Sune Almkvist

Sune Almkvist played as a forward in two Swedish championships finals (1907, 1908) for IFK Uppsala both of which ended in defeat. In 1908, he played four games for the Swedish national team including Sweden’s first match at the London Olympics. Sweden with Almkvist as captain lost this match 12-1 against Great Britain (England). They finished fourth after a second defeat against the Netherlands. Four years later Almkvist acted as a linesman at Finland’s win against Italy during the Olympic tournament.

His main sport, however, was bandy. Almkvist started his career at the age of 15 for the Upsala Gymnasisters Hockeyklubb in 1901 and won the Nordic Games’ travelling prize in the following year. In 1905, he set an incredible record by scoring 19 goals in a single match during the Nordic Games bandy tournament. Considered one of the pioneers in bandy in Sweden, he was the first athlete ever to receive the “Stor Grabb” badge. As a center Almkvist led his team, IFK Uppsala, to 11 Swedish championship gold medals between 1907 and 1920, a record still unbeaten in Swedish bandy. He never lost a final in which he played. After playing two international matches in 1920 and 1921, Almkvist became the first chairman of the Swedish Bandy Association in 1925, a position he held for 25 years. He also wrote three rulebooks for the sport. In 2011 he was inducted as number 1 in the Swedish Bandy Hall of Fame.

Almkvist was an excellent tennis player and won two Swedish championships in the men’s doubles (indoor) with Lennart Silfverstolpe in 1918 and 1919. He was also an avid golfer.

The son of a professor of Semitic languages, Sune Almkvist was trained as a doctor and worked as a practicing physician in Stockholm in 1921. Ten years later he became a doctor at the Stockholm City Polyclinic for Venereal Diseases. In 1917, he married Greta Ålander. After her premature death in 1928 he remarried Agda Ingrid Elisabet Wærn.