On the slopes: Rosi Mittermaier 1970 in Val Gardena, Italy
Image: Picture Alliance
At the peak of her career, Rosi Mittermaier retired and gave up what she loved most: skiing. Nevertheless, she managed to do something that hardly any top athlete can do today.
Zto run away, right? Baskets of letters and packages for weeks, 27,000 tokens of affection for “Rosi”. At home on the Winklmoosalm, a caring siege of complete strangers who stormed the garden and looked through the window at the lunch table. Day after day expectant peewits in front of the front door, after the central organ for determining the federal German emotional life had announced a love storm for Rosa Katharina Mittermaier on its front page in February 1976: “Rosi, we kiss you!”
Help! What does a 25-year-old do with a rural alpine idyll when she becomes (made) the love object of the citizens almost overnight, but doesn’t really know why? Gold in downhill skiing at the 1976 Olympic Games, yes, that was surprising, if not sensational.
