Udo Gurgel

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Udo Gurgel (* 1938 in Schwerin ) is a German civil engineer and designer of luge , bobsleigh and skeleton tracks .

Life

Gurgel studied until 1963 at the School of Civil Engineering Cottbus and then at the College of Architecture and Civil Engineering Weimar Structural Engineering . He then worked as an engineer in the team that was commissioned to plan an artificial ice rink for Oberhof in 1966 . Since then he has been busy planning, calculating and realizing bobsleigh and toboggan runs. In addition, Gurgel also plans single-family houses and smaller bridges in everyday life.

In 1968 the Scientific and Technical Center for Sports Buildings (WTZ Sportbauten) Leipzig began to build the first bobsleigh and toboggan run in the GDR in Oberhof - after the one on Königssee, the second artificial ice rink in the world. Since Gurgel and his colleagues had no insight into the detailed planning of the Königsseebahn, many technical solutions had to be redesigned. In order not to have to use wood for the formwork of the curve geometry, the WTZ and the civil engineer Ulrich Müther jointly developed a formwork-free concrete spraying process that is still used in the railways currently being built. In addition, a mainframe computer located in Dresden was used for the first time for the calculations . The racing sledge track in Oberhof is the first track in the world that has been completely calculated on the computer.

The good development of tobogganing and bobsleigh in the GDR on a world scale led to the fact that from 1982 to 1986 a second track was built in Altenberg in the Ore Mountains . The secrecy required by the Ministry for State Security on behalf of the sports management at the time prevented successful teamwork and had a negative effect on the construction, so that the track had to be rebuilt after a test season.

After this setback, the company specialized more and more in design, planning and calculation and developed its own software for this purpose, so that the engineering office is now a world leader in the planning of bobsleigh and toboggan runs.

After the political change , Gurgel went into business for himself and founded an engineering office in 1993 in order to be able to implement the many years of experience of the WTZ Sportbauten in the future. Today the engineering office Gurgel + Partner Leipzig is run by Mike Richter and Jörg Penseler, Udo Gurgel is officially only active as a consultant.

Udo Gurgel has lived in Leipzig since 1966.

Buildings (with details of the planning periods)

  • 1968–1970: combined bobsleigh and toboggan run in Oberhof (first artificially supercooled bobsleigh and toboggan run in the world, calculated entirely on the computer)
  • 1980, 1982–1986, 2007: combined bobsleigh and toboggan run in Altenberg and its renovation (considered the most difficult run in the world)
  • 1982–1985: Toboggan run in Sigulda , Latvia
  • 1984–1986: combined bobsleigh and toboggan run for the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary , Canada
  • 1989–1991: combined bobsleigh and toboggan run for the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer , Norway
  • 1993–1995: combined bobsleigh and toboggan run for the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano , Japan
  • 1992, 1996–1998: combined bobsleigh and toboggan run for the 2002 Winter Olympics in Park City , USA (design of a 1,500 m long run and redesign to shorten it)
  • 2003–2004: combined bobsleigh and toboggan run for the 2006 Winter Olympics in Cesana , Italy
  • 2004–2006: combined bobsleigh and toboggan run for the 2010 Winter Olympics in Whistler-Blackcomb near Vancouver , Canada
  • 2009–2010: combined bobsleigh and toboggan run for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Krasnaja Polyana near Sochi , Russia (homologation in March 2012)
  • 2016: combined bobsleigh and toboggan run in Paramonowo near Moscow , Russia

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Udo Gurgel: The Altenberg bobsleigh and toboggan run. ( Memento from September 10, 2004 in the Internet Archive ) In: Sportmuseum aktuell, H. 1/2001, p. 7.

See also

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Gurgel, Udo
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German civil engineer and designer of bobsleigh and toboggan runs
DATE OF BIRTH 1938
PLACE OF BIRTH Schwerin