Louis Balsan was a bobsledder, member of the French Resistance, and a noted businessman. As a bobsledder Balsan first competed at the Olympics in 1932 in Lake Placid where he came 11th in the two-man event with Daniel Armand-Delille. Four years later he finished ninth in the four-man event at the 1936 Garmisch-Partenkirchen Games. When World War II broke out he joined the French Resistance but was later arrested by the Gestapo in 1942. He was sent to the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp but survived the ordeal until the camp was liberated in 1945, later writing a book of what had transpired. In the 1950s he took over the family carpet making business, running the company until it was bought out in the mid-1970s.
France