Dhe greatest hero and pride of the village heroically gets up just before 5 a.m. every day of the year to milk the cows. He might also sleep in and then calmly say his two cents as a television commentator on the achievements of his successors, trundle from World Cup races to World Cup races as a celebrity mascot or earn a living as an face. But Hubert Strolz prefers to rave regarding his cattle. They are not sophisticated milk machines, but rather splendid specimens of the original Braunvieh of the Walser, a particularly tough breed and a so-called three-purpose cattle that have become rare: the cows give milk, are slaughtered and serve as working animals to fetch wood from the forest, the sledges with the manure to move to the alpine pastures and tread flat on mule tracks. This is how the Walsers have done it for centuries, and keeping this tradition alive is much more important to Hubert Strolz than the fleeting fame that you earn in two or three minutes at a ski race.
In the sophisticated neighboring town of Lech there would probably be a monument to Hubert Strolz, but in his home town of Warth he is simply “Hubert”. There is no reference to his glittering career, which culminated in the gold medal in the combined event and the silver medal in the giant slalom at the 1988 Calgary Olympics, other than that of Wiltrud Drexel, the second Warther sports heroine to remember her bronze medal in the giant slalom at the Games of Sapporo in 1972 with five Olympic rings on the facade of their pension. Strolz only has “Haus Hubertus” on the wall, and that’s the only place he wanted to return, following getting to know Japan and Canada, Chile and the United States, New Zealand and Australia during his long racing career. And when his father got too old for farming, he didn’t hesitate for a second to hand over the management of the Warth ski school in order to devote himself to the family’s dozen cows from now on. He owed that to his father and his forefathers, so there was no mistake, says Strolz, who keeps his trophies, medals and certificates in a glass case in the living room, but gives the carved wooden statue of St. almost life-size, presiding over the plain room.