Before the LA Indoor European Championships

Curious history: start indoors, finish outdoors!

Athletics past and present - Árpád Blödy (1929) and Raphael Pallitsch (2024)

(Bild: Offizielle Publikation des österreichischen Leichtathletik-Verbandes, Bjorn Paree )

Long before the European Indoor Championships celebrated their premiere in Vienna in 1970, athletics competitions were held indoors under extremely difficult - and from today's perspective, sometimes strange - conditions. The seven ÖLV athletes who will be competing at the European Indoor Championships in Apeldoorn next week can hardly imagine what it was like ...

Raphael Pallitsch and Co. would probably not be competing this year under the conditions of the past. One can only pay tribute to how the first indoor records were set in the early days in those disciplines in which red-white-red is represented at the European Championships this year. It's always worth taking a look at the newspaper archive...

"Carried off the curve"
 Pallitsch's "ancestor" as an indoor 1500m record holder is Árpád Blödy from Hakoah Vienna. In Austria, athletics competitions were even held in the "Ronacher" as early as 1919 for propaganda purposes, but indoor tracks did not yet exist. That is why Blödy, one of the best Austrian middle distance runners of the 1930s, used the indoor meeting organized by Maccabi in Frankfurt for a start on 29 September 1936.

"The event took place in a large hall and was attended by 4,000 spectators," reported the "Neue Wiener Tagblatt". Blödy ran the 1500 m in second place in 4:15.2 minutes, the time that is listed by the ÖLV as the first indoor record over 1500 m. The special thing: According to the report, the circular track was "only 100 meters long, so that on the shorter distances the runners were repeatedly carried out of the curves". Nowadays, the standard length of the circuits at championships is 200 meters.

With some reservations, Raphael Pallitsch would still run under such conditions: "But a race like this has to be part of a highly decorated meeting, it has to be interesting for the media and have amenities. The lap has to be practically a circle; for my 1500 m pace, tighter radii are no longer feasible due to the speed and the risk of injury."

Spikes forbidden on clay soil
Soon after the Second World War, Wiener Neustadt developed into a center of indoor athletics. The first ÖLV indoor records in the triple jump, women's 60 m and men's and women's 60 m hurdles were set here between 1950 and 1952. Austria's European Championship starter Endiorass Kingley (triple jump), sprinter Leni Lindner and the hurdles duo Karin Strametz and Enzo Diessl would be amazed at the conditions under which these best performances were achieved ...

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(Bild: „Wiener Montag“)

But let's read the ÖLV association news from April 11, 1950! "For the first time, ASKÖ Niederösterreich attempted to organize a major indoor meeting. Despite the greatest difficulties that stood in the way of holding it, all the scheduled competitions were held without complaint." Almost unbelievable: "60 m and 60 m hurdles had to be run outside through the gate, as the hall is only 58 m long. One corner of the circular track, which is only 125 m long, ran entirely over the jumping pit, which had to be completely covered for the heats. The performances also suffered somewhat from the fact that no spikes were allowed to be used in the hall, which has a very good clay floor."

But still! The athletes defied the poor conditions. Emmerich Zensch set the first ÖLV indoor record in the triple jump with 12.29 m, Felix Würth improved this two years later to 13.08 m. Traude Zolda ran the 60 m in 8.0 seconds in 1950 - starting indoors and finishing outdoors!

"Siberian cold"
 In 1952, first the ASKÖ and then the Union organized indoor meetings in Wiener Neustadt, which were widely reported in the daily newspapers. The event on 26 January, wrote the "Wiener Montag" under the title "Athletics at minus five degrees", took place "in Siberian cold and under unfavorable technical conditions". The "unusual cold" was due to the fact that "the hall could not be heated" (ÖLV-Nachrichten). Nevertheless, Friedrich Zimmermann set the first ÖLV indoor records over 60 m hurdles with 8.8 in the preliminary heat and Helga Zuber in 9.3.

At the meeting on February 10, 1952, "slightly higher temperatures (2 to 5 degrees above zero)" prevailed, resulting in "a series of excellent indoor performances" (ÖLV-Nachrichten). Zolda also equaled her best time of 8.0 set two years earlier.

Maria Sykora

(Bild: Krone Archiv)

Circular track 195 meters long
Compared to these extremely tough conditions for the indoor records of the early days, the record-breaking starts over 800 m and in the women's pentathlon (where Caroline Bredlinger and Verena Mayr represented Austria in Apeldoorn) took place under good conditions. Maria Sykora set the first benchmark in the Palac Lodowy on a 195 m long track with her 2:18.7 over 800 m as eighth at the "4th European Indoor Games" in Belgrade in 1969. This brings us back to the time of the European Indoor Championships, the brilliant premiere of which took place in the Stadthalle in Vienna in 1970. Melitta Aigner set the first ÖLV record in the pentathlon, which was added to the European Championships program late, in Sofia in 1981 with 4037 points.

The first indoor records in the disciplines in which Austria is represented in Apeldoorn:
Men:
1500 m: 4:15.2 (2) - Árpád Blödy Frankfurt - 29.11.1936
60 m hurdles: 8.8 (1h1) - Friedrich Zimmermann - Wr. Neustadt - 26.01.1952
8.5 (1) - Klaus Potsch - Jablonec - 01.03.1969
Triple jump: 12.29 (1) - Emmerich Zensch - Wr. Neustadt - 18.03.1950
13.08 (1) - Felix Würth - Wr. Neustadt - 26.01.1952

Women:
60 m: 8.0 (1) - Traude Zolda - Wr. Neustadt - 18.03.1950
8.0 (1) - Grete Jenny (Bosnyak) - Wr. Neustadt - 17.02.1951
8.0 (1) - Traude Zolda - Wr. Neustadt - 10.02.1952
800 m: 2:18.7 (8 ) - Maria Sykora - Belgrade - 09.03.1969
60 m hurdles: 9.3 (1) - Helga Zuber - Wr. Neustadt - 26.01.1952
Pentathlon: 4037 (6) - Melitta Aigner - Sofia - 09./10.03.1981