Annemarie Moser-Proell turns 70 – athlete of the century celebrates “comfortably”

And in excellent health. “But I also do something for it”, Moser-Proell refers to a still active life with mountain hiking, skiing and tennis. Everything with measure and goal, only the latter is currently being pursued more intensively by the passionate huntress. When she turns seven, she wants to do good and donate money with a charity tennis tournament in Vienna in May, in which she actively participates.

Moser-Proell celebrates the birthday itself in a more “comfortable” way, goes skiing with the family and then with his ex-rival friend Marie-Theres Nadig. “I won’t be at home, the door won’t close anymore,” says Moser-Proll with a smile.

A legend

The life and career of the mountain farmer’s daughter, who was born on March 27, 1953 as the sixth of eight children in Kleinarl im Pongau, is actually overdue for a film adaptation. Like classmate Franz Klammer, Moser-Proell, who has actually only been called Moser since her marriage to Herbert Moser (deceased in 2008), has had a decisive influence on ski racing for a good decade and is still one of the legends of her guild.

Her 62 World Cup victories were a mark that lasted 35 years and was only surpassed in 2015 by Lindsey Vonn and in 2019 by her US compatriot Mikaela Shiffrin. The fact that Shiffrin, after Ingemar Stenmark, will also dethrone Moser-Proell in the foreseeable future is only logical for the Austrian. “I’ve had such a wonderful time that I don’t think about anyone taking the bullet record away from me. Mikaela is such a perfect skier that if she stays healthy, there’s no upper limit.” Eleven downhill victories in a row, Moser-Proell will probably not imitate that quickly.

Learned to ski on roof shingles

The cinematic nature of the life and career of “La Proell”, as it was first respectfully called by the French press, is quickly described. She ended her first World Cup downhill run in Bad Gastein at the age of 14 crying because she was last after several falls. But the ambitious girl, who had learned to ski with her father’s roof shingles, quickly sparked a nationwide hype with her success and became the skiing superstar of her time.

Velvet formation of legends. When she won all the races in Grindelwald despite being ill and then emptied a few glasses of champagne, a stunned Swiss journalist wrote about the Austrian: “She smokes, she drinks and she wins.”

Moser-Proell gave up smoking long ago. Even in the car, as a former hobby racing driver (“I was a huge Jochen Rindt fan”), at 70 she is no longer quite as full throttle as she was in the “wild” 70s.

“I was really fed up”

In any case, Moser-Proell triggered a shock wave in ski-mad Austria when, at the age of only 23, she surprisingly announced her retirement after her most successful season to date. The “Supergirl” (newspaper title) had already won two gold medals at the World Championships, 41 World Cup races and five large crystal globes in a row. The name change criticized by the ski company, threatening letters and material discussions had greatly spoiled the desire to ski at “Annamirl”. When his father also became seriously ill, Moser-Proell dropped out just before the winter of 1976 with the home Olympics in Innsbruck. “I was really fed up at the time,” Moser-Proell became emotional on the subject, even 43 years after her resignation.

The debts due to the Cafe Annemarie (today “Cafe Restaurant Olympia”), which opened during the break, were a catalyst for Moser-Proell to return to ski racing after all. Because of the commercials shot during the break from racing, however, she had to be re-amateurised. Moser-Proell went on for four more years and won again so quickly that the competition and the trade press were stunned.

In total, in eleven seasons between 1970 and 1980, Moser-Proell not only won six big balls, but also twelve disciplines and finished on the podium 114 times in over 200 World Cup starts. Nine World Championships and three Olympic medals complete the record of the five-time world champion. In the end, in 1980 in Lake Placid (USA) there was also the longed-for Olympic gold in the downhill, after she had failed in 1972 in Sapporo as the big favorite in the wake of the Schranz scandal and had voluntarily passed in 1976.

Although still just under 28 – i.e. as old as Shiffrin today – there was no longer any thought of a comeback for Austria’s seven-time athlete of the year (record). Moser-Proell finally resigned in 1980, became the mother of a daughter named Marion and, as a restaurateur, became a foreman in the bakery.

The seventies don’t frighten her at all, Moser Proell now emphasized. “For me, it’s a birthday like the 69th or the 71st. Life doesn’t take a sudden turn because of that and you always look forward anyway.”

The one backwards triggers goosebumps in the Salzburg native who was voted World Winter Sportswoman of the Century in 1999 at the Vienna State Opera alongside Muhammad Ali, Pele and Carl Lewis. Moser-Proell emphasizes that the allegations against Toni Sailer, who died in 2009, and her ex-coach Karl Kahr (90) that were made in the course of “Me too”. She had a lifelong friendship with Sailer as well as with Kahr.

Then came Corona. “The children and young people in particular were poor,” says the grandmother of a 20-year-old grandson. “It should have been the best time of their lives for them. And then they were practically only in the room.” In principle, she does not want to give any tips to the youth. “Only this much: It helps if you have a clear goal and then pursue it consistently.” She herself wants to be remembered less as an athlete than as a person. “As a pal. As a comrade to steal horses with.”