Hannes Schroll

Hannes Schroll ( born June 13, 1909 in Wörgl, † April 5, 1985 in Redwood City, California ) was an Austrian alpine and Nordic skiers. He celebrated the end of the 1920s, numerous victories in national and international competitions, at first mainly in ski jumping and later in downhill and slalom. In 1935 he emigrated to the USA where he worked as a ski instructor and the Sugar Bowl Ski Resort built.

Biography

Schroll was born in Tyrol Wörgl where he soon came to Bischofshofen in Salzburg, where he grew up. He began at the age of eight years with the skiing and developed into an all-rounder, who (especially in ski jumping ) achieved good results both in the alpine ( downhill, slalom ) and the Nordic disciplines. In his youth he worked as a locksmith, car driver and a linesman at the railway. The often long free time during the winter months, he used to improve his ski sport perfect proficiency.

First Schroll was a member of the ski club Bischofshofen and denied the age of 15 and his first race in the junior class. He won with 16 years of ski jumping at the Austrian Youth Skiing in Bad Mitterndorf and in 1927, at the age of 17 years, Salzburg youth champion in ski jumping. After the dissolution of the SC Bischofshofen to Schroll graduated in 1929 at the Ski Club in Radstadt, where he jumped a hill record of 45 meters in the same year. The first victory in the general class he celebrated also in 1929 two jumping in Bad Hofgastein and Johann George Town. In 1930 he won a competition in the monastery as well as a slalom in Mitterberg. In the winter of 1931 Schroll was Austrian champion in ski jumping. He also won departures in Schwaz and am Schneeberg, a Slalom in Zell am See, the Nordic Combined at Innsbruck and again jumping into the monastery. The FIS race in Murren, he was 12th in slalom and 14th in the downhill. The unofficial "long" descent, he finished in 11th position.

In the winter of 1932 Schroll won a competition in Bad Gastein, but primarily concentrated on his work as a ski instructor, both in its own ski school in the pulpit height and elsewhere at home and abroad. He remained in the winter of 1933, therefore, no great victory, but eg reaching second place in the downhill of the Austrian Championships in Kitzbühel and a jump in the same place. The FIS Race 1933 in Innsbruck, he was in the Nordic disciplines 38 in the combination and 41 in ski jumping, while he was in the alpine disciplines in the unofficial special exit ( " descent " ) 14, in the actual World Cup race but did not play. Schroll now increasingly focused on alpine skiing in winter 1934 and celebrated important victories in the giant slalom on the Marmolada and in slalom and combination of Abetone. He also won the slalom at snow mountain of the Austrian Championships, which earned him a seventh place in downhill in third place in the championship standings.

In the winter of 1935 Schroll was determined by Chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg as Austria's representative in the open alpine championships of the United States at Mount Rainier in Washington, where first staged next to a descent in which there were already 1933 and 1934 U.S. championships, slalom and combined were. Schroll was one of the first European top runners in the U.S., won downhill and slalom in a superior manner, thus securing also the champion in the combination before the American Dick Durrance. One of the observers of the competition was Donald Tresidder, president of the Yosemite Park & ​​Curry Co., the dedicated Schroll in place as the new head of the ski school at Badger Pass in Yosemite National Park.

Schroll enjoyed great popularity in the U.S. and was awarded after his victory at the U.S. Championships with the Silver Skis. He, alongside his work as a ski instructor for several years at individual race in part and directed the ski school in Yosemite to 1938, before he was a new project, the construction of a ski resort on Mount Lincoln in California was dedicated. The Sugar Bowl Ski Resort was opened on 15 December 1939 and remained until 1945 under the direction Schroll. He organized in 1940 the first time the Silver Belt, which became one of the earliest known ski race in the USA.

Schroll brought it to considerable financial wealth and married 1943 Maud Hill, the daughter of the president of the Great Northern Railway Louis W. Hill and granddaughter of railroad magnate James J. Hill. The couple had two children and lived in California, first on a small farm in Palo Alto, and later a larger ranch in Hollister, where Schroll successfully devoted to the breeding of racehorses. He died in 1985 at the age of 75 years in Redwood City, twelve years before his wife. For his contributions to the sport of skiing in the United States Schroll was recorded in 1966 in the U.S. Ski Hall of Fame.