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.

Stampfl was born in the capital of then Austro-Hungarian Empire. His father, Josef Stampfl ran a small company manufacturing surgical instruments. His mother was Russian Princess Caroline Yusupov. 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.

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, Stampl 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 June 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.

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