Will the third Alpine World Ski Championships take place in Garmisch-Partenkirchen in 2025?
The decision will be made on Saturday, October 3rd.
Gerd Rubenbauer will find out about it on Mallorca.
In 2011, the sports reporter legend was head of the media.
In 1978 the man for everything that nobody wanted to do.
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Opening ceremony 2011: Around 11,000 spectators came to see the start of the “Festival in the Snow”.
The media celebrated the show with great fireworks.
© dpa / Stephan Jansen
Garmisch-Partenkirchen
- Yes.
Or no.
Ingemar Stenmark didn't say anything more to reporters.
Unless they got him.
“He was just as quick to steal away as he was in slalom,” says Gerd Rubenbauer.
Now, ahead of the 1978 World Ski Championships in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, the beginner is given this task of all things: to capture quotes from the ski superstar after the race.
So Rubenbauer is standing in the target area with the Uher tape recorder around his shoulders.
Thousands of people - fans and reporters mixed - around him.
Stenmark, the ski king of the 1970s and 80s, swings right in front of him.
Look at him.
Asks: “And?
How much? ”He wants to know the head start from Rubenbauer, who has a clear view of the billboard.
"Two seconds," he stammered.
Despite all the shock, he thinks of the microphone, holds it under Stenmark's nose.
“I asked stupid questions.” Something like: “How was it?” Stenmark answers.
"Beautiful." Or something.
And something else.
Rubenbauer believes to this day that as a reporter he received the first two connected German sentences from the Swede.
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Gerd Rubenbauer's hero: Ingemar Stenmark (center) is celebrated by Willy Frommelt (left) and Andreas Wenzel.
© Imago
Gerd Rubenbauer and his World Cup appearance in 1978: “Great.
A gift."
Rubenbauer was 30 years old at the time, was just taking his first steps on the radio, commenting on games in the second Bundesliga for the BR program “Today in the Stadium”.
At the 1978 World Ski Championships in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, colleagues took Rubenbauer with them as a “man for everything that nobody wanted to do”.
Above all, quotes collect.
It was “great”. “A present.” Rubenbauer knew: “There is no better job.”
He stuck with it and became one of the voices of German television sport.
He commented on the Bundesliga, was used at the Summer and Winter Olympics and all World Cups between 1982 and 1998.
A fixed date for which he flew in from his chosen home Mallorca: the Alpine Ski World Cup in Garmisch-Partenkirchen.
For twelve years - 2020 was the end - he acted as media director.
2011 also at the second World Ski Championships in town.
“A completely different number” than the 1978 World Championships. But not bigger.
Opening ceremony 1978: 40,000 spectators, opening ceremony 2011: 11,000 spectators
At the first opening ceremony, around 40,000 spectators in the Olympic ski stadium marveled at Willy Bogner's twelve-minute show “Everything is ski”.
In 2011 there was room for around 11,000 guests.
The motto of the celebration was “Festival in the Snow - Bavarian, of course”.
The media praised the spectacle, for some locals it was not Bavarian enough.
Costume and tradition shaped the picture and the program in 1978. At the end, the Garmisch and Partenkirchen bands marched in.
“There was a lot more local flavor,” says Rubenbauer.
In 2011 the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra played.
Which caused displeasure.
Rubenbauer always justified this with the 1.5 million euros that the federal government made available for a cultural program.
There, he still says today, you can't just think in terms of customs.
Background noises in retrospect.
The 2011 World Cup was a celebration.
Maria Höfl-Riesch won bronze twice and was fourth in the slalom.
No disappointment for Rubenbauer, even if the Garmisch-Partenkirchner, who lives in Kitzbühel and appears as an ambassador for her home country's 2025 World Cup application, was the favorite.
Rubenbauer bows to her.
"I know how sick she was." Virus flu, cold, severe cough.
"I'll take off my hat."
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A little later they felt like crying: Felix Neureuther (left) retired in the slalom in 2011, Gerd Rubenbauer suffered too.
© Peter Kornatz
Felix Neureuther retires, Christian Neureuther finishes sixth - Rubenbauer "could have howled"
Felix Neureuther could have become the second World Cup hero.
In the slalom, however, he was eliminated on his Gudiberg in front of his audience.
Rubenbauer suffered with him, suppressed tears.
Like 33 years earlier with his father.
In Stenmark's victory, Christian Neureuther took sixth place in the slalom - again no medal.
Another major event without a podium for the Garmisch-Partenkirchner, that is part of his skiing history.
“I could have cried,” says Rubenbauer.
Neureuthers future wife Rosi Mittermaier, double Olympic champion from 1976 in Innsbruck, had already ended her career, she appeared as a co-commentator.
Many have regretted that, says Rubenbauer.
She was so enthusiastic about former skiers too.
The French Jean-Claude Killy, for example.
During the opening ceremony and beyond, he sought her proximity, “dug into her”.
The newcomer to the reporter noticed that straight away.
Just like the looks of the Austrian Toni Sailer, who "talked over the whole time" from a few meters away.
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Skier legends among themselves that Gerd Rubenbauer has observed.
He describes scenes like this like this: Toni Sailer (2nd from left, next to Karl Schranz) "pecked over" from a safe distance, Jean Claude Killy did not give way to Rosi Mittermaier's side.
© ASSOCIATED PRESS
Even without Mittermaier, the German women convinced: silver for Irene Epple in the downhill, silver for Pamela Behr in the slalom.
Gold for Maria Epple in the giant slalom.
Interviewing you - impossible for Rubenbauer.
“It was just passed around.
She was always sitting on someone's shoulder. "
Annemarie Moser-Pröll: "She was the super athlete, a super star."
The big names in 1978 were different.
Stenmark.
And Annemarie Moser-Pröll.
"She was the over-athlete, a super-star." Not to be compared with the big names of 2011.
Not because of the athletic performance - outstanding then as now.
Not because of the media coverage - great then as now.
But probably because of the euphoria of the people.
“The 1978 hype was different.” Thousands of cheering spectators stood to the right and left of the race tracks.
There was no oversaturation back then.
So was the first World Cup better?
Rubenbauer wouldn't say that.
Different.
His role was also different.
The responsibility as well.
With that came the trouble.
In 2011 he immediately had a conversation with Gian Franco Kasper, the FIS President, the highest man in the International Ski Federation.
Rubenbauer wanted to know whether he was looking forward to the opening ceremony.
And what does he say?
For him there was only a nice opening ceremony.
The one in Saalbach in 1991. “Why?” Asks Rubenbauer to provide the answer.
“It was canceled.” His team worked on the ceremony for almost two years - then the comment.
"I could have thrown him out."
Ingemar Stenmark and his silence: "That made him even bigger."
Much good has remained from 2011 too.
A friendly relationship with the gold heroes Elisabeth Görgl from Austria - she won the downhill and the Super-G - and Christof Innerhofer from South Tyrol, winner of the Super-G.
The contact with them continues to this day.
Rubenbauer's star remained Stenmark.
His appearance, the unapproachable, his silence.
“That made him even bigger.” To see him skiing on site.
To elicit the first German sentences from him.
When, says Rubenbauer, for years he pretended not to understand German.
"You don't forget that."
