The Milano-Cortina Olympics are in progress, but I’m still writing about the 50th anniversary of the 1976 Winter Olympics!

Last week I highlighted Franz Klammer’s legendary Downhill run which was definitely the highlight of the men’s Alpine competition. On the women’s side, Rosi Mittermaier came oh-so-close to winning three golds. She won both the Downhill and Slalom and finished second in the GS to Kathy Kreiner of Canada by .12 second!

Just a reminder that in 1976 there were only three Alpine events. Two men had won all three events in a single Olympics, Toni Sailer and Jean-Claude Killy, but no woman had achieved the sweep.

When she was 16, Rosi Mittermaier joined the World Cup in its inaugural 1967 season skiing for West Germany. She started competing in just Slalom and GS, but added Downhill when she turned 18.

In the early 1970s Mittermaier worked her way into the top 10 in the overall World Cup. That was the same period when Annemarie Moser-Proell of Austria was dominating the women’s World Cup. Moser-Proell won 35% of the races she entered and didn’t leave much room at the top. She won the overall World Cup each year from 1971 to 1975. But then, Moser-Proell took the 1976 season off to care for her ailing father which even meant missing the Olympics in her home country!

Rosi Mittermaier took full advantage of Moser-Proell’s absence. Leading up to the 1976 Winter Olympics Mittermaier podiumed in 10 of the 21 World Cup events. The first Alpine event in Innsbruck was the Downhill. Mittermaier won the Gold edging Austrian Brigitte Totschnig who won Silver. American Cindy Nelson would win the Bronze. The big surprise? That was the first time Mittermaier had ever won a Downhill!

The Slalom was the second event for the women. On the first run, Mittermaier was second, but she won the second run by a wide enough margin to give her the Gold medal. The highest finishing American in that race was Lindy Cochran in 6th place.

The last event for the women was the GS. Something I learned in researching this article was that GS was still a one run event for the women in 1976! The men had gone to a two run format back in 1966, but the women wouldn’t change over until 1978. Somehow that fact was lost in my memory. Anyway, 19 year-old Canadian Kathy Kreiner had bib #1 and laid down a time of 1 minute, 29.13 seconds. Mittermaier had bib #4 and had a lead over Kreiner at the last interval. However Mittermaier would make a small mistake and finish with a time of 1 minute, 29.25 seconds earning the Silver medal.

Mittermaier said, “I think I lost the race on the bottom part where I took one gate too close and had to brake. Kathy deserved to win.” Always the good sports woman!

By the way, the highest finishing American in that GS was Lindy Cochran in 12th place!

Rosi Mittermaier would carry her winning ways to the next World Cup stop after the Olympics. That was at Copper Mountain in Colorado which hosted a GS and Slalom. The races were supposed to be at Heavenly Valley, but lack of snow forced a move to Copper. It was the first time Copper had hosted World Cup races. Mittermaier won both races! As a result, Copper would name its competition trail Rosi’s Run! Just this past November, Copper hosted the women’s World Cup races on Rosi’s Run.

Rosi Mittermaier would finish her 1976 season winning the overall World Cup crystal globe for women and then retired from competitive skiing. She married fellow West German World Cup skier Christian Neureuther and their son, Felix Neureuther, would follow in his parents’ footsteps to become a World Cup skier!