Erdinger memories of the beautiful days of Albertville
Created: 02/12/2022, 1:00 p.m
By: Dieter Priglmeir
Dieter Priglmeir © private
Everything about the Olympics in Beijing is on the front sports pages.
Here we crank the time machine and reminisce about 1992 "when we still had virgin amateur games."
This is how Christian Zach puts it today.
Back then, if you wanted to go to the Olympics, you had to bring money with you.
The now 57-year-old estimates that the adventure cost him and his friend Florian Maurer 30,000 marks.
The Ski Association paid the participation fee (5400 francs), the rest was on their own account.
But they would do it again, "because Albertville was one big flash," Zach enthuses.
“There was that Olympic spirit oozing out of every pore.
The athletes helped each other.
You lived out the competition in competition.
Before and after it was one big celebration.”
Zach and Maurer took part in the high-speed ski demonstration competition.
What is that?
In a contribution that Ullrich Wickert moderated in the daily topics, a skier could be seen on a rocket.
Exaggerated, but not entirely wrong either.
At 170 km/h at the latest, more and more air is pressed between the 2.40 m long boards and the ground, explains Zach. gradient broke the 200 km/h barrier for the first time.
Zach clocked 194.28 km/h.
The numbers after the decimal point are important because the Grantinger missed 0.2 km/h for the quarter-finals.
Bad luck?
Rather luck, because Zach was traveling with an alleged lumbago, which turned out to be a ruptured lung.
"I've collapsed half a lie.
He survived the run unscathed.
He finished Olympia in 32nd place, his Spezl from Moos was 29th.
"It's been 30 years now," says Maurer, and everything is back immediately: the fan bus with 50 trailers, the opulently flagged area or the taxi armada that was already waiting for the athletes to drive them to other competition sites for free .
Or the hotel room with a view of the Les Arcs high-speed piste.
"Look up!
That's how it goes," Zach said to Maurer at the time.
Also unforgotten was the announcement by the service people Marco and Günter Unger: "We're going shopping now." The two people from Wartenberg came back with a 3,500-mark bill for wax and with a relatively uncomprehending: "You don't even have to look like that, you always want the best.” And they were right, because it had to be the fluorocarbon wax.
The skis came straight from the Atomic factory in Altenmarkt.
You wanted to be prepared, which is why Zach and Maurer had autograph cards printed in advance.
"Now we only have to drive as well as we give autographs," Maurer told his friend at the time.
The tickets were sold out during the Olympics.
They could have used some later at home.
"We were already little heroes, didn't have to pay admission to the Musikpalast, and were given free drinks,"
says Zach.
Sometimes the phone rang at ten in the evening: "We're just sitting at the regulars' table and discussing: How soon will you be back?"
You still know it today – down to the last decimal place.
And we love to hear that too.
Olympians start the time machine
