Peter Kraus was never afraid of painful injuries. Equipped only with a face mask and a jockstrap, the hockey goalkeeper of the Rüsselsheim Rowing Club (RKK) faced off against attackers or penalty corner takers between 1959 and 1978 and in doing so earned himself a lot of bruises. This was also the case at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, where the then 31-year-old, three years after his debut in the national team, was unable to be overcome in both the semi-final against the Netherlands (3-0) and the final against Pakistan (1-0). – especially since after two seven-meter parries in the group game against Pakistan (2:1) – he was generally considered the “father” of Germany’s first Olympic triumph in hockey. The sadness and shock in the RKK and in his birthplace and hometown of Rüsselsheim are correspondingly great This special son of the Opelstadt died of heart failure after a shoulder operation on August 1st at the age of 83 in the Mainz University Hospital. In addition to the two RRK colleagues in the “golden” DHB team from 1972, Fritz Schmidt (81) and Rainer Seifert (76), as well as the other eight living heroes of Munich, the news also deeply touched Bianca Heinz: “Peter Kraus was a great role model for me. I thought he was really cool as a goalkeeper and admired him. When I was little and playing in my youth, he repaired my goalkeeper rails and gave my glove extra padding. With him, the RRK loses a real personality – modest and yet very present in his appearance and often on the hockey field. “I really liked him and I’m really sad,” said the former national goalkeeper (including Olympic runner-up in 1992) and current club chairwoman, representing the entire RRK “family.”More on the topicThe hands-on nature of the trained upholsterer, who worked in the Opel until 2001 His long-time companion Seifert also has a special memory of his work at the factory: “He always did a lot of handicrafts and his motto was: Bring it in the morning, do it in the evening.” Peter Kraus, who switched from football to hockey due to a knee injury, was also able to be selective Take time off. For example, before the Olympic final in Munich, when he calmly went to sleep, to the horror of the then co-coach Klaus Kleiter. “But I went into my last game in the national team well rested,” emphasized Kraus on the occasion of his 80th birthday in 2021. The record of just 26 international matches had previously been garnished with the European Championship title in 1970 (3-1 against Holland). , and with “his” Rüsselsheimer RK, a total of six German championships were won between 1968 and 1978. Kraus followed the RRK teams’ home games on Sommerdamm intensively until the end, sometimes with a critical undertone. He was anything but indifferent to the fact that the rowing club’s men’s team had to be relegated back to the fourth-class second regional league at the beginning of July. The joy would have been all the greater if, after the RRK duo Christopher Reitz (1992) and Nicolas Jacobi (2012), another goalkeeper from Hesse, Jean-Paul Danneberg from Darmstadt, could have called himself an Olympic champion in Paris on Thursday evening. Peter Kraus, who will be buried on August 14th (2:30 p.m.) in the new forest cemetery, leaves behind his wife Ursula, to whom he was married for more than 63 years, two sons and two granddaughters. “And he was so excited to become a great-grandpa in November,” reports the widow.
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