Werner Zahn

Werner Zahn could not participate in 1932 because he broke his left arm from a 40 metre fall in his four-man bob in a January training accident on the Lake Placid track. He still wanted to start, but the jury did not allow it. His greatest sporting achievement was winning the 1931 World Championship in four-man. He was nominated as a replacement starter in 1936 at Garmisch-Partenkirchen, but his first international appearance was in 1938. Zahn was a four-time German champion. In 1928, he had also wanted to participate in the Winter Olympics, but was involved in a training crash in which his brakeman, Werner Schröder, was fatally injured.

Zahn was also a German pilot, motorcycle and car racer. As a pilot in World War I he once flew for 70 km deep into France to drop a letter from a French pilot onto his parents’ farm. This feat was made public to the world at the award ceremony of the 1931 World Cup in St. Moritz by Count Renaud de la Frégeolière, then president of the International Bobsleigh and Luge Federation. Zahn drove motorcycles for Mabecco and raced cars for Bugatti. In the 1930s he became the director of the Schuberth company in Braunschweig, which not only produced helmets, but also the well-known “Schubra” bob.