus secured the Austrian championship title in the combination. Six days later, on March 7, 1959, Toni Mark had a hard fall in the downhill run of the 4th international ski race around the Golden Shield from Wallberg in Rottach-Egern, Bavaria . He got off the piste shortly before the finish and drove into a group of spectators, suffered severe head injuries and died three days later, on the morning of March 10, 1959, in the Tegernsee hospital . Toni Mark was buried in the local cemetery in Saalfelden. In his memory from 1961 to the 1970s, the Toni Mark commemorative races were held in his home town of Saalfelden, alternating with Saalbach-Hinterglemm and Zell am See .

It was the second fatal accident in ski racing within a short time after the Canadian John Semmelink had an accident on the Kandahar downhill run from Garmisch-Partenkirchen a month earlier . These accidents prompted the International Ski Federation FIS to undertake far-reaching reforms. At the FIS Congress in June 1959, it was decided that helmets were compulsory, as well as the implementation of racing training (“non-stop”) in descents, the introduction of a technical delegate responsible for safety and better safety precautions on the slopes in the form of safety nets, bales of straw and larger fall areas .

successes

Victories in FIS races

Austrian championships

literature

Individual evidence

  1. Toni Mark won medals at Austrian youth championships. ÖSV winner board, accessed on May 14, 2012.
  2. Joachim Glaser: Goldsmiths in the snow. 100 years of the Salzburg State Ski Association. Böhlau, Vienna-Cologne-Weimar 2011, ISBN 978-3-205-78560-6 , p. 336.
  3. ^ Hermann Nussbaumer: Victory on white slopes. Balance of alpine skiing. 9th expanded edition, Trauner Verlag, Linz 1977, ISBN 3-85320-176-8 , p. 191.
  4. knerger.de: Toni Mark's grave
  5. see also: Karl Erb : Fascination Departure. SV Internationale / Schweizer Verlagshaus, Zurich 1985, ISBN 3-7263-6389-0 , p. 167 and Dieter Seefranz : The White Rush. From skiing in Austria. Forum Verlag, Vienna 1976, p. 45.