Four-Time World Champion Gudrun Pflüger (AUT) passed away
Gudrun Pflüger was a four-time Mountain Running World Champion, a nature researcher - and a cancer patient. She was a cross-country skier, competed in the FIS World Cup and also got overall victory at the “Wordloppet” ski marathon series, and she was one who, after her sporting career, went to live in North America in search of Canadian wolves.
The result was documentaries such as “Auf der Spur der Küstenwölfe” (On the Trail of the Coastal Wolves, 2007), or “Running with Wolves” (2009), and also a book bestseller, “Wolf Spirit: A Story of Healing, Wolves and Wonder” (2014).
Gudrun Pfüger passed away in Radstadt (Salzburg), Austria, one day before her 51st birthday on 17 August 2023.
Gudrun Pflüger was a fighter all her life. In the same year in which Helmut Schmuck won his first of two world championship titles in mountain running she triumphed for the first of four times. In Italy in 1992, in Germany, more precisely in Bavaria, in 1994, in Scotland in 1995 and in Telfes in Tyrol in 1996, no one was faster than her in the Mountain Uphill, not even the Frenchwoman Isabelle Guillot, also a four-time world champion, nor British Sarah Rowell, who is now treasurer of the WMRA. “She was an outstanding athlete,” Rowell recalls, “a pity that we had little contact with each other at the competitions and away from the races, with no Internet or social media we did not stay in contact at the time. I am so grateful to have been able to have email contact with Gudrun in the months before this years World Championships in Innsbruck and to share stories about what we have done since racing against each other. She will be missed deeply”.
At the Kitzbüheler Horn mountain road race, her star had raised. Franz Puckl, the Austrian grandsigneur of mountain running, nominated her for the 1992 World Championships in Italy because another runner had dropped out. In an interview in September 2022, Pflüger spoke about times gone by: “I remember that there was a very good spirit in Team Austria, but the contact with athletes from other countries was limited. We did not all stay in the same hotel and we all had lots of things to do. It also came to the point that I sometimes did not even have the opportunity to look at a course layout before the race, which wasn't always a disadvantage, because then I didn't know what to expect…”
More than 15 years ago, Pflüger, who leaves behind a son, had fought off a brain tumour: The encounter with the wolves gave her strength at that time. The disease came back, the fight went on again, but there was no doubt about the outcome.
RIP Gudrun Pflüger
* 18 August 1972 in Graz
† 17 August 2023 in Radstadt