1976 World Championship runner-up: Kreitmeir board in the museum - three questions for Leopold Kreitmeir

A surfboard in a museum: an exhibition about the town's most famous athletes opened in Lindau at the weekend. This includes Hermann Kreitmeir, the 1976 runner-up world champion who died in 2023 and ran the local surf school. Kreitmeir also became legendary thanks to a poster in surf's predecessor, Windsurfing magazine, which shows him performing a highly elegant catapult.

• Interview with Hermann Kreitmeir from 2011

Under the title "Of Gold Girls and Silver Surfers", the most famous athletes who have been honoured by the city over the past 50 years are presented. Kreitmeir is represented with his legendary picture, as it says: "The photo of the flying Hermann Kreitmeir seems almost surreal - [...] a member of the Lindau Film Club took the photo in front of the Lindau harbour entrance during a foehn storm." His son Leopold Kreitmeir drew our attention to the exhibition and answered a few questions:

How did the organisers of the exhibition become aware of Hermann Kreitmeir?

The organisers came up with the idea because of the annual sports awards in Lindau. The 50th anniversary was celebrated at the beginning of the year, and to mark the occasion, a temporary exhibition of Lindau's most famous athletes has now been set up in the Lindau Cavazzen Museum.

Is the board the original board from the World Championships?

You have to be careful here. It was written that it was the runner-up world champion board, but that's not true. The World Championship was held at Ten Cate, the same regatta at which Robby Naish became world champion.

The design of the board is striking - is there a story behind it?

The board in the exhibition was built by my father as a souvenir of the Bahamas on the occasion of his runner-up title in the World Championships. It normally stands in Lindau in my sister Verena's restaurant "Hermannos"!

The exhibition "Of Gold Girls and Silver Surfers" at the Cavazzen Museum in Linda runs until 27 February 2026. information at culture.lindau.de/cavazzen-museum/