Turid Jespersen

Turid Jespersen
Full name	Liv Turid Jespersen
nation	Norway
birthday	February 22, 1917
place of birth	Oslo , NOR
date of death	January 17, 1991
Place of death	Lincoln , Loudoun County , VA , United States
Career
discipline	Downhill , slalom , alpine combination

Liv Turid "Tu" Jespersen (born February 22, 1917 in Kristiania (Oslo) , Norway , † January 17, 1991 in Lincoln , Loudoun County , VA , United States ) was a Norwegian alpine ski racer.

Jespersen was one of the great young hopes in Norwegian alpine skiing of the early 1930s during her short career . In 1935 she was a participant in the Alpine World Ski Championships and in 1936 a member of the Norwegian women's team for the Olympic Winter Games in Garmisch-Partenkirchen .

Short sporting career

Turid Jespersen took part in the Alpine World Ski Championships in Mürren , Switzerland, in 1935 when she was 18 and only the second Norwegian woman .

She achieved 26th place in downhill skiing among 31 starters, but proved her skills in the slalom competition in which she finished the course on the Allmendhübel saddle in seventh place and stood in front of established greats in the ski world such as Hadwig Pfeifer-Lantschner , Jeanette Kessler , Esmé MacKinnon and Helen Boughton-Leigh as well as the entire Austrian team placed. In the Alpine Combined she came in 14th with the result from the goal run.

In the following year she was scheduled to take part in the Alpine Combination at the 1936 Winter Olympics in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, alongside Laila Schou Nilsen , Johanne Dybwad and Nora Strömstad . In a training fall, she broke her leg and had to skip the Olympic competition. A start at the Alpine World Ski Championships shortly afterwards in Innsbruck had become impossible.

Private

Liv Turid was the daughter of the Norwegian Olympic champion in gymnastics Per Mathias Jespersen (1888–1964), who came from Skien in the province of Telemark , and his wife, the music teacher Anna Pauline, née. Johnsen (1889-1964). She was born in Kristiania (Oslo) in 1917 and had an older brother, Finn Varde Jespersen (1914–1944).

During the time of the occupation of Norway by the German Reich in World War II , she acted as a courier for the Norwegian resistance for some time , bringing important news from one secret base to another on skis. Around 1941 she followed her brother Finn to Canada , who moved there after the German troops marched into Norway and fought as a fighter pilot on the side of the Allies for the liberation of his country. In Canada she met her first husband, Fritz Thoresen, a Norwegian military pilot and flight instructor. The two married and lived near the city of Toronto in the military settlement " Little Norway " built on one of the Toronto Islands , where in 1943 their son Kjell, their only child, was born.

After the Second World War, the family returned to Oslo. Fritz Thoresen worked as a pilot for Scandinavian Airlines and the Norwegian airline Braathens . He had an accident in 1960 as a passenger in the crash of a SAS Caravelle over Ankara .

Turid emigrated to the USA after the death of her husband and only lived in the Washington, DC area, where she worked as a ski instructor in the nearby Appalachians . Your best-known customer was the American astronaut and later Senator John Glenn . While taking ski lessons, she met her second husband Lorenzo Custis Lewis from Lincoln , Virginia , with whom she spent the rest of her life in his hometown at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains .

During this time she worked as a co- author on the war memorabilia of her brother who died in the aerial battle over Normandy . The book was published in Norway in 1983 by JW Cappelen.

Turid Jespersen remained an avid cross-country skier to the end . She died at the age of 74 on January 17, 1991 as a result of a stroke and was buried in her Norwegian homeland, in Lardal , Vestfold province, next to her first husband and only son. Her second husband, Lorenzo, died almost six years later to the day in Lincoln, Loudoun County , Virginia.

Sporting record

winter Olympics

winter Olympics	competition
	Departure	slalom	Alpine combination
1936 Garmisch-Partenkirchen	DNS (violated)	DNS (violated)	DNS (violated)

Alpine World Ski Championships

Alpine World Ski Championships	competition
	Departure	slalom	Alpine combination
1935 Murren	26th	7th	14th

Web link

• Portrait of the Norwegian skier Turid Jespersen ; Austrian National Library; Retrieved from bildarchivaustria.at on November 22, 2017
• Turid Jespersen from Heming and Birger Ruud i Garmisch ; Norsk Bergverksmuseum; Retrieved from digitaltmuseum.nor on November 22, 2017

swell

• Turid Jespersen Lodge # 44 / Lodge's Name Short biography on Daughters of Norway page; accessed on November 22, 2017
• Justin Glenn: The Washingtons. A family history. Volume 5 (Part One) Generation Nine of ... ; Retrieved from books.google.at on November 22, 2017

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Jespersen, Per Mathias Hvem er Hvem? Utgitt av HJ Steenstrup, Oslo 1930; Retrieved from runeberg.org on November 22, 2017