Happiness and joy, tragedy and sadness. These days, the rollercoaster of life and sport has a name: Odermatt.
A week ago, Marco Odermatt celebrated his great triumph in Adelboden and made skiing Switzerland go crazy.
48 hours later, Josef “Seppi” Odermatt, the namesake of Marko and also Nidwaldner, died at the age of just 69 in a nursing home in Buoxa. The jubilation from Adelboden does not reach Buox.
Seppi Odermatt dies alone, penniless, forgotten.
Once Seppi was also a gifted skier. He is twice vice-world champion among professionals in the USA. At a young age, with his long flowing blond hair, he was even the sunshine boy of the Swiss skiers.
Seppi grew up in Dallenville and was one of four children. He becomes a window builder like his father. And he is a keen skier, he has talent and courage, he is promoted and gets into the national team. There he shares a room with Roland Collombin.
Attractive, trusting bird of paradise
Colombine and Odermatt. Two from one tree. Very talented, but very attached to the joys of life. On the descent in Garmisch, Seppi crashed spectacularly, and then spent several weeks in the hospital with severe back injuries.
He drops out of the Swiss-Ski team and leaves for the US at the age of 23. There he fights people like Hansi Hinterseer, who becomes his friend. And with former world championship stars like Walter Tresch and Werner Muttle who are working professionally in America towards the end of their careers. Seppi twice became vice-champion of the world. The Tyrolean Andre Arnold stands in front of the sun.
Seppi makes good money, meets people like Bruce Springsteen, and later becomes Ivana Trump’s private ski instructor in Aspen. He marries a Spanish woman and invests in an apartment building in central Switzerland.
Then the descent begins. Seppi, a sweet but somewhat gullible bird of paradise, is addicted to drugs and smokes cocaine from foil. He is briefly imprisoned after illegally entering the United States.
The mortgage rate is rising, some of the residents of his apartment building are no longer paying. He was one of the first in the country to open a fitness center for women in central Switzerland.
But the good Seppi watches one of his clients too closely. The wife breaks up with him. This is an expensive divorce. Seppi loses everything. The end of life becomes torture.
Drug use destroyed his lungs. For the past two years, he has been living in a nursing home with an oxygen machine on his back. Last Monday, he couldn’t breathe at all. And suffocates.
This Odermatt quietly left
Seppi Odermatt is buried in Dallenville on 21 January. in the nearest circle. Once welcomed to the US, he has only a few friends left.
During his World Championship participation, Seppi also competed in Kitzbühel. His namesake Marco will thunder down the river Streif on the day of Josef Odermatt’s funeral. The skiing world will be at Marco’s feet again. It’s getting loud.
The other Odermatt is gone. Very quiet.