Rudolf Burkert: The man who won Czechoslovakia’s first ever Winter Olympic medal
The Czech Republic has sent a record number of athletes to the Winter Olympics in Milan and the country has a good track record of participation in winter Olympic sports. To find the very first Czech medal from the Winter Games, we would have to go back to St. Moritz in 1928, when Czech-German Rudolf Burkert won the bronze in ski jumping.
Rudolf Burkert was born on October 31, 1904, in the village of Polubný in the Jizera Mountains. From a young age, he was a passionate athlete. He competed in ski jumping and Nordic combined and worked his way up to the world elite.
In 1927, he won the world championship title in Nordic combined at the championship in Cortina d’Ampezzo.
A year later, he led the Czech Olympic delegation and carried the flag. This is documented, among other things, by a photograph of the Games participants from the Skiing Museum in Dolní Branná, on which the individual athletes also signed their names on the back. One of the most famous Czech coaches in ski jumping Aleš Suk recalled the games.
“He delivered three very long jumps, and the Scandinavians, who had already divided all three medals among themselves in advance, suddenly realized they had an excellent rival here.”
Rudolf Burkert thus became the first citizen of Czechoslovakia to win an Olympic medal at the Winter Games bringing home a bronze medal in ski jumping.
As a skier, Burkert shone in almost all disciplines.
“He had an incredibly dynamic takeoff in ski jumping and excelled with a beautiful flight phase, ” Suk says.
Burkert was also an outstanding cross-country skier for the Nordic combined event.
“Horní Polubný had a snow jump just below the railway line. Nevertheless, it was quite small. A bigger jump was located below Štěpánka, where they could jump up to 40 meters in the old quarry. There were also three other jumps: Smědava, which is quite far away; Harrachov, where at that time they were already jumping 50 meters at Ptačinec; and the last jump was in Desná. Burkert had to travel to the jumps on cross-country skis, carrying his jumping skis slung over his shoulders on a cord. This helped him build endurance, and he was able to race competitively over longer distances as well.”
Rudolf Burkert recorded his last major success in 1933, when he won second place in ski jumping at the World Championships in Innsbruck. In addition to these world-level achievements, he also collected medals at European and national championships.
He was very popular with sports fans. He often accompanied his ski jumps with daring stunts. On one occasion, for example, he jumped while holding his future wife in his arms. Unfortunately, during one of these jumps, Burkert seriously injured his leg and had to end his sporting career.
However, the injury spared him from having to enlist in the Wehrmacht a few years later. After 1945, Rudolf Burkert did not have to leave the country during the expulsion of Germans. He then lived in Jiřetín pod Bukovou, where, among other things, he worked as a ski lift operator.
In 1968, he emigrated to the Federal Republic of Germany, where he died in 1985.
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