Carl Erhardt

Carl Alfred Erhardt (February 15, 1897 in Beckenham, Kent, United Kingdom – May 3, 1988) was an English ice hockey player who captained the British National Team to numerous international championships in the 1930s, including Olympic gold at the 1936 Winter Olympics in Garmisch-Partenkirchen.

Unlike most British hockey players of the era, Erhardt did not grow up in Canada. Rather, he learned the game of hockey while attending school in Germany and Switzerland as a boy. Erhardt was a passionate defenseman, sometimes playing in excess of 40 minutes each game. An excellent athlete, Erhardt also excelled at tennis, skiing and water-skiing. (He founded the British Water Ski Federation.)

Erhardt was a member of the British World Championship teams in 1931, 1934 and 1935, and the captain of the team which won the European and World Championships, along with Olympic gold, in 1936. Of the twelve members of the 1936 team, Erhardt was one of only two that had not either been born or learned the game in Canada. Thirty-nine years old at the time, Erhardt is the oldest man ever to win an Olympic gold in ice hockey. The British defeated the prohibitive favorites, the Canadians, in capturing Great Britain's first and only gold medal in ice hockey.

After his Olympic success, Erhardt retired from hockey. He wrote a book in 1937 titled Ice Hockey, became a referee, and joined the Council of the British Ice Hockey Association, of which he became a lifetime Vice-President. He coached the national team at the 1948 Winter Olympics.

Erhardt was elected to the British Ice Hockey Hall of Fame in 1950, and was posthumously elected to the IIHF Hall of Fame in 1998. In 2012 The Elite Ice Hockey League (EIHL) named one of its two newly introduced Conferences after him