Departures of note

Michael Pfeffer was a German sports journalist whose voice accompanied ZDF viewers at major sporting events for more than three decades. A member of the German student ski national team, he brought deep knowledge of alpine skiing to his work. He began his journalism career in the 1980s writing for sports magazines before joining ZDF, where he initially covered Nordic skiing before moving into the broadcaster's alpine team.

From 1998 to 2011 he reported annually on the Tour de France alongside his colleague Peter Leissl, spending many summers together in the broadcast booth and cycling across France in their spare time. He also covered several Olympic Games, and in the 2024 Summer and Paralympic Games in Paris he commented on the cycling events before ending his career as a sports reporter for reasons of age.

Pfeffer was an enthusiastic athlete himself, enjoying cycling, kite surfing and inline skating. A life-threatening off-piste accident in Vail, Colorado in 1999 had already shown the risks he took. He divided his life between Germany and Brazil, where his Brazilian wife Sylvia's family home in Ipanema, Rio de Janeiro was a second base. He died in September 2026 at age 67 while swimming off a beach in Rio, leaving a son and a daughter.