On January 27th, five years ago, the heaviest, myth-laden hill in the ski world gained another chapter. The Super-G was coming up in Kitzbühel on the famous Streif run – and a skier named Josef Ferstl started with start number one. When the then 30-year-old was healthy and, according to reports, raced to the finish line a good 73 seconds later, he flopped exhaustedly onto the seat that they had reserved for the leader in the finish area. He still seemed pretty calm at the time, as with this starting number he was more rather than less the test pilot for the rest of the starting field. The next 80 minutes showed what his time on the Streif was worth.
Ferstl sat on this chair and wanted to get up several times, for example when Vincent Kriechmayr didn’t want to crawl over the Hahnenkamm – but then took a detour before the local mountain. It was even closer for the Frenchman Johan Clarey, but he was also eight hundredths of a second behind Ferstl at the finish. And so Ferstl sat in his seat until the last man rushed down the Streif. Ferstl, now Firstl, had won this race.
Nobody will take this victory in Kitzbühel away from him, Pepi, or “Ferchtei”, as they called him as a child in Chiemgau. Before Kitzbühel, he won the Super-G in Val Gardena in 2017, and for eleven years he thundered down the most difficult downhill slopes on the planet in the World Cup, at four World Championships and two Winter Games. On Thursday Ferstl announced that after Thomas Dreßen he would also end his career. He chose Garmisch-Partenkirchen for his last trip. There will be a Super-G there on Saturday (11.45 a.m.), without Ferstl – but the race was in jeopardy until the end due to the warm, wet weather. If the second Super-G takes place on Sunday (11.30 a.m.), Ferstl would race his 191st and final World Cup race there.
“When the head is no longer willing to take full risk, it is time to draw a line.”
“This season I tried everything again to be able to assert myself again among the best speed riders in the world,” says Josef Ferstl. However, unlike in previous years, he was hardly able to do that. 15th place on the shortened descent from Val Gardena in mid-December was his best result this winter: “If your head is no longer willing to take full risks, it’s time to draw a line in the sand.”
Ferstl, who drives for SC Hammer in the Traunstein district, was someone who stood out as a child. On the one hand, this was due to the young Pepi’s ski helmet, consisting of a white rubber shell, which was decorated all around with original signatures of the best ski racers in the world at the time: Hermann Maier, Lasse Kjus, Bode Miller. Of course, the kids in the elevator asked the casual guy with the even more casual helmet how that happened. And so Pepi told the second part of the story, which is why he already had celebrity status in the Traunstein and Berchtesgaden junior ski circuit back then.
Thanks to his father Sepp Ferstl, little Pepi had early access to the professional scene. Sepp Ferstl had long been considered a ski icon in Chiemgau at the time; he had won the Streif downhill in 1978 and 1979, which was already considered the most important ski race of all back then. The moment his son Pepi was able to stand and ride on skis, the new family project basically began. The “Kitz” project.
The children used to say: Look, that’s Ferstl, his dad won the Streif. Those days are over
Ferstl did not develop into an animalistic downhill rider like Hermann Maier, nor did he become a bon vivant like Alberto Tomba, nor did he become a super-character. He lives with his wife and his two children Leni and Hannes in Waging am See and drives an excavator “quite well” because his father Sepp now has a civil engineering company. The senior’s two Streif victories were always held against the junior – until that day at the end of January 2019.
Ferstl’s former head coach Mathias Berthold once described him as “very talented”. In fact, with a height of only 179 centimeters, Ferstl was always one of the smaller representatives in the World Cup for speed drivers. This can cost you speed, and it may have sometimes done so for him, but Ferstl knew how to compensate for this with his talent and the skiing technique he had learned since childhood. The increasing injuries became more of a problem.
Not one for provocative gestures, but quick in the race and with a clear opinion: Josef Ferstl has left his mark in alpine sports.
(Photo: Daniel Karmann/dpa)
In December 2015 he tore his cruciate ligament, that’s where it started. At the beginning of 2021 he fell at the home race in Garmisch, injured his ankle and missed the subsequent World Cup. In 2022 he fell again in Garmisch, this time the diagnosis was: fractured upper arm. Ferstl received a titanium pin and twelve screws in his right arm. Last season, his hip and inflammation in his pelvis caused problems for him. Ferstl continued to drive and fight.
At a meeting in Val Gardena a few weeks ago, Josef Ferstl still sounded confident. Convinced that he can make it to the top of the world again. “I’m starting to get on the podium,” he said. Now the career is ending prematurely – and with it the era of those downhill skiers who catapulted themselves from the lowlands of the scene to the top of the world under Berthold and today’s DSV head coach Christian Schwaiger. In any case, he chose a worthy place for his farewell in Garmisch, the home race for German skiers. The children there used to say: Look, that’s Ferstl, his dad won the Streif. At the weekend they say goodbye to the streak winner Pepi Ferstl.