Sports reporter legend Jan Hiermeyer (1929-2014): He moderated his debut under drugs

No more medicines!

Sports fascinated him from an early age. As a goalkeeper, he reached the National League A with the Young Fellows Zurich. However, an injury suddenly shattered his dream of becoming a professional athlete. When he joined the newly founded Schweizer Fernsehen in 1954, it didn’t even have its own sports department. That is why he was soon appointed as first team leader.

“It was a crazy time,” said Hiermeyer Blick when he was fired from television and retired 40 years later, “you had to do everything yourself. And everything was very prone to interference. We were always exhausted after the broadcasts. »

In 1956, Hiermeyer himself stood in front of the camera for the first time. As a 27-year-old rookie, he hosted “Hopp Schwiiz”, a program about Swiss football. He later revealed that he made his debut while on drugs. Because he was extremely nervous before the premiere, those responsible for TV gave him Stuka tablets.

What Hiermeyer didn’t know was that the tablets had been used as a stimulant by German dive bomber pilots (so-called Stukas) during World War II. Hiermeyer on the unwanted consequences of drug use: “An incredible heat rose up inside me. I wanted to lift the oak table I was sitting at and throw it at the camera. That was the first and last time in my life that I had taken a drug took.”

Suddenly he was in the GDR

At that time, he also got hot during a meeting with the current Miss World. At the time, due to a lack of changing rooms, a curtain was hung in a corner. “A colleague at work told me there was a microphone on the floor under the curtain. I should be more careful, because things are delicate and expensive.” So Hiermeyer went to the curtain and ripped it open to pick up the microphone. “There is Miss World standing before me, just as the Lord God created her… Much to the delight of his colleagues, who had purposely sent him behind the curtain.

Equally legendary was an anecdote from 1961. In the decider for the 1962 World Cup, Switzerland met Sweden in Berlin. Since Hiermeyer could not sleep after the game, he left the hotel early in the morning and slipped through a wooden hut. Just a few weeks earlier, the GDR had started building the Wall. Suddenly he was standing in front of a poster with the inscription: “Watch out, you are leaving the GDR.”

Hiermeyer: “Suddenly a man appeared from behind a tree. Completely scared, completely ragged. He shouted with his hands in the air: ‘Don’t hurt me!’» The East German thought he was standing in front of a secret police agent and confessed that he wanted to flee. “I calmed him down, took his hand and ran with him across the border. When he got there, he knelt on the ground and kissed the asphalt.”

Hiermeyer once found himself in a predicament. At the Winter Olympics in Innsbruck he was the only reporter on Swiss television. That is why he was not allowed to get sick under any circumstances and he continued to comment despite a meningitis. “The doctor sat next to me with the syringe. As soon as the show was over, I collapsed and had to be rushed to the hospital. My life was hanging by a thread.”

When the post scored a goal

What sports commentators were already thriving at the time: criticism from the TV audience and the media. When the TV magazine “Tele” asked more than 200 national A football players who was the worst football reporter, Hiermeyer “won” by a wide margin. His biggest blunder? Happened during a match between two Italian teams. There he turned a shot from the post into a goal from a certain Palo. Too bad there was no palo, because palo is the Italian word for mail. Apparently, Hiermeyer had been fooled by the Palo cry of an Italian reporter colleague.

After retiring from Swiss television, he devoted himself mainly to his career as a country singer. The last song on his last CD was called «I’m Movin On». Since 2014 he will hopefully continue in heaven. He then died at the age of 85.