37 years ago, the nine-time Swiss champion EHC Arosa said goodbye to the anonymity of amateur sport. Now the club is about to be promoted to the Swiss League. What is left of his myth? A visit to the remote mountain village that has also had a beguiling effect on writers.
“Arosa,” says Heini Staub, “is a piece of ideal world.” Staub, 65 years old, should know, he’s spent most of his life in the village. And became Swiss champion twice with EHC Arosa, in 1980 and 1982. Staub was a national player and one of the best defenders in the country. He was one of the pillars of a team that wrote Swiss sports history. He can tell of the wild eighties, the last epoch before sport lost its innocence because of money and greed and the endless spiral of self-optimization. He experienced how the EHC traveled to the away games together with the entourage in the extra train – and how the beer flowed on the return journey.