Today on Oldest Olympians, we wanted to continue wrapping up our coverage of eisstockschießen, or “ice stock sport” at the 1936 Garmisch-Partenkirchen Olympics. We have covered this tournament haphazardly, but we wanted be a little more organized and touch upon the remaining mystery competitors that we have not yet mentioned. Today, we are going to take a quick look at those who were ranked highly in the tournament, but we have not yet covered.

In particular, we have missed mentioning a few of the members of the team from Miesbach that placed second in the team event that was open to international clubs. For one of them, Alois Dirnberger, we know of an individual of this name who was born June 15, 1891 in Bavaria and died October 19, 1981 in Indio, California, but we cannot confirm that he was the competitor. About the other two, Johann Elbach and Josef Lenz, we know nothing.

Just missing the podium in fourth in that event was the team from Straubing. Of those individuals, we have not mentioned Franz Xaver Bachl or Albert Karl, but that is largely because we have been unable to uncover nothing about them. The same goes for two of the members of the fifth-placed team from Zwiesel: Hermann Fuchs and Wolfgang Röck. In the latter case, however, it is possible that he is connected to the manufacturing company of the same name that based in Zwiesel.

Finally, in our discussion of those who competed exclusively in individual events, we missed one: Karl Möbus of FTC 1914 Palmengarten, Frankfurt am Main, who did not make a mark in the German-only target shooting event. As before, we wanted to review this topic in the hopes that, by getting their names out there a little more, we might one day learn more about them and their contributions to the world of sport.

Yesterday we had two important birthdays to celebrate and the one that we did not choose to feature was Dimitri Atanasov, born August 8, 1927. Atanasov represented Bulgaria at the 1952 Oslo Games, where he failed to advance beyond the first run in the slalom event. Although this is all that we know about him, we current list him as the oldest living Bulgarian Olympian.

Our last evidence of his being alive, however, comes from his 85th birthday announcement in 2012, which means that if we do not get any updates by the end of the year, we will have to remove him from our tables. That would leave Stoyanka Angelova, born May 28, 1928, as the oldest living Bulgaria Olympian. Angelova represented her country in the gymnastics tournament at the 1952 Helsinki Games, and later moved to Mexico.

(Erna Herbers)

Additionally, a few days ago we posted about the death of Marianne Werner, born January 4, 1924, who was the oldest living German Olympian and Olympic medalist in track and field athletics. The oldest living German Olympian is now Erna Herbers, born May 2, 1925, who represented her country in the 100 metres backstroke swimming event at the 1952 Helsinki Games, where she was 18^th. George Rhoden, meanwhile, who represented Jamaica at the 1948 and 1952 Games, was already the oldest living Olympic track and field champion, having won the 400 metres and the 4×400 metres relay at the latter edition, and is now the oldest living medalist in the sport overall.

Finally, we wanted to address one recent removal from our lists that is also an Olympic mystery. We had previously listed British speed skater Patricia Devries, born July 6, 1930, as alive, but according to an article titled “Off the Beaten Track” on page 14 of the November 5, 2022 issue of Speedway Star, she died a few years prior to publication. We know, therefore, that she is deceased, but do not have an exact date, or even a year.