It has been 17 years since Michaela Dorfmeister ended her skiing career in March 2006 after 14 World Cup seasons. Her path to double world champion and Olympic champion has not been repeated to this day. The Lower Austrian starts her 51st year on Saturday.
As a sports director at the state ski association, she is currently on the road with her talents – there is not much time to think about the big birthday. “I actually take it relatively easy. I have a nice life and nice people around me and I’m enjoying it at the moment,” says Dorfmeister in an interview with noe.ORF.at.
In private, Dorfmeister has long been happily in a relationship again after earlier turbulence surrounding her ex-partner. Daughter Lea is 14 years old, but will not follow in her mother’s footsteps. Her love belongs to confectionery and patisserie. “You have to be careful there. She wants to be a confectioner, so she’s not allowed to bake so much at home,” says Dorfmeister.
With persistence to success
Michaela Dorfmeister was born on March 25, 1973 in Vienna. At the age of four her family moved to the Unterberg in Neusiedl/Waidmannsfeld (Wiener Neustadt district) in the foothills of the Alps in Lower Austria. There Dorfmeister joined the ski club. The soon-to-be-successful junior runner from the flat east of the country initially had to travel hard to keep up.
The most important achievements:
Ski World Cup:
- from 1991 to 2006 25 World Cup victories
- Winner overall World Cup 2002
- Winner of the Downhill World Cup in 2003 and 2006
- Winner Super G World Cup 2005 and 2006
- Winner of the giant slalom world cup in 2000
Olympia:
- Gold departure 2006
- Gold Super G 2006
- Silber Super G 1998
WM:
- Gold departure 2001
- Gold Super G 2003
- Silver Departure 1999
- Bronze Super G 1999
Her persistence paid off. In December 1995 he achieved the first of 25 World Cup individual victories, in 1998 Dorfmeister missed Olympic gold in Nagano in the Super-G by a hundredth of a second. From then on, at the latest, people knew the young woman, who had once attracted attention with her enthusiasm for rats and who had long been called “Mundl” because of her Viennese origin. In addition to World Championship medals, including gold in 2001 in St. Anton (downhill) and 2003 in St. Moritz (Super-G), Dorfmeister won the overall World Cup rankings in a superior manner in 2001/2002.
Dorfmeister was one of the three “Golden Girls” in a particularly successful era for the ÖSV women. Today, Alexandra Meissnitzer is, among other things, a TV presenter. Renate Götschl is the President of the Styrian Ski Association.
From the Ski World Cup to the Olympics
Winning the big crystal ball in 2002 is still the most important thing for the woman from Pernitz. “The overall World Cup victory – always deliverable from October to mid-March – is certainly one of the greatest successes that I’ve achieved in my career from a sporting point of view,” said Dorfmeister.
In terms of sport, everything worked out for her. She won the missing classics in Lake Louise and Cortina. Shortly before the Olympics, a near-crash with a snow groomer just ended well and in the end she won gold in downhill and super-G at the Turin Games.
Winning the two Olympic gold medals in 2006, at the end of her career, also confirmed Dorfmeister’s motto in life: “If you have a huge goal and then achieve it, that’s a sign for everyone – no matter what phase of life: If you set yourself a If you have a goal, then you can achieve it.”
Exact birthday planning still open
Today, Dorfmeister is also active as a newspaper columnist in addition to the state ski association. In Lilienfeld, the sports school is named after her. She is also involved in the development of an alcohol-free gin. The guest performance in the SK Rapid presidium is over. But the club is still close to her heart, she says.
Dorfmeister has long had her current center of life in Purgstall (district Scheibbs) in the Mostviertel, where she and her daughter live surrounded by animals and nature. Your sports trophies are distributed. A Turin gold hangs in the St. Pölten sports center, other prices are in the Hotel Vienna of her partner Thomas in Vienna.
At the time of the interview, Dorfmeister didn’t know exactly how she was going to spend her birthday. “I wanted to plan a birthday party on my own, but I was refused. I have no idea what happens from morning to evening. Unfortunately I have to be surprised. I was in control of my life until I was 50, now it seems like it’s slipping away a bit,” she says, smiling.