Hanni Wenzel was born in Germany and moved to tiny Liechtenstein (population 25,000) when she was one year old.

An Olympic family

At the 1976 Innsbruck Olympics she won a bronze medal in the slalom. In Lake Placid, in 1980, she entered all three women's Alpine skiing events and performed better in each one. In the downhill she earned a silver medal. In the giant slalom she recorded the fastest time of the first run and the third fastest of the second run to win the gold medal by 46 hundredths of a second. Two days later she breezed through the slalom, registering the best time in each of the two runs. Her brother, Andreas, finished second in the downhill competition, bringing Lichtenstein its fifth Olympic medal.