Carl Erhardt

Great Britain won the 1936 Olympic ice hockey tournament on the day after Carl Erhardt’s 39th birthday and he is the oldest player in Olympic history to have won a gold medal for ice hockey. Erhardt learned the game at school in Switzerland, Austria and Germany, and on his return to England he joined the Princes Club when it was revived in 1926. He later played for Streatham and captained the British team that finished third at the 1935 World Championships. He was also captain of the 1936 Olympic team, playing in six of the seven matches. After his retirement, Erhardt wrote a book on the sport and coached the 1948 Olympic team. He was a referee at the 1950 World Championships in London and served as a committee member of the governing body for many years, before being elected a life vice-president of the British Ice Hockey Association. As well as being a director of an engineering company, Erhardt was also a founder and the first president of the British Water Ski Federation.