Toni Spiss

Toni Spiss
nation	Austria
birthday	April 8, 1930
place of birth	St. Anton am Arlberg , Austria
date of death	March 20, 1993
Place of death	Sankt Anton am Arlberg
Career
discipline	Giant slalom , slalom descent , combination
society	Ski Club Arlberg
Medal table
Olympic medals 0 × 0 × 1 × World Cup medals 0 × 0 × 2 ×
winter Olympics bronze Oslo 1952 Giant slalom  Alpine World Ski Championships bronze Oslo 1952 Giant slalom bronze Are 1954 slalom

Toni Spiss (born April 8, 1930 in Sankt Anton am Arlberg ; † March 20, 1993 there ) was an Austrian ski racer . He won the bronze medal in giant slalom at the 1952 Winter Olympics and in slalom at the 1954 World Championships , was Austrian champion in Alpine Combined in 1952 and won numerous international races.

Career

The first outstanding international result of the Austrian starting for the Ski Club Arlberg was a fifth place in 1951 at the Arlberg-Kandahar race . At the end of January 1952, Spiss took part in the Austrian Championships at Semmering , where he won two bronze medals in downhill and giant slalom and came second in slalom. In the Alpine Combined , he even won the title thanks to his consistency in the three competitions. One month later, the Austrian competed for the first and only time at the Winter Olympics , which took place in Oslo in 1952 , where he took part in giant slalom and slalom. While he was eliminated in the slalom, he won the bronze medal in the giant slalom 3.8 seconds behind Stein Eriksen and Pravda. The 21-year-old convinced a US industrialist so much that he adopted Spiss in the wake of the Olympic Games and placed him as the head of a ski school in Vermont .

The Olympic bronze medal, which also counted as a world championship medal, was Spiss' greatest success, but more followed. In 1954 he was able to win the slalom bronze medal at the World Ski Championships in Åre, Sweden . In 1955, he also placed second behind Molterer in the Hahnenkamm slalom race, which was already steeped in tradition at the time, after winning the same competition in giant slalom and slalom the year before and achieving second place in the combination.

Together with his teammates from the junior division, Othmar Schneider and Christian Pravda , Spiss introduced an internationally new and successful technique in which the upper body remains largely calm; this was called the counter shoulder technique.

He was the supervisor of the Austrian national team, but still competed in races: In March 1957, for example, he won the slalom at the Etna Race (third in the downhill and second in the combination).

Sporting successes

winter Olympics

• Oslo 1952 : 3rd giant slalom

World championships

• Oslo 1952 : 3rd giant slalom
• Åre 1954 : 3rd slalom, 9th giant slalom

Austrian championships

• Austrian combined champion in 1952

Web links

• Toni Spiss in the database of the International Ski Federation (English)
• Toni Spiss in the database of Ski-DB (English)
• Toni Spiss in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Toni Spiess . In: Der Spiegel . No. 9 , 1952 ( online ).
2. ↑ "Toni Spiss wins the giant slalom" . In: Arbeiter-Zeitung . Vienna January 23, 1954, p. 8 ( berufer-zeitung.at - the open online archive - digitized).
3. ^ "The Lost Years" . In: Arbeiter-Zeitung . Vienna January 26, 1954, p. 8 ( berufer-zeitung.at - the open online archive - digitized).
4. ↑ You will be an Olympic champion forever ( memento of the original from May 31, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on lech-zuers.de 
5. ↑ As always: Toni Sailer wins everything . In: Arbeiter-Zeitung . Vienna March 19, 1957, p. 10 ( berufer-zeitung.at - the open online archive - digitized).