Othmar Schneider

A great all-around skier, Othmar Schneider’s greatest success came at the 1952 Olympics, where he won the slalom and placed second. He might have won a third medal in the combined, but that event had been discontinued after 1948 and replaced by the giant slalom. It was held as a World Championship event in subsequent Olympics, but not in Oslo.

While not managing to win any additional medals in international championships (Schneider ranked fourth in the 1954 World Championship giant slalom), he did win various honors in major races in Europe and North America. In 1951, he won the famous Arlberg-Kandahar slalom (held in Sestriere that year), while winning the Wengen downhill and combined two years in a row (1951-1952). After the 1956 Winter Olympics, Schneider switched to the pros, competing in two Professional World Championships.

In the meanwhile, he switched focus to a second sport, pistol shooting. A 34-fold Austrian champion (17 individual titles), he won a World Championships team bronze in the free pistol (1974) and a European Championship team bronze in the center-fire pistol (1975). A third Olympic appearance in the sport was impossible because of Schneider’s past, having been a pro and a skiing teacher in the US and Chile.

Schneider, who was course manager at the 1966 World Championships in Chile, later managed his own hotel in Lech, and owned and managed Huber, a manufacturer of skiing apparel and accessories. In 1976, he also managed his third appearance at the Olympic Games as the coach of Austrian’s sport shooters, and his pupil Rudolf Dollinger won a bronze medal in those games.