Abstract des Autors

With twenty-eight nations and 669 athletes finding their way to the St. Moritz Games, the level of Garmisch-Partenkirchen was slightly topped (twenty-eight nations, 646 athletes). Also the number of events had significantly increased from seventeen in the last Games to twenty-two. In addition, the organizers again included two demonstration sports giving a platform for promotion. Besides the military patrol, a combination of cross country skiing and shooting which had already been part of the Games before, the so called "pentathlon d'hiver", in English called winter pentathlon, a combined event composed of cross country skiing, shooting, alpine skiing, fencing and horse-riding, was introduced and replaced the ice stock sport which had joined the military patrol during the last Winter Games in 1936. Differing only in the two skiing disciplines (which were in summer replaced by swimming and a cross country run), the winter pentathlon was in comparison to its estival counterpart, the modern pentathlon, only one time integrated into the Olympics. This study aims at analyzing the Olympic implementation of the winter pentathlon and the reasons for its failure to be legitimized as permanent part of the Olympic program. Besides literature and press material on the 1948 Winter Games, historical documents of the IOC, the Union Internationale de Pentathlon Moderne (UIPM) and its forerunner the Fédération Internationale du Pentathlon Moderne (FIP), all of them located in the lOC Archives in Lausanne, Switzerland, are used to investigate the topic. In addition an interview with William Grut (born 1914), former modern pentathlete and silver medallist in the winter pentathlon in 1948, contributes to reconstruct the sport's history. In 1948 a Swiss newspaper aptly entitled the winter pentathlon "a superfluous appearance'". The result of this research shall finally enable to decide whether this was just an expression based on wounded national pride or a true objective conclusion. (geändert)