Verné Lesche, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death
TweetVerné Lesche
speed skater from Finland
Date of Birth: 
Place of Birth: Helsinki, Uusimaa, Finland
About Verné Lesche
- Verné Lesche, married Vanberg (11 October 1917 – 21 April 2002) was a speed skater from Finland who twice won the World Allround Championships. Lesche was born in Helsinki, Finland, and already skated a world record in 1933 when she was only 15 years old.
- Her successes continued and she won the world title for the first time in 1939, when Tampere hosted the World Allround Championships.
- She won it for the second time in Drammen in 1947, making her the only speed skater in history to have won a medal at the World Allround Championships both before and after World War II.
- At those 1947 World Championships, Lesche won all four distances and the difference in samalog points with the silver medallist, Norwegian skater Else Marie Christiansen, was 20.923 points – the largest difference in history between numbers one and two at an international championship.
- Of this 20.923 point difference, 6.983 points (equal to 41.9 seconds) were the difference between Lesche and Christiansen on the 3,000 m, while Lesche recorded a 9.690 point difference over Christiansen on the 5,000 m by skating that distance 1 minute and 36.9 seconds faster than the Norwegian. A very rare event took place at the Finnish Allround Championships in 1948.
- Lesche won one distance and finished second on the other three, and her resulting samalog score was better than that of any of her opponents.
- However, Eevi Huttunen had finished second on one distance while winning the other three, and the rule at the time was that a competitor would automatically be the winner by finishing first on at least three distances.
- So despite having the best samalog score, Lesche won only silver.
- The most famous occurrence of this application of the three distance wins rule was at the 1983 World Allround Championships, when Rolf Falk-Larssen became World Champion despite silver medallist Tomas Gustafson having a better samalog score. Lesche's last international appearance was at the 1949 World Allround Championships where she finished fifth overall and set a new world record on the 5,000 m.
- Lesche-Vanberg died in Kongsberg, Norway, at the age of 84.
- Her son, Marcel Lesche Vanberg, is still active in speed skating as a starter.
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