Farewell to a Pioneer: GDR Alpine Legend Eberhard Riedel Passes Away

Eberhard Riedel, the most successful alpine ski racer in the history of the German Democratic Republic, died peacefully on Easter Sunday following a brief but serious illness. He was 88. The news was announced by his son Peter in an obituary published on his personal website.

"He was not a loud person, not one who pushed himself to the fore," Peter Riedel wrote of his father. "He worked, trained and fought — quietly, consistently, and with a deep respect for his sport and his fellow competitors."

Riedel was born on 14 February 1938 in the Saxon town of Lauter, in what would become East Germany. He began his sporting life as a ski jumper before switching to alpine racing, and by 1957 had earned a place in the GDR national team.

His defining moment came in January 1961, when he pulled off one of the great upsets of the alpine skiing world. Competing in the giant slalom on the legendary Chuenlisbärgli piste at Adelboden in Switzerland, Riedel beat the world elite to take a sensational victory — a feat that would make him the only East German ever to win a World Cup alpine race. He won by 1.3 seconds, and his reaction afterwards was characteristically understated: "I still can't quite believe it."

For more than 50 years he remained the last German to win at Adelboden, until Felix Neureuther triumphed there in 2014. Since 2004, a cast of his footprint has been preserved on the resort's "Place of Fame," alongside those of other skiing legends.

What made the achievement all the more remarkable was the setting from which Riedel emerged. While his rivals trained in the Alps, Riedel came from Oberwiesenthal, a small town in the Erzgebirge mountains, where in the 1960s an unlikely alpine training centre took shape under the visionary coach Joachim Loos. The Fichtelberg, the region's highest point, stands far below the altitude of the great Alpine race venues, and the team had to be resourceful. To simulate the speeds of courses like Kitzbühel's Streif, they cut a track through the spruce forest below the Fichtelberg cable car. When snow was scarce, they waxed their skis and watered the grass on the slopes. The squad that Loos built became known, affectionately, as "the miracle of the Fichtelberg."

Riedel competed at three Winter Olympics: in 1960 in Squaw Valley as part of the unified German team, then in 1964 in Innsbruck and 1968 in Grenoble under the GDR flag. His best Olympic result came in Grenoble, where he placed 13th in the slalom. His career was also marked by political frustration: in 1962 he was barred from competing at the World Championships in Chamonix for political reasons, as France was a NATO member. 

His career ended not through decline but by government decree. The GDR leadership withdrew funding from alpine skiing, citing a lack of medal prospects and the sport's commercially professional character, which was deemed incompatible with the socialist ideal. Riedel was left without a programme to compete in.

He remained devoted to sport in other ways. After studying at the DHfK sports institute in Leipzig, he worked as a fitness coach for the football club BSG Wismut Aue, and from 1980 coached ski jumping in Oberwiesenthal — including, for a time, a young Jens Weißflog, who would go on to become a three-time Olympic champion.

His love of skiing never left him. As recently as last year, the honorary citizen of Oberwiesenthal was still out on the slopes. "My turns were still just as beautiful and clean as before," he said, laughing, in an interview to mark his 88th birthday in February.

His son Peter has asked that mourners refrain from sending flowers, and instead make a donation to ASC Oberwiesenthal, the local sports club. The funeral will be held privately, for the family.

Eberhard Riedel is survived by his son Peter. A chapter of East German sporting history — one written against the odds, on short mountains, with limited kit, in a system that ultimately did not know what to do with him — has closed.