German Olympic heroine is dead: "Greet me de Katzenborle"

Created: 01/24/2022, 13:55

By: Christoph Klaucke

Germany's first downhill Olympic champion Heidi Biebl died at the age of 80.

© Imago

The former ski star Heidi Biebl is dead. The woman from the Allgäu was Germany's first Olympic champion in the downhill.

Biebl passed away after a short illness.

Oberstaufen – Great sadness in German winter sports.

Former ski racer Heidi Biebl is dead. The 1960 downhill Olympic champion died last Thursday, just two weeks before the Olympics in Beijing, at the age of 80 after a short illness at the Immenstadt Clinic.

The Ski Club Oberstaufen confirmed this when asked by SID.

Heidi Biebl is dead: Germany's first Olympic champion in the downhill

Heidi Biebl was the first German Olympic champion in the downhill and was already a star as a teenager.

Your name will always be associated with February 20, 1960.

Three days after her 19th birthday, Biebl drove out of nowhere to gold in Squaw Valley (today: Olympic Valley).

The anthem at the awards ceremony?

"I didn't know her at all," said Biebl a year ago and laughed, "yes, where from, at 19?

I didn't even know what was going on there."

Biebl grew up in modest circumstances in the tranquil town of Oberstaufen in the Allgäu. Her mother was one of millions of German war widows.

"I had to fight hard for a lot," she said.

Also the ski career.

She turned down the advice to graduate from high school - and relied fully on skiing.

Heidi Biebl as a teenage star: "Greet me de Katzenborle"

After their triumphal journey, the nation puzzled: "Who iskatzeborle?" Biebl later explained with a smile: After her coup, she was allowed to call her mother at home from an outside broadcast van. "That was the highest thing for me, we had no telephone, no television and nothing," she reported, "and in the end I thought of our beloved cat and said: Give me de Katzenborle."

She didn't have much of her gold medal, which is now in the Oberstaufen local history museum.

"I was just too inexperienced and couldn't market them," she said regretfully.

Other Olympic heroes such as Georg Thoma or Hans-Peter Lanig received a piece of land from their community, and Biebl was offered a wristwatch by their ski company: "But I already had one."

She got paid for her driver's license instead.

Former downhill Olympic champion Heidi Biebl died at the age of 80.

© Anke Fleig/Imago

Heidi Biebl is dead: Early career end after a dispute with DSV

The Federal Republic of Germany honored Biebl with the silver laurel leaf, her home town dedicated the Heidi-Biebl-Weg to her, and the German Ski Association (DSV) gave her the badge of honour. "But I can't bite off that either," she said contritely. After two fourth places at the 1964 Olympics, Biebl ended her career in 1966 because of differences of opinion with the DSV: "I was left. I was too undiplomatic."

Biebl became a ski instructor, opened her own ski school and the "Olympia" hotel in Oberstaufen.

In 2008 she sold it "at the worst possible time".

In the recent past, her health was worse after vein surgery, but she didn't want to complain.

For her 80th, she wished "pleasant, good days for as long as possible" with her husband Bora, with whom she was married for 48 years and who is now mourning his Heidi.