50 years ago: Ebersberger dachshunds test Olympic timing technology

Created: 02/20/2022, 11:07 am

By: Joerg Domke

What do two local dachshunds have to do with the Olympics?

Very much!

They were the ones who tested the new timing technology in Munich's Olympic Stadium 50 years ago.

Maria Petzinger from Bruck remembers the race of her beloved "hooligan".

Two dachshunds from the Ebersberg district tested the new timing technology at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich.

"Rowdy" from Wildenholzen in the municipality of Bruck did not let the victory be taken away.

© Private

Grafing/Bruck

– Ekke Scholz suddenly and unexpectedly stood on the Petzinger farm in Wildenholzen in the municipality of Bruck.

The well-known Grafinger original and unique was back then, we're talking about May 1972, game warden in the area.

"We need your dog," he called to Maria Petzinger and the others in the yard.

What was meant was “Rowdy”, the then five-year-old wire-haired dachshund of the family.

The Petzingers couldn't think for long.

"It's pressing," Scholz emphasized again and again.

So much so that the rowdy owning family didn't even have the chance to clean their loyal and beloved family member from the dirt.

Anyone who regularly goes muskrat hunting in the area will quickly get dirty.

And Rowdy liked to go hunting.

Scholz murmured something about a television crew.

And before the Petzingers really got excited about what the "dog kidnapping" was about in detail almost exactly 50 years ago, Rowdy was already on his way to the Munich Olympic Stadium.

Olympic Games in Munich: New technology should deliver "honest times".

Freia was already waiting for him there, Ekke Scholz's wire-haired dachshund lady.

And with the two Zamperl also a couple of nice hostesses and who else had something to say.

The joint mission on this Friday at the end of May 1972 in the “Oly”: to test whether the state-of-the-art electronic time measurement called “Pola-Chron”, developed by the watch company Junghans, really worked as the Olympic organizers and all friends of athletics hoped.

In 1972, for the first time, races were to be measured with a technology that delivered “honest times”, as the tz colleagues wrote at the time.

And in such a way that, in case of doubt, photos of the finish should provide incorruptible information about the placement of the athletes.

After all, the organizers had invested three million Deutschmarks in the timing system,

Based on the mascot of the 1972 Olympics, dachshund "Waldi", someone apparently had the idea of ​​having two dachshunds race against each other for the first test run for the "Pola-Chron": Freia (4) from Grafing versus Rowdy (5) from Wildenholzen, municipality of Bruck.

The tz reported 50 years ago on the unusual test run of the "Olympia-Waldis".

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Maria Petzinger, now 81, remembers it well.

In all sprints, the zamperl man was a few dog lengths ahead of the lady.

Although she wasn't there in person, she read everything in detail in a report from Munich's tz the day after.

It was all fun and nice and went well, Ekke Scholz told her a few hours after the kidnapping, which was actually "only" a loan, when he delivered Rowdy back to Wildenholzen.

After that, the dashing dachshund was able to pursue his hobby again undisturbed: muskrat hunting.

Rowdy's life ends tragically: hunter shoots "poacher"

Unfortunately, his life soon ended tragically.

Rowdy was caught poaching and killed by a hunter, says Maria Petzinger.

She was all the more surprised that almost 50 years later there was a reunion with the beloved family dog.

It must have been, she reports, a good year and a half ago when Kai Pflaume asked the candidates who the first person was in the ARD quiz show “Who knows something like that?” with Kai Pflaume the modern and then still revolutionary target camera electronically stopped in 1972 in the Olympic Stadium in Munich.

According to the woman from Wildenholzen, nobody knew the right answer.

In order not to withhold the correct solution from the candidates and the television audience, ARD immediately played a short film sequence of the race of the two dachshunds from the Ebersberg district in the Olympic Stadium.

"What do you think it feels like to suddenly see your dachshund on TV 50 years later?" asks Maria Petzinger, touched.

In any case, Rowdy has remained the only real Olympian Waldi in her heart to this day.

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