Ferdinand Steiner

Steiner was born on 23 May 1884 in Tovačov. He died on 19 August 1968.^[1]

Steiner took part in the World Gymnastics Championships in 1909, 1911 and 1913, helping his team to the gold medal at two of those games and silver at the other. Ferdinand Steiner is officially recognized by both the FIG^[2] (the official governing body of the sport of Artistic Gymnastics) and USAG^[3] (the official governing body of the sport of Artistic gymnastics within the USA) as the 1911 World All-Around Champion in the sport of Artistic gymnastics.

Steiner introduced an element, the inverted cross,^[4] a move that is still valued as a "C"-difficulty element in the current Code of Points,^[5] if not much higher, depending upon the movement from which it is entered.^[6]

Since medal winners who represented Austria-Hungary came from Bohemia, these medals were later transferred to Czechoslovakia by the FIG.

After Steiner's competitive career was over, he was a very reputable trainer of his fellow Czechoslovak Sokol gymnasts.^{[7]: 252, 329}