Olympic Missing Links, Part 9

Today, we are continuing our look into Olympians for whom we believe to have identified their date of death but, for whatever reason, we are unable to connect the information, such as obituary or public record, conclusively to the athlete. Last week, when we looked into Canadians who fall into this category, we also hit upon the only mysteries from the 1932 Los Angeles Games. Today, therefore, we felt it fitting to look into the next oldest cohort: those who participated in the 1936 Berlin Olympics:

 

Guillermo Chirichigno – Member of Peru’s track and field athletics delegation to the 1936 Berlin Olympics

Guillermo Chirichigno represented Peru in the pole vault at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, where he finished joint-29th and last in the qualifying round and did not advance to the final. He had had more luck at the previous year’s South American Championships, where he won the gold medal, and would later take silver at the 1938 Bolivarian Games. Traces of his activities disappear after World War II, although an entry in the Lima Death Index lists a Guillermo Chirichigno, born 1904, who died June 3, 1970. Despite the rarity of the name, however, without knowing the birth date, or even the age, of the Olympian, we cannot confirm that the individual in the registration and the athlete are one and the same.

 

Karl Lutz – Member of Austria’s boxing delegation to the 1936 Berlin Olympics

After winning the Austrian National Championship in the heavyweight division, boxer Karl Lutz, born February 23, 1914, was chosen to represent his country at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, where he was defeated in round two by Ernest Toussaint of Luxembourg. We do not know much else about him, although an anonymous user added a date of death of June 20, 1990 and a place of death Braunau am Inn to his Wikipedia page. We have, however, been unable to verify this information in any other source.

 

Roland Annen – Member of Switzerland’s field hockey squad at the 1936 Berlin Olympics

We known less about Roland Annen, born September 22, 1916, than we do about our other Olympians today. All we can be certain about is that, as a member of Stade-Lausanne, he helped represent Switzerland in the field hockey tournament at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, where his nation was eliminated after winning one and losing two of its matches in the preliminary round. Once again, we turn to Wikipedia, where an anonymous user added a date of death of August 28, 2005 but, without further confirmation, we cannot consider this information a verified fact.

 

That is our final blog entry for the year, but we will be back in 2019 to continue our look into Olympic missing links and all other manner of Olympic mysteries. We hope you will join us, after a pleasurable New Year’s of course!