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| Konrad Bartelski | |
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| Country |  United Kingdom |
| Born | 27 May 1954 |
Konrad Bartelski (born 27 May 1954) is a former British alpine ski racer who produced the then best result by a Briton on the Alpine Skiing World Cup circuit in 1981 by coming within 0.11 seconds of winning a World Cup downhill race at Val Gardena. [1]
Bartelski, born in London, grew up in the Netherlands and is of Polish and English origin. He competed at his first Olympics at the 1972 Winter Games in Sapporo at the age of just 17. Two years later, he finished 15th at the 1974 World Championships.
In February 1975, he had a dramatic and spectacular fall during the downhill race at Megève and suffered a concussion and a broken nose which kept him out of action for several weeks. He failed to feature in the top placings for the next five years until finishing 12th at the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid.
Bartelski stunned the skiing world during his performance at the World Cup at Val Gardena, Italy on 13 December 1981 when he finished the downhill in 2 minutes 07.52 seconds, just 0.11 behind the race winner Austria's Erwin Resch.
Britain had never produced a successful male downhill racer, and Bartelski's performance resulted in the French television commentator saying, "Ce n'est pas possible! C'est un anglais" ("It's not possible, It's an Englishman").
The second placing result remained the highest placing by a Briton in any World Cup race, until it was equalled by Dave Ryding in the 2017 Kitzbühel World Cup Slalom and then surpassed by Ryding in the 2022 Kitzbühel World Cup Slalom.
British television viewers began to tune in more regularly to Ski Sunday each week to follow the performances of a surprise hero, but Bartelski failed to improve on his biggest result. He finished 7th in Schladming in February 1982 and also had a 13th place and two 15th-place finishes during that winter season. He ended the season ranked 19th in the World Cup standings.
He retired from World Cup races in 1983.
Towards the end of his career, Bartelski began to make appearances in the commentary box for Ski Sunday on BBC television, the programme which gained him his fame in his home country.
He also worked for Sky Television on the Ford Ski Report and Great Escapes and for BBC Radio Five Live and several broadsheet UK newspapers including The Guardian, Daily Mail, Sunday Telegraph, Sunday Times and The Times.
For 10 years he was a director of Badger Sports, a Winter Sports distributor with a £1.90 million turnover.
In the late 1990s, he switched to behind the television cameras, as an assistant producer for Trans World International (TWI) and moved to Octagon CSI in 2001. By 2003 he moved to ESPN Classic Sport, broadcasting in Italy and France and later the United Kingdom.
He is the son of a Polish father and English mother. His father, Jan, escaped the Invasion of Poland and the Katyn massacre and eventually arrived in England and enlisted in the RAF. After the war he worked as a pilot for KLM. [2]
Konrad was educated in the Netherlands and speaks fluent German and Dutch. He is married to Shauna and has one daughter. He is also a charity worker: since 1997 he has been involved with Back Up, a charity helping people paralysed through spinal cord injury, serving terms as President and Chairman. He is Chairman of Selectors for the British Ski and Snowboard Federation, and a fund-raiser for Christies’ British Ski Team Appeal Auction.[ citation needed ]
Franz Klammer is a former champion alpine ski racer from Austria. He dominated the downhill event for four consecutive World Cup seasons (1975–78). He was the gold medalist at the 1976 Winter Olympics in Innsbruck, winning the downhill at Patscherkofel by a margin of 0.33 seconds with a time of 1:45.73. Klammer won 25 World Cup downhills, including four on the Hahnenkamm at Kitzbühel. He also holds the record for the most victories (four) on the full course at Kitzbühel.
Samuel Bode Miller is an American former World Cup alpine ski racer. He is an Olympic and World Championship gold medalist, a two-time overall World Cup champion in 2005 and 2008, and the most successful male American alpine ski racer of all time. He is also considered one of the greatest World Cup racers of all time with 33 race victories and being one of five men to win World Cup events in all five disciplines. He is the only skier with five or more victories in each discipline. In 2008, Miller and Lindsey Vonn won the overall World Cup titles for the first U.S. sweep in 25 years.
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Franz Heinzer is a former alpine ski racer, who specialized in downhill. He was World Cup champion in downhill three consecutive seasons, second only to Franz Klammer. He won a total of 15 World Cup downhill races, fourth behind Klammer (25), Peter Müller (19) and Stephan Eberharter (18). Together with Franz Klammer, Toni Sailer, Jean Claude Killy, Karl Schranz and Stephan Eberharter, he is considered among the best downhill racers of all time. He also won the season title in Super-G in 1991.
Roland Collombin is a former World Cup alpine ski racer from Switzerland, a two-time World Cup downhill champion and Olympic silver medalist.
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Aleksander Aamodt Kilde is a Norwegian World Cup alpine ski racer. He competes in four events, with a main focus on super-G and downhill. Kilde hails from Bærum and represents the sports club Lommedalens IL.
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The men's overall in the 2024 FIS Alpine Skiing World Cup consisted of 35 events in four disciplines: downhill (DH), super-G (SG), giant slalom (GS), and slalom (SL). The season was originally scheduled with 45 events, but the first three events of the season were cancelled due to high winds and heavy snowfall. The cancelled giant slalom was subsequently rescheduled for Aspen on 1 March, and one of the canceled races from Zermatt-Cervinia was rescheduled to Val Gardena/Gröden on 12 December. As discussed under "Season Summary" below, there were additional cancellations and reschedulings after the opening races.
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