SEven the first appointment with Rosi Mittermaier was not quite normal. As a matter of course she invited to her house at the foot of the Kramer in Garmisch-Partenkirchen. She asked us to go to the table with the corner seat in the dining room. It felt like visiting good friends, not a professional date.
The occasion was an anniversary. 20 years earlier she had won the downhill and the slalom at the Olympic Winter Games in Innsbruck and had suddenly become the “Gold Rosi” for an entire nation. She actually didn’t think this anniversary deserved a bigger mention. But then she did talk about that time, went from one person to the next, and what she couldn’t remember was added by her husband Christian Neureuther.
It was more of a conversation than an interview, the hours passed. At some point it was lunchtime, the children came home from school. It was also clear that you were asked to stay for dinner. A happy boy was sitting at the lunch table at the time, his almost twelve-year-old son Felix. He also found it normal that there was a stranger to him.
Rosi Mittermaier was an ambassador for sport
That was Rosi Mittermaier. Not a driven person defined by what he has achieved, in her case three Olympic medals and ten World Cup victories. She wasn’t looking for success, but maybe that’s why success found her. When Felix Neureuther won his first World Cup race in Kitzbühel in 2010, she was standing in the finish area and initially worried about his health because he had to stand and walk in the snow for a long time in thin sneakers. Rosi Mittermaier always saw people first and only then athletes.
This is exactly what she was honored for after the family announced Rosi Mittermaier’s death on Thursday. On Wednesday she “slept peacefully” after a serious illness, it said. Thomas Bach, President of the International Olympic Committee, praised Rosi Mittermaier, who turned 72, as a “likeable and credible ambassador” for sport. Franz Steinle, President of the German Ski Association, said: “Sport taught her values such as friendship and fairness, and she upheld these values throughout her life.” Former ski racer Maria Höfl-Riesch said: “Rosi made sure that women’s sport is perceived differently.”
With starting number 5 in first place: Rosi Mittermaier in the Innsbruck slalom
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Image: picture alliance / Lutz Rauschnik
Friendly, open, modest, honest – that’s how they met their colleagues in the ski circus and that’s how she stayed over the years. Envy was alien to her, she used to be just as happy about the successes of her competitors as she was about her own. If it was possible, Rosi Mittermaier avoided the limelight, if not, she accepted it – and made the best of it, using it, for example, to help other people who are not so on the sunny side.
Although she would have preferred to do that quietly. Among other things, she was the patron of the German Children’s Rheumatism Foundation, was involved in the Christoffel Mission for the Blind and, together with her husband, made Nordic Walking popular in Germany. “I’ve been very lucky in life,” she often said. And she always wanted to give something back. Rosi Mittermaier never took herself particularly seriously. And for that very reason he was a role model for many.
Family man: Rosi Mittermaier with her husband Christian Neureuther and their children Ameli and Felix
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Image: picture alliance / Lutz Rauschnik
Rosi Mittermaier was born on August 5th, 1950 in Munich. She grew up above the winter sports resort of Reit im Winkl on the Winklmoosalm. Movement, nature and sport played a role in her life early on. On her father’s lap, Rosa Katharina – that was Mittermaier’s real name – watched the final of the 1954 World Cup in a hotel in the ski region that had a television. Later, the team’s captain, Fritz Walter, became a good family friend and even attended their wedding.
