Rosi Mittermaier, a West German Alpine skier who gained two gold medals and one silver on the 1976 Winter Olympics in Innsbruck, Austria, and went on to grow to be a massively common determine again residence, died Jan. 4 in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany. She was 72.
Her household stated that she died after a extreme sickness, the German information company DPA reported.
Mittermaier almost achieved the unprecedented feat of successful three girls’s Alpine snowboarding occasions at a single Olympics. She gained the slalom and the downhill, however Kathy Kreiner, an 18-year-old Canadian, bested her by 0.12 seconds within the big slalom.
People might take pleasure in Dorothy Hamill’s figure-skating gold medal that yr, however Mittermaier emerged because the star of the Video games.
“Now, all of the sudden, she was well-known,” Sports activities Illustrated wrote. “Flowers have been strewn throughout the mattress in her resort room. Troopers guarded the stairway. Once in a while she would step out onto the balcony and favor the crowds with a dimpled smile and pleasant wave.”
The Related Press stated that she “wore her omnipresent smile when she took off her goggles.”
Mittermaier additionally clinched the Alpine Ski World Cup later that season as she earned the nickname Gold-Rosi.
“Rosi Mittermaier was a really charming and credible ambassador of sport, who at all times approached folks overtly and in a humble manner,” Thomas Bach, the Worldwide Olympic Committee president, stated in a press release a day after her demise. “She impressed all of us together with her heat and her smile. For all these causes, and never solely due to her two Olympic gold medals, she’s going to at all times be remembered as Gold-Rosi by all of us.”
Her triumphs have been hardly anticipated. Although she had gained 16 German nationwide ski titles, Mittermaier had by no means captured a significant downhill race in her 10 years of World Cup competitors and had not earned a medal on the two earlier Winter Olympics.
However she downplayed the significance of Olympic medals. She believed they have been far much less essential than successful a World Cup title after a full season, viewing that as a logo of excellence and consistency over a interval of a number of months. She additionally stated that the important thing to success in snowboarding was in having enjoyable with it.
“One shouldn’t take ski racing too severely,” she stated. “I’ve had some very dangerous leads to my profession from doing simply that.”
Mittermaier retired from worldwide Alpine snowboarding in Could 1976 at age 25. She would stay a preferred determine. She recalled in a 2020 interview with the DPA that her letter provider struggled to ship 27,000 items of fan mail to her dad and mom’ residence one month.
She was named West Germany’s Sportswoman of the Yr in 1976, obtained the nation’s Order of Benefit in 2005 and was inducted into the German Sports activities Corridor of Fame in 2006.
Rosa Anna Katharina Mittermaier was born in Munich on Aug. 5, 1950. A twin sister died at delivery. When she was younger, her dad and mom, Rosa and Heinrich Mittermaier, moved the household to the village of Reit im Winkl in Bavaria. Her father, a licensed ski teacher, turned her first coach.
After her snowboarding profession, Mittermaier joined Worldwide Administration Group, a well known sports activities and leisure company run by Mark McCormack, becoming a member of the celebrated athletes Jean-Claude Killy, Jackie Stewart and Bjorn Borg. In her three years with the company, Mittermaier designed winter sportswear and made worldwide appearances for ski merchandise.
She was a commentator for main sports activities occasions on German tv and created a basis to help kids with rheumatism.
Her husband, Christian Neureuther, gained six World Cup slalom races. Their son, Felix Neureuther, was additionally a World Cup ski racer, and their daughter, Ameli, labored as a clothier. Mittermaier’s sisters Evi and Heidi have been Alpine skiers. (Data on survivors was not instantly obtainable.)
Mittermaier didn’t specific disappointment at failing to brush the Alpine snowboarding occasions.
“It might be very unfitting if I used to be not happy with two gold medals and a silver,” she informed The A.P.