Lars Gandrup Dresler
January 2, 1968-November 7, 1995
Photo courtesy DIF Museum, Denmark
Born in a suburb of Copenhagen, Lars Dresler trained at the Gladsaxe Skøjteløber Forening under World Professional Champion Lorna Brown. He won the Danish Championships five consecutive times from 1984 to 1988 and represented Denmark at five European Championships, six World Championships and the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary. His best finish at an ISU Championship was ninth at the 1989 Europeans in Birmingham. He passed away on November 7, 1995 at the age of twenty-seven.
Photo courtesy DIF Museum, Denmark
Lorna Brown's remembrances of Lars: "After John [Curry] died, I lost Lars Dresler. I went through a lot with him after he found out as he didn't want anyone to know, as his family didn't even know he was gay. I had to tell his sister for him to get her used to that idea before she found out he had AIDS. We only competed for one more year and then it was too hard to cope with. He would be on a warm-up at an international competition and would come over to me and say 'What's the point?' It was so devastating. The last I saw of him was when he was very ill and a friend who was a former Danish Champion (Anette Nygaard) and I took him to Spain for a vacation as he had never been and wished to go there. It was so very hard to see him so thin and ill and every day he thought he was dying. I helped him as much as I could and we called each other between England and Denmark until almost the end of his life but I didn't make it on time as I had promised him I would. He died suddenly in the hospital."
*Source for inclusion: Interview with Lorna Brown, April 2014
