Franz Stampfl

Franz Ferdinand Leopold Stampfl MBE (born Vienna 18 November 1913 – died 19 March 1995 Melbourne) was one of the world's leading athletics coaches in the twentieth century.

He pioneered a scientific system of Interval Training which became very popular with sprint and middle distance athletes.

In 1937 sensing the rise of Adolf Hitler and having been banned after refusing to obey instructions from Austrian Olympic officials, he left Austria for England to study at the Chelsea School of Art.

When Hitler marched into Austria in 1938, the British government demanded that he leave the country unless he showed a unique and necessary skill.

Having taught skiing back in his homeland, Stampfl pitched AAA officials to coach their athletes, earning him a job in Northern Ireland.

This was in part due to assistance by Olympic athlete Harold Abrahams.

During World War II Stampfl taught physical education at Queen Elizabeth's Grammar School, Barnet (then holders of the Public Schools Challenge Cup for athletics) from February to June 1940, when he was suddenly interned as an enemy alien.

He was transported to Canada and then Australia.

He went on hunger strike to protest at his confinement.

Early one July morning in 1940, Stampfl was on his way to Canada on the liner ship SS Arandora Star with a host of other prisoners of war.

In the middle of the North Sea, a German U-boat torpedoed the ship; and within thirty minutes amid screams of fear, the ship was flooded with water and sunk to the bottom of the Atlantic.

To survive, Stampfl forced a steel plate aside to get to the surface and then jumped into the freezing cold, oil-slicked sea.

For eight hours he swam, warding off shock from the cold and struggling to keep his head above the water, before a rescue boat sighted him.

The Headmaster of Queen Elizabeth's, Ernest Jenkins, later observed that, under the relevant order, even friendly Germans and Austrians were arrested.

He gave the date of Stampfl's detention as 2 July 1940, but, as this was the day that the Arandora Star was attacked, it was probably slightly earlier.

The decision to arrest aliens was taken on 18 June 1940.

Stampfl was one of 868 survivors when the Arandora Star, carrying 1,190 deportees, was torpedoed en route to Canada.

Among those who lost their lives were the former Italian head chefs of London's Savoy and Ritz Hotels.

Hundreds died in the disaster, but those who survived were shipped back to Britain, interned and shipped once again to Australia on the HMT Dunera.

There, Stampfl was sent to internment camps in Hay and Tatura, where he stayed from 7 September 1940 to 28 January 1942.

To ease the desperation plaguing the prisoners he organised athletics, boxing, wrestling and football matches.

'It was not just a job for me,' he said.

'It was an inner desire to survive and remain sane for myself and my friends in camp.' From 8 April 1942 to 15 January 1946 he served in the 8th Australian Employment Company of the Australian Army.

After the war has ended, Stampfl decided to return to Britain to continue athletics coaching in 1946.

Although he suffered terribly over the previous years and had trouble sleeping under linen or far from an open window because of his long confinement, he still admired the English for their love of amateur sport, and felt their athletes could use his help.

He reconnected with amateur officials and arranged for a coaching post in Northern Ireland from 1946 to 1951.

In 1947 he married Patricia, née Cussen, an Australian whom he had met in Melbourne, at a ceremony in Belfast.

They moved to London in 1951 where he worked as a sales assistant at the sports wear company Lillywhites.

He established a training base at the Duke of York's Barracks and had part-time coaching posts at Cambridge and Oxford Universities.

Still he was not asked to aid the British Olympic team in 1952 – evidence that amateur officials never brought him fully into their fold because he was an outsider.

In 1952 the John Fisher School (Purley) won the Public Schools Challenge Cup for athletics, held at the White City Stadium.

Smaller than most of the 203 top schools that entered the competition that year, John Fisher's victory caused controversy.

His most striking success was the world's first sub-four minute mile by Roger Bannister in 1954.

Stampfl was posthumously awarded the World Athletics Heritage Plaque as a "legendary and pioneering coach" on 26 September 2019.

Stampfl was born in the capital of then Austro-Hungarian Empire.

His father, Josef Stampfl ran a small company manufacturing surgical instruments.

His mother's maiden name was Karoline Katharina Yusupov.

She was supposed to be the illegitimate child of a member of the House of Yusupov, but this could never be proven.

He studied writing and painting in school.

After high school, he attended the Vienna Kunstgewerbeschule and had some success as a skier and javelin thrower.