Death of WCF Honorary President Günther Hummelt

The World Curling Federation (WCF) is deeply saddened to learn the news of the death of former WCF President Günther Hummelt. He was 78. Hummelt was President of the WCF from 1990 to 2000. “On behalf of the World Curling Federation I express our sincerest condolences to Günther’s family,” said WCF President Kate Caithness. “World Curling has lost a great friend and advocate of the sport. I pay tribute to the tremendous work he did over his lifetime to promote and develop the sport. He will be sadly missed.” Born in 1931 in Innsbruck in Austria, Günther Hummelt first got involved with curling in 1959. He became a founding member of several curling clubs in Austria as well the first club to be established in Munich in Germany. As a curler, Hummelt represented both Germany and Austria at World Championship level and latterly he coached both the Austrian junior men’s and women’s teams. In 1980 he became president of the newly founded Austrian Curling Association, which became a member of the ‘International Curling Federation (ICF)’ in 1982. Günther Hummelt was elected Vice-President of the ICF in 1988 and President in 1990. A year later the ICF was renamed the ‘World Curling Federation’. Hummelt will be remembered for leading the WCF committee which lobbied to achieve Olympic medal status for curling. The sport made its first modern day Olympic appearance at the Olympic Winter Games in Nagano, Japan in 1998. In 2000, Hummelt retired as President. The WCF Annual General Assembly of that year named him the first Honorary President of the Federation in recognition of his outstanding contribution to World Curling. He remained the President of the Austrian Curling Association and continued to represent them as a WCF representative at all WCF meetings around the world, his last attendance being in Cortina d’Ampezzo in Italy in April this year. A further tribute can be found here: https://www.ecf-web.org/