And again and again the snow: Willy Bogner wins prizes as a winter sports enthusiast as well as as a producer of breathtaking ski films. Under his leadership, the parental business becomes a well-known fashion brand. Now Bogner is celebrating his 80th birthday.
Bogner and the Olympic Games
As a ski racer, Willy Bogner competed at the Olympic Games for the first time at the age of 18. Later, he skis backwards with a camera for a James Bond film. He expanded the sportswear company founded by his father into an international company and for years dressed the German Olympic team for the Winter Games. In the 1980s film «Feuer und Eis» he combined acrobatics and dance scenes on skis with music. On Sunday (January 23) the athlete, entrepreneur and filmmaker will be 80 years old.
In terms of sport, Bogner followed in the footsteps of his father, who was enthusiastic about skiing. At 17 he was the first German to win the Lauberhorn race and later won several titles in slalom and combined. In 1960 and 1964 he competed in the Winter Olympics, but – like his father in 1936 – did not win a medal.
Olympia 2018 in Munich – that would have closed the circle for the Munich native. “Bringing the 2018 Olympics to Munich is the biggest Olympic challenge I’ve ever faced,” he said when he took over as head of the bid company in 2009. But Munich 2018 failed. And that year, for the first time in a long time, his company did not outfit the German Olympians.
“That’s perhaps the most interesting thing about sport – that you learn to lose,” says Bogner in Bayerischer Rundfunk’s “Lebenslinien” on the occasion of his birthday. Fate also shaped his life. In 1964 his partner at the time died in an avalanche while filming under his direction. In 2005, his then 17-year-old adopted son died. In 2017 he lost his wife Sônia, to whom he had been married since 1972.
Bogner spent a lot of time in St. Moritz, his “winter home”, as he once said. In an interview, he once called the feeling that grips him again and again “snow pain”. «This noiseless falling of the first flakes, that is the magical winter feeling for me. Since my childhood.”
In 1977 Willy Hermann Björn Bogner took over the management of the sports company founded by his father in 1932. He made the label with the big B in a circle as a trademark world-famous. The Bogner company shaped fashion far beyond the edge of the piste – for example with the wedge pants, which became a fashion hit in the 1950s. Bogner regularly dressed the German team at the Winter Olympics, and in 2012 also the summer team.
Willy Bogner withdraws from the company
In 2016, Bogner handed over operational management after almost 40 years. In 2019, a wish came true for him when his adopted daughter Florinda moved into the supervisory board. A few months later he almost completely retired. “At the age of almost 78, I realized that I could no longer support the company as actively and intensively as it was necessary on the way to the future,” he wrote at the time. “Sportsmanship also means making room in good time in the service of the team and the common goal.”
The company is coming through the pandemic solidly after the change at the top. Despite the crisis, Bogner closed the 2020/21 financial year with earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) of EUR 7.3 million – and thus significantly above the previous year (EUR 3.0 million). As expected, sales were lower at EUR 122.5 million (previous year: EUR 163 million), but above plan.
From Olympia to James Bond
Bogner discovered his passion for filming while he was still playing sports. As an athlete at the 1960 Olympics, he also filmed in the Olympic Village. Parents pushed him to take care of the company – Bogner found a way to combine business with his passions. For a long time he was considered one of the best ski cameramen in the world, among other things he received the Bambi in 1985.
In the 1969 James Bond film “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service” he opened up new and spectacular perspectives for the audience when he drove backwards in front of the skiers with the camera on skis that were bent up at the back. He filmed action-packed scenes on a bobsleigh track – for “Fire and Ice” among other things: With the camera he raced down the ice channel at high speed. «First you have the idea, which is insane, then you turn on your brain and ask yourself: Why isn’t that actually possible? Then you will find the comrades-in-arms,” he said in 2014 at a gala at the Munich Film Festival about daring scenes on skis. Recently he has hardly appeared in public. On request, he announced that he would be celebrating his birthday, which falls in the company’s 90th anniversary year, in private. “I’m happy and grateful to be celebrating my milestone birthday in the year in which our family business also celebrates its 90th anniversary,” he explained. “It’s a good feeling to see your life’s work so successful and with a promising future.” In the BR he put it more casually: “Everything’s okay, I would say.” The episode “Willy Bogner – durch Feuer und Eis” of the TV format Lebenslinien is currently available in the media library of the BR television station. The focus of the approximately 43-minute episode is on the entrepreneur, athlete and filmmaker. (dpa)
Read the interview series here: