Kurt MEIER

Kurt Meier joined the Swiss national team in 1980, but it was not until the mid-1980s that he began to be noticed on the international bobsledding scene. Meier, alongside Erwin Fassbind, Erich Schärer, and the non-Olympian André Kisser, won the four-man event at the 1986 World Championships, as well as at the European Championships, with Hans Hiltebrand in place of Schärer. Meier then joined with Ekkehard Fasser, Werner Stocker, and Rolf Strittmatter to form a four-man crew that came in third at the 1987 European Championships. This quartet replaced Strittmatter with Marcel Fässler and, together, they travelled to the 1988 Winter Olympics, where they pulled off a surprising victory, taking advantage of a disastrous third run from defending Olympic champion Wolfgang Hoppe’s East German team and winning by a margin of 0.07 seconds.

Success on the international level eluded Meier for the next several years, until he came back big by winning the four-man at the 1993 European and World Championships alongside Donat Acklin, Domenico Semeraro, and Gustav Weder. The quartet then travelled to the 1994 Winter Olympics, where they earned silver with a combined time of only 0.06 seconds slower than the gold medal-winning Germans. Meier retired from active competition shortly after the Games.