Werner Bleiner (born May 26, 1946 in Tschagguns ) is a former Austrian ski racer . At the end of the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s, he was one of the most successful athletes in the world in slalom and especially in giant slalom . Bleiner won two world cup races and was runner-up in the giant slalom world championship in 1970 .
Bleiner began to ski competitively at the age of 12. He soon became one of the strongest runners in Austria's youngsters and won eight junior championship titles from 1964 to 1966, and in 1965 he even won all four disciplines (downhill, giant slalom, slalom and combined). During these years he also had his first successes on an international level. After finishing second in the B-class slalom on Mount Etna in 1964 , he also achieved second place in the first-class Lauberhorn descent in Wengen in 1965 . He also achieved good results in the Scandinavian races in the winter of 1965: he finished third in the Narvik downhill and in the Gällivare giant slalom and celebrated his first victory in the Åre giant slalom . In the next few years, the giant slalom also became his strongest discipline. In the winter of 1965/66 he achieved another victory in the giant slalom of Kranjska Gora and two second places in the giant slalom of Cortina d'Ampezzo and Oberwiesenthal . He qualified for the 1966 World Cup in Portillo, Chile , where he came seventh in the giant slalom.
During the first World Cup season in 1967 , Bleiner achieved a total of six top 10 results in all three disciplines held at the time (downhill, giant slalom and slalom), including two third places at the end of the season in the slalom and the giant slalom in Jackson Hole , bringing him ninth place in the overall World Cup reached. He also won the giant slalom on Whistler Mountain, which is not part of the World Cup . In the 1968 World Cup season, Bleiner initially drove into the top ten twice. He had no success in the giant slalom of the 1968 Winter Olympics . He was disqualified for a goal mistake due to a fall. A little more than two weeks later, on February 24, 1968, Bleiner won his first World Cup race in the giant slalom in Oslo . In the overall World Cup, however, he fell back to 21st place.
During the entire 1968/69 season Bleiner did not get in shape and did not make it into the points in a single World Cup race, i.e. among the top ten. His best results were two eleventh places. The 1969/70 season was much more successful : Bleiner won the silver medal in the giant slalom at the 1970 World Cup in Val Gardena behind his compatriot Karl Schranz . This was followed by two more second places in World Cup giant slalom and at the end of the season in Voss' giant slalom, his second World Cup victory. Overall, this winter he was able to rank among the top eight in ten of eleven World Cup giant slaloms (the races of the World Cup were also part of the World Cup) and thus achieved fourth place in the Giant Slalom World Cup, tied with Schranz. With two top 6 results in slaloms, he reached seventh place in the overall World Cup, making this season his most successful.
After that, however, Bleiner could no longer match these results. In the 1970/71 season he achieved five top 10 results, but only one podium place in the giant slalom of Mont Sainte-Anne , which is why he fell back to eighth place in the World Cup and was no longer among the top 20 in the overall standings. The 1971/72 season was even worse , in which he was only twice in the top ten. At the 1972 Winter Olympics , he finished 18th in the giant slalom.
Because Bleiner could no longer gain a foothold in the World Cup, he switched to the North American professional racing series in 1973. There he achieved some successes and won the giant slalom classification in the winter of 1974/75. For several years he was able to classify himself in the top ten of the overall ranking until he retired from ski racing in 1979.
Austria
