Willi Forrer

Willi Forrer was born on 3 July 1935 in Wildhaus, canton of St. Gallen, Switzerland. He grew up as the middle child of seven siblings on a farm in Wildhaus-Oberdorf in the Toggenburg. His father worked as a farmer, piecework logger, ski instructor and mountain guide. His mother was a farmer and a traditional-costume embroiderer.

He learned to ski on a hill behind the family home. Club affiliation in his racing years was with SC Wildhaus. While competing he worked from April to November as a trained ski maker in a ski factory.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s Forrer ranked among the world's best alpine ski racers, especially in downhill. He raced the Hahnenkamm at Kitzbuhel every year from 1957 to 1962 and started seven times in the Lauberhorn races at Wengen.

At the 1958 FIS Alpine World Ski Championships in Bad Gastein he finished fourth in the downhill, missing bronze by 0.4 seconds behind Toni Sailer, Roger Staub and Jean Vuarnet. He won Swiss championship titles in downhill in 1959, 1960 and 1962, and in the combined in 1962.

At the 1960 Winter Olympics in Squaw Valley he finished fourth in the men's downhill, twentieth in the giant slalom, and was disqualified in the slalom. In 1962 he won the Hahnenkamm downhill on the Streif, becoming the third Swiss winner of that race. At the 1962 World Championships in Chamonix he again finished fourth in the downhill and eleventh in the giant slalom. Contemporary accounts ranked him that winter among the world's leading downhillers, ahead of Karl Schranz in some assessments.

After criticising the Swiss Ski Association's leadership in the press (Blick headlined that something was rotten in Swiss sport), he was banned for two years. He finished his racing career in Canada and won the Canadian giant-slalom title in 1964. Across his career he recorded about twenty international race wins.

Forrer declined an offer to coach for the Canadian ski association because his young wife did not want to emigrate. From childhood he painted traditional folk art, using motifs from the Toggenburg and Appenzell regions; German sources describe him as a Brauchtumsmaler (folk-tradition painter).

With his second wife, Johanna, he lived in British Columbia from 1990 to 2008. The couple later returned to Klosters, Johanna's hometown. In 2017 he visited the Hahnenkamm again with his daughter Brigitte and spoke warmly about earlier racing years when athletes largely looked after themselves and prize money was absent.

Willi Forrer died on 24 March 2026 at the age of 90. According to the Kitzbuhel Ski Club, which was informed by his widow Johanna, he died peacefully at home after a brief hospital stay, as he had wished. He was buried in the closest family circle at the Davos Forest Cemetery (Waldfriedhof Davos). The club published its remembrance on 4 July 2026.

Forrer is remembered as a Streif winner (1962), a four-time Swiss champion, a 1960 Olympic downhill fourth-place finisher, and a racer whose three consecutive major-championship fourth places in downhill became part of Swiss skiing lore. Later Swiss downhillers such as Rene Berthod described him as a wild, daring competitor. He also left a body of folk painting rooted in Toggenburg and Appenzell tradition. The Hahnenkamm organisers marked his death as the loss of another great name from the race's history.