Roger STAUB

Swiss alpine skier Roger Staub first competed at the Winter Olympics in 1956, where he missed the podium in the downhill event by less than one second (silver went to his teammate Raymond Fellay). He fared much better at the 1958 World Championships, however, taking silver in the downhill and bronze in the combined and the giant slalom (sharing the latter medal with France’s François Bonlieu). He also came in fifth in the slalom. He returned to the Olympics in 1960 and, after the downhill was postponed, won the gold medal in giant slalom. Believing originally that he had come in second, he was bumped up after it was realized that the time of Pepi Stiegler of Austria had been announced incorrectly. Staub ended up finishing fifth in the downhill and was disqualified in the slalom after failing to complete the first run at these Games.

Staub retired from active competition in 1961, having won nine Swiss national titles across various events. Outside of skiing, he had also been active in tennis. He took up work as a skiing instructor in Vail, Colorado, ran a sports store in his native Arosa, and developed his own style of headgear for the sport. He also founded a sports school and ran it until 1974, when he was killed in a delta gliding accident (a sport that combines skiing and hang gliding).