Peter Kirby

Peter Murray Kirby ( born December 17, 1931 in Montreal) is a former Canadian bobsledder. He was active in the 1960s and was once each Olympic champion and world champion in four-man bobsleigh.

Career

Kirby was first an above average skier. He won the 1953 Canadian Junior Championship, in 1954 a member of the Canadian national team and led in 1956 to the ski team at Dartmouth College. Then he switched to bobsledding. The training conditions were extremely unfavorable: The Canadian Olympic Committee refused any support, so that Canadians had to practice in gyms push starts and rarely got on the bobsled track in Lake Placid, the opportunity to practice sessions.

Before the Olympic Winter Games in 1964, the Austrians and Italians were seen as high as a house favorite. The Canadian Viererbobteam consisting of Victor Emery, John Emery, Douglas Anakin and Peter Kirby, could only train four times on the Olympic bobsleigh run Igls, unlike many competitors who had arrived a week earlier. Quite surprisingly, undercut the Canadians in the first run the track record, held up to the end at the top and won the gold medal. In the two-man Victor Emery and Peter Kirby drove to fourth place. At the World Championships 1965 in St. Moritz, the Canadian foursome with Kirby as a brakeman was again the fastest.

After retiring from professional racing Kirby worked as a geologist and later worked as a businessman.