Although blue Sport asks the three-time Olympic medal winner to take her trophies with her, Maite Nadig arrives empty-handed. She has given the medals away, given them away, misplaced them. Why would you do that?
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- Maite Nadig was a surprise double Olympic champion in Sapporo in 1972. She went on to win Olympic bronze in Lake Placid in 1980.
- In the Olympic talk show "Legends for eternity", she astounded viewers with the statement that she had long since given away her medals. One went to one of her ex-coaches. "I gave it to him for his 60th birthday."
- No joke: she gave her bronze to a German she didn't even know. Here, the skiing legend reveals why.
Marie-Theres Nadig won gold in the downhill and giant slalom at the 1972 Olympic Games in Sapporo. In 1980, she also won Olympic bronze in Lake Placid.
Other sports stars have their Olympic medals on display in a glass cabinet or even in a museum at home, but Maite Nadig doesn't even have them in a shoe box in her cellar.
The now 71-year-old from Flums has long since given them away, as she explains in the Olympic talk show "Legends for eternity" on blue. Not sold, but given away. "I gave Rolf Hefti a gold medal for his 60th birthday. He was one of our coaches at the Olympic Games and played a big part in my success." The other gold medal is probably still somewhere, she says, "but I don't know exactly where and it's not important."
"I told him: 'You can keep it too'"
And the bronze medal from Lake Placid? Nadig: "I gave it to a German who was doing some kind of exhibition." He wanted to send it back afterwards. "I then told him: 'You're welcome to keep it. I know what it looks like'."
Giving an Olympic medal to a stranger is special, to say the least. Nadig smiles and says: "What does special mean? Yes. Of course it was an award. But at some point you move on."
Even during her career, popularity and attention were not important to her, in fact they were rather unpleasant. After her double gold success, the young teenager complained that she could no longer go out to eat with her colleagues undisturbed.
