Wolfram Ortner

Wolfram Ortner
nation	Austria
birthday	10th March 1960 (age 60)
place of birth	Bad Kleinkirchheim , Austria
size	181 cm
Career
discipline	Slalom , giant slalom , combination
society	SC Bad Kleinkirchheim
status	resigned
End of career	October 1982

Wolfram Ortner (born March 10, 1960 in Bad Kleinkirchheim ) is a former Austrian ski racer . He achieved his greatest successes in slalom , giant slalom and in combination . In slalom and giant slalom he won numerous European Cup and FIS races around the turn of the 1980s, was placed in the first starting group for years and had several top 10 placements in the World Cup . At the height and at the end of his career in 1982, Wolfram Ortner took fourth place in the combination at the 1982 Alpine World Ski Championships in Schladming. After the end of his career, he founded his distillery (1989) and the World Spirits Award (2004), which is internationally recognized in professional circles as a high-quality spirits award.

Childhood and youth

Wolfram Ortner was born on March 10, 1960 in Bad Kleinkirchheim . His father was a secondary school teacher in Radenthein, worked as a gymnastics teacher and state student manager - one of the reasons for the “naturally forced” growing into ski racing. The parallel slalom between everyday school life and a sports career began quickly: at the age of ten, he joined the ÖSV school squad as the youngest, because he had already won the school ski championships. At the age of eleven he was faster than the 14-year-olds at the regional level and at twelve he was two-time Austrian school ski champion. In 1974 Ortner passed the entrance exam for the Stams ski school. A year later he was "the world's best youth I runner in slalom" and ranked under 40 points in the FIS list. In 1976 he was appointed to the C-team of the Austrian Ski Association (ÖSV), and in the same year he was appointed to the ÖSV-B-team.

Career

Ski career

Shortly afterwards, on December 17, 1976 Wolfram Ortner had his first World Cup appearance in Madonna di Campiglio and was 15th out of the fourth starting group, then 14th in Laax in Switzerland, third-best Austrian behind Phil Mahre and Christian Neureuther .

There were further successes in FIS races. After two slalom victories in Bad Kleinkirchheim in front of Andy Wenzel and Paolo De Chiesa and in Pernitz, he became vice European champion in slalom and giant slalom in Kranjska Gora at the European junior championship on March 6, 1977. According to the FIS ranking list in slalom, that meant: 2nd starting group in World Cup races. After winning the European Cup race in Jahorina and first place with the OPA Cup, the prize of the Organization of the Alpine Ski Associations, in Sportgastein, he was 16th in the FIS ranking in the 1977/78 ski season and was the leader in the European Cup. On January 22nd, 1978 Wolfram Ortner is the "sensation in Kitzbühel ": 5th place in the World Cup slalom and appointment to the World Cup team for Garmisch . As 15th in the FIS rankings, the promotion to the national team was due, followed by winning the European Cup slalom in Zakopane . The next highlight was the 4th place in the giant slalom in Jasná in the Low Tatras on February 4th 1979.

Wolfram Ortner's skiing career was marked by numerous injuries: a hernia and several torn ligaments prevented the skier from participating in the 1980 Olympic Games in Lake Placid . Nevertheless, he continued to concentrate on his skiing career and was able to achieve 5th place in the slalom in St. Anton on February 1, 1982 , with start number 57, where he had even led after the first run. And in the first Super-G in ski history on the 2.6 km long track in La Villa in Hochabtei in the Dolomites, he was able to take second place in this new discipline, 0.73 s behind Pirmin Zurbriggen . This race on December 10, 1981 was not part of the World Cup. On January 8, 1982, after a herniated disc, it was said: Support corset during training and at the end of January in Adelboden , Switzerland, when it was eliminated for the World Cup in Schladming . Ortner took 4th place in the combination at this world championship; Placed in second place after the slalom on February 1st, he tore up too great a time gap (21st place) in the downhill on February 5th, in which he was quite inexperienced. In the special slalom on February 7th, he was one of the 31 drivers who did not make it into the ranking.

After the world championship, Wolfram Ortner was in very good shape (5th place in the giant slalom in Kirchberg on February 9th and 6th place in the slalom on March 14th in Jasná), but was followed by bad luck with injuries in the same month: knee injury and cartilage damage with surgery in Innsbruck and meniscus injury at the World Cup final on March 26th in Sestriere (Montgenèvre) with an operation in Klagenfurt. Despite the lack of training, he was still able to assert himself as 12th in the world rankings in slalom this year. It was not until October 1982 that it became apparent that no increase in performance was expected, no matter how hard training. And the last attempt at a race without training in Courmayeur meant the premature end of a great ski racing career - and the beginning of a new life in a wide variety of areas.

Further career

After his skiing career in 1982, Wolfram Ortner took over his parents' hotel business, which he ran until it was sold in 1995. As a schnapps distiller and initiator of Destillata (1992), a predominantly national liquor fair and award, he made a name for himself as an entrepreneur in the spirits sector. After the sale of the Destillata (1998), he founded the World Spirits Award in 2004 , an international spirits fair and award, which was held annually until 2014 in Klagenfurt ( Carinthia ). In 2015 Ortner went on a world tour with the WSA for the first time. The country in which the award ceremony takes place depends on how many award winners come from a country or who the superstar of the current WSA is. A decision will be made in agreement with the winners or possible organizers.

Ortner was also the author of the book - on January 15, 1988, he presented the book Rehabilitation and Remedial Gymnastics about avoiding and treating sports injuries in his Birkenhof .

Private life

Ortner has been married since 1985, has two sons and lives in Bad Kleinkirchheim .

Web links

• Wolfram Ortner in the database of the International Ski Federation (English)
• Wolfram Ortner in the database of Ski-DB (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ "The World Spirits Award initiated by Wolfram Ortner is one of the most important events in the world of spirits." ( Memento from April 3, 2013 in the web archive archive.today ). In: Prost-Journal.at. April 11, 2012.
2. ↑ Camilla Kleinsasser: Wolfram Ortner: A high-percentage all-rounder. ( Memento of October 3, 2011 in the Internet Archive ). In: Small newspaper. October 1, 2011, accessed February 23, 2013.
3. ↑ «forked up» . In: Arbeiter-Zeitung . Vienna January 16, 1988, p. 22 ( berufer-zeitung.at - the open online archive - digitized version). Glossary left, center: first contribution.