Wiltrud Drexel

Wiltrud Drexel
nation	Austria
birthday	16th August 1950 (age 70)
place of birth	Feldkirch , Austria
size	171 cm
Weight	71 kg
Career
discipline	Downhill , giant slalom , slalom , combination
society	SC Warth
status	resigned
End of career	1976
Medal table
Olympic games 0 × 0 × 1 × World championships 0 × 0 × 2 ×
winter Olympics bronze Sapporo 1972 Giant slalom  Alpine World Ski Championships bronze Sapporo 1972 Giant slalom bronze St. Moritz 1974 Departure
Placements in the Alpine Ski World Cup
Individual World Cup debut 1968  Individual world cup victories 5  Overall World Cup 3. ( 1968/69 )  Downhill World Cup 1. (1968/69)  Giant Slalom World Cup 7th (1968/69)  Slalom World Cup 7th ( 1970/71 )  Combination World Cup 11. ( 1975/76 )
Podium placements 1. 2. 3.  Departure 5 9 6th  Giant slalom 0 2 1  slalom 0 0 3  combination 0 0 1

Wiltrud Drexel (born August 16, 1950 in Feldkirch ) is a former Austrian ski racer . She won the bronze medal in the giant slalom at the 1972 Winter Olympics and the bronze medal in the downhill at the 1974 World Cup . In the World Cup you have five downhill victories and another 22 podium places. In the 1968/69 season she won the Downhill World Cup . In addition, she was four times Austrian champion .

Career

Drexel decided to pursue a career as a ski racer at the age of twelve. In 1968 she made her debut in the World Cup and won her first World Cup points on January 17th with tenth place in the downhill from Bad Gastein . In the 1968/69 season , the then 18-year-old was one of the world's best. She celebrated two victories in the downhill runs of the SDS race in Grindelwald and the gold key race in Schruns and secured another podium in St. Anton to win the Downhill World Cup. She also achieved third place in the giant slalom and came third in the overall World Cup, just one point behind Florence Steurer, who was second .

In the 1969/70 season Drexel achieved fourth place in the downhill from Grindelwald and second place in Garmisch-Partenkirchen . On the downhill run of the 1970 World Cup in Val Gardena , however, the medal contender did not make it to the finish because a ski binding opened shortly after the start. In the slalom she also split up. At the end of winter she achieved second place in the giant slalom in Voss , but fell back to 15th place in the overall World Cup with only three top 10 results. In 1970 she became Austrian downhill champion for the first time . In the 1970/71 season she achieved significantly more top results. She was in the top ten a total of twelve times and was on the podium six times in downhill and slalom. She celebrated her only World Cup victory this winter on January 28, 1971 in the downhill section of Pra-Loup . This made her fourth in the overall World Cup and second in the Downhill World Cup. In the Slalom World Cup she achieved her best placement with seventh place, in the following years she won only a few World Cup points in this discipline.

At the beginning of the 1971/72 season Drexel achieved second place in the downhill from Bad Gastein after several top 10 results. At the 1972 Winter Olympics in Sapporo it was not used in its strongest discipline, but surprisingly it won the bronze medal in the giant slalom, which also counted as a world championship medal, behind the Swiss Marie-Theres Nadig and the Austrian Annemarie Moser-Pröll . In the Olympic slalom, she failed in the first round. After the games, she achieved a podium finish in the giant slalom in the World Cup for the first time in three years and she achieved a victory and a second place in the two downhill runs from Chamonix , making her second in the Downhill World Cup and seventh in the overall World Cup, as in the previous year. Drexel also achieved second place in the Downhill World Cup in the 1972/73 season - for the third time in a row behind her teammate Annemarie Moser-Pröll. Drexel did not win, but achieved three second places in the downhill runs from Grindelwald, Chamonix and Schruns as well as third place in St. Moritz and fourth place in Val-d'Isère . With further top 10 results in slalom and giant slalom, she was sixth in the overall World Cup.

Drexel reached two second and two third places in World Cup downhill runs in the 1973/74 season , with which she was third in the Downhill World Cup and ninth in the overall World Cup. At the 1974 World Cup in St. Moritz, she won the bronze medal in the downhill, behind Annemarie Moser-Pröll and the Canadian Betsy Clifford . She also became Austrian champion in downhill and slalom. At the start of the 1974/75 season , Drexel celebrated her fifth and final World Cup victory in the descent of the first snow criterion in Val-d'Isère. You get two third places in the descent from Cortina d'Ampezzo and in the combination of Schruns. Already in 1971 and 1973 she had won the combination of the gold key race in Schruns, but at that time this was not part of the World Cup. She was fifth in the Downhill World Cup and eleventh in the overall World Cup.

In the 1975/76 season Drexel did not achieve a podium. Of five top 10 results, fourth place in the downhill from Cortina d'Ampezzo was her best World Cup result. In the 1976 Winter Olympics in Innsbruck she could not take part because she was defeated in the team's internal qualification against Elfi Deufl . After this winter, in which she was Austrian downhill champion for the third time, Drexel ended her career. Today she lives in Warth in Vorarlberg and runs a guesthouse there.

Sporting successes

winter Olympics

• Sapporo 1972 : 3rd giant slalom

World championships

• Sapporo 1972 : 3rd giant slalom
• St. Moritz 1974 : 3rd descent

World Cup ratings

Wiltrud Drexel won the discipline ranking in the downhill once.

season	total		Departure		Giant slalom		slalom		combination
	space	Points	space	Points	space	Points	space	Points	space	Points
1968	36.	6th	22nd	5	21st	1	-	-	-	-
1968/69	3.	111	1.	65	7th	34	13.	12	-	-
1969/70	15th	51	6th	31	13.	20th	-	-	-	-
1970/71	4th	124	2.	60	13.	19th	7th	45	-	-
1971/72	7th	102	2.	76	11.	22nd	21st	4th	-	-
1972/73	6th	106	2.	86	13.	16	20th	4th	-	-
1973/74	9.	72	3.	70	-	-	24.	2	-	-
1974/75	11.	82	5.	58	20th	4th	21st	6th	-	-
1975/76	20th	31	12.	23	-	-	-	-	11.	8th

World Cup victories

Drexel achieved a total of 27 podium places, including 5 wins:

date	place	country	discipline
January 10, 1969	Grindelwald	Switzerland	Departure
15th January 1969	Schruns	Austria	Departure
January 28, 1971	Pra-Loup	France	Departure
February 26, 1972	Crystal Mountain	United States	Departure
4th December 1974	Val d'Isère	France	Departure

Austrian championships

• Austrian champion in downhill 1970 , 1974 and 1976 and in slalom 1974

More Achievements

• Victory of the combined evaluation of the first snow criterion in Val-d'Isère on December 19, 1971

Awards (excerpt)

• 1996: Gold Medal of Merit of the Republic of Austria

literature

• Austrian Ski Association (Ed.): Austrian Ski Stars from A – Z. Ablinger & Garber, Hall in Tirol 2008, ISBN 978-3-9502285-7-1 , pp. 50–51.

Web links

• Wiltrud Drexel in the database of the International Ski Association (English)
• Wiltrud Drexel in the database of Ski-DB (English)
• Wiltrud Drexel in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Wiltrud Drexel attacks . In: Arbeiter-Zeitung . Vienna December 20, 1971, p. 11 ( berufer-zeitung.at - the open online archive - digitized).
2. ↑ List of all decorations awarded by the Federal President for services to the Republic of Austria from 1952 (PDF; 6.9 MB)