2-time Olympic skiing champion Mittermeier dies

German alpine skiing icon Rosi Mittermaier, a two-time Olympic champion, has died at the age of 72, her family said on Thursday.

The family said Mittermeier "died peacefully in her sleep surrounded by her family after a severe illness."

Mittermeier gained pop star status by creating some of Germany's lasting Olympic moments by winning downhill and slalom gold, plus giant slalom silver, at the 1976 Winter Games in Innsbruck, Austria.

The races doubled up as world championship events and she also won the non-Olympic combined world title from her downhill and slalom wins.

She also won the overall World Cup title that year and retired from the sport at the end of that season at the young age of 25.

Embraced by the whole country as Gold-Rosi, the immensely popular but modest Mittermeier was West Germany's Sportswoman of the Year in 1976 and the first winter sport athlete at the time to be inducted into the Hall of Fame of German Sports in 2006.

"With Rosi Mittermaier, the ski family loses an extraordinary personality who rightly enjoyed great popularity beyond the sport," Gedrman Ski Federation president Franz Steinle said in a statement Thursday.

"Rosi Mittermaier was friendly and modest, always ready to help, available for every good cause - regardless of the function in which she could support.

"She was a good soul. Sport taught her values such as friendship and fairness, and she upheld these values throughout her life. We mourn the loss of a great role model and our sympathies and thoughts are with her family in these difficult hours."

Her popularity was immense after the Olympic heroics, with Mittermeier recalling on the occasion of her 70th birthday that "in my parents' house there was a whole room full of mail and parcels. In one month 27,000 letters arrived, the postman told us."

Mittermeier was married to Christian Neureuther who was also a successful skier with six World Cup race wins since 1980, and the couple appeared regularly on German TV shows.

Mittermeier once said that "pure skiing is still the most beautiful thing there is and where my heart will always be," but she didn't want to be reduced to being an athlete.

She was engaged in various social projects, was the patron of a German foundation supporting children with rheumatism, and a national ambassador for sport, tolerance and fair play.

She leaves behind two children and four grand children.

Daughter Ameli is a fashion designer while son Felix Neureuther became Germany's most successful male skier with 14 World Cup race wins and six medals at world championships, including a 2005 team gold.