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Michaela Dorfmeister

Michaela Dorfmeister is more than just the seventh Austrian champion to have clinched the Overall World Cup title! She is for sure one of the great stars as well as one of the most outgoing personalities on the women’s ski tour and a real fighter too! In winning five races in three disciplines, “Michi” was by far the dominant skier during the 2002 World Cup season. In March 2002, she celebrated a nice revenge after her defeat two years earlier when she came in 2nd behind her friend Renate Goetschl.

During that 1999/2000 winter the Austrian already achieved quite an impressive performance by winning four GS races and the World Cup standings in that specialty in which she had previously never scored a decent result! In fact, the Olympic silver medal winner in Super-G from Nagano 1998 was herself amazed by these unexpected results. In the previous seasons, she was foremost a good speed specialist. During the 1998/99 season, Michaela tried four times to qualify in GS – without any success.
She also excelled in some Super-G races in 2000, but she was not as consistent in the speed events as the more experienced Goetschl, the 1999 Downhill World Champion from Vail. The pressure was also quite tough on Dorfmeister in the last part of the season but she learned her lesson that winter. At the end, she was pleased the same by her season and her GS World Cup title – her first ever in her career.
A year after, Michaela reached another summit at the St Anton Ski World’s when she grabbed gold in the downhill – more than five years after her first major success. It was her third medal in World Championships since 1999.
The tall and athletic Austrian scored her first points in 1992 after graduating from the famous ski academy in Schladming and won her first World Cup downhill in December 1995 at St Anton. Michaela, who grew up only an hour drive from Vienna where she was born in March 1973, needed a long time to confirm this success. Yet her spectacular look – she used to change the colour of her hair several times in a year – and her relaxed manners brought her soon fame in her country.
In 1997 and 1998 she was pretty confused and less concentrated partly because of equipment problems. She only finished 39th and 32nd in the Overall standings those years after being 9th in 1996!
Fortunately, she regain her confidence and her momentum at the 1998 Olympics in Nagano where she came in 2nd in Super-G, only a mere 1/100 ofa second behind America’s Picabo Street! This excellent result and the strong support of her coach Karl Frehsner helped her to recover her confidence and to find a new motivation for the following season.
Michaela Dorfmeister trained harder during the next summer and was more focused while racing. She accumulated a series of top-3 results in the speed events in January 1999 before winning her first Super-G in March at St Moritz, Switzerland, for once ahead of her best friend Renate Goetschl.
She has been quite close to beat her several times in downhill that winter, including at Vail where she lost the gold medal by 5/100 after having clocked the best intermediate time. She also clinched bronze in Super-G in Colorado.
In total, she stood almost ten times on the podium during the 1998/99 season – a good reason for her to aim for more in future – and the Overall World Cup title, her main goal when she entered the ski team. Three years later, she finally achieved it!
Her last triumphs at Altenmarkt in downhill and Super-G helped her to overcome her Olympic disappointments from Salt Lake City where she ended several time close to the podiums.

A very smart and humorous person, Michaela Dorfmeister often surprises the media with her funny and strong answers. She also likes to say “we” when speaking about herself – and she likes to mention that she has many pets at home including two rats names Columbus and Cindy-2. In 2000 she sometimes traveled with another rat – Cindy – on the World Cup tour, but it died during the season.

Patrick Lang