Rosi Mittermaier, the West German Alpine skier who won two gold medals and one silver at the 1976 Winter Olympics in Innsbruck, Austria, and went on to become a hugely popular figure back home, died Jan. 4 in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany. She was 72.
Her family said that she died after a severe illness, the German news agency DPA reported.
Mittermaier nearly achieved the unprecedented feat of winning three women’s Alpine skiing events at a single Olympics. She won the slalom and the downhill, but Kathy Kreiner, an 18-year-old Canadian, bested her by .12 seconds in the giant slalom.