Double Olympic Champion Rosi Mittermaier Dies At 72

Rosemarie Mittermaier passed away on Wednesday evening at the age of 72, as announced by the family, due to a severe illness.

"Rosi" was the focal point of a family of champions; her husband is Christian Neureuther, another legend of those wonderful years, and her son is Felix, who wrote other beautiful pages in the last decade before retiring in March 2019.

Rosi was born in Munich on 5 August 1950 and grew up in the heart of Bavaria, in Reit im Winkl, where her parents, who had moved there from the capital city, had a restaurant and a ski school. Mittermaier became a skiing legend in 1975/76 when she won the overall and slalom titles and two Olympic gold medals, one in downhill and one in slalom, and a silver medal in the giant slalom in the 1976 edition.

Mittermaier made her World Cup debut in the inaugural season of 1967, and won her first World Cup race two seasons later.

She won two gold medals (downhill and slalom) and one silver (giant slalom) at the 1976 Winter Olympics in Innsbruck. Her victory in the Olympic downhill was the only downhill win in her international career. Mittermaier was the most successful athlete at those games, along with cross-country skier Raisa Smetanina of the Soviet Union, earning her the nickname of Gold-Rosi within Germany (then West Germany).[12]

In addition to the overall World Cup title, she also won the season title in slalom and combined in 1976. After winning both races at Copper Mountain in Colorado to wrap up the overall and slalom titles, the four-year-old resort immediately named the race course run after her. In addition to her success in international competition, she also won 16 German national titles during her career.

On 31 May 1976, she retired from international competition at age 25, following the very successful 1976 season.

After her career in sports, Mittermaier joined Mark McCormack‘s International Management Group as the only German alongside Jean-Claude Killy, Jackie Stewart, and Björn Borg. During her three-year contract, she designed a collection of winter sports clothing and made international appearances for various skiing products. She worked for several charities and occasionally as a commentator for German television for major sporting events. She established a charitable foundation to aid children with rheumatism in 2000