Shooting was one of the earliest organized sports in Liechtenstein. Here is the Shooting Club of Vaduz, in 1905. In fact, the earliest record of organized sport in Liechtenstein refers to the founding of the Order of Shooting of Liechtenstein in 1789, if I am not mistaken, the same year as the French Revolution. For the first 80 years or so, the shooting clubs were quite martial. But Liechtenstein has never really had much of an army, and the last member of a shooting club who was also a veteran was Andreas Kieber, member in 1869 of the shooting club in Mauren.

Of course there were many other sorts of sport as well. The first Liechtensteiner to ski was Ranger Josef Negele, who got his skis from Tirol. Liechtensteiners still talk about the first time they saw him skiing down the mountain at Balischgut in 1895. Another skiing pioneer was the artist Friedrich Kaufmann, who skiied through Malbun valley in eight days in 1910. People called him crazy, a college dropout. The Ski Club of Liechtenstein was founded in 1926.

Other early organized sports included gymnastics (1886), soccer (1932), tennis (1925), and bicycling (1897). If this all seems a bit late, it's with good reason: Liechtensteiners had a tough life until the last few decades, and were for most of their history more concerned with keeping food on the table than with keeping fit.





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